--successful in the only real way
a woman can, after all, be successful. Minnie is married. She is the
wife of an enterprising young business man, and the mother of a charming
baby. She has been married nearly two years, and lives in a pretty
cottage in a peaceful suburb. It was what the world would call a good
match, and Minnie declares she is perfectly happy. And no doubt she is,
else that honest creature would not be so bent upon making matches for
everybody else.

As for myself, I have been merely prosperous--prosaically and
uninterestingly, though none the less agreeably, prosperous. I do not
know whether I am happy or not. I am still a working girl, and by all
the portents of the dream-book I am foredoomed eternally to remain a
wage-earner in spite of all Mrs. Minnie's good offices. For I was born
on a Saturday; and "Saturday's child must work for its living."

Now, I do not care to be accused of a superstitious faith in
dream-books, but I do want to say that I have found all sorts of
inspiration in a philosophical acceptance of that oracle attaching to my
unfortunate birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why
not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms
possible with Fate? why not work with, and not against, that inexorable
Forelady, in cooperation with her plans and along the lines of her least
resistance?

This I have tried to do. How I have done it, and what the results have
been, I shall now try to sketch with not more attention to tedious
details than I feel justified in assuming may be of some help and
encouragement to other strugglers.

I became a stenographer and typewriter, earning twenty dollars a week. I
worked hard for my money, and the day was still a long day. I went to
work at nine o'clock in the morning, and while I was supposed to get off
at five, and sometimes did, I was often obliged to work till six or
seven.

And this I called prosperity? Yes; for me this was prosperity, when I
remembered the circumstances of my beginnings.

When I met Minnie Plympton on the street corner, that hot summer night,
I was "dead broke," not only in purse, but in body and spirit as well.
She took me home with her to the two small rooms where she was doing
light housekeeping, and where we continued to live together until her
marriage a year later broke up our happy domestic partnership. A few
weeks after Minnie took me home with her I got a position in the notion
departm