urday night. Which was all in accord with Mrs. Mooney's prediction
the first day: "You won't last long, mind ye; you young uns never do. If
you ain't strong as an ox it gits in your back and off ye go to the
'orspital; and if you're not able to stand the drivin', and thinks
you're good-lookin', off you goes to the bad, sooner 'n stay here."

I would like to dwell for a moment upon the character and personality of
her whom I have more than once referred to as the "queen." The queen had
worked, I was told, for seven years in the laundry, and she was, as I
saw and knew her in those days, as fresh as the proverbial daisy. She
seemed the very embodiment of blithesome happiness. In the chapter
dealing with the laundry I had occasion to speak of her voluptuous
beauty. Her long years of hard labor--and she labored harder than any
one else there--seemed to have wrought no effect upon her handsome,
nerveless body. Her lovely eyes, her hair, her dazzling complexion and
perfect features, were all worthy the reputation of a stage beauty. She
was kind; in her rough, uncouth way, she was kind to everybody--so kind,
in fact, that she was generally popular, though envied as enjoying the
boss's favor. And, as may be imagined, her influence, during those seven
years, upon the underfed, underpaid, ignorant, unskilled green hands who
streamed into the "Pearl" every morning must have been endless for evil.

On the subject of morality I am constrained to express myself with
apparent diffidence, lest I be misinterpreted and charged with vilifying
the class to which I once belonged. And yet behind my diffidence of
expression I must confess to a very honest and uncompromising belief,
founded upon my own knowledge and observation, that the average working
girl is even more poorly equipped for right living and right thinking
than she is for intelligent industrial effort. One of the worst features
of my experience was being obliged to hear the obscene stories which
were exchanged at the work-table quite as a matter of course; and, if
not a reflection of vicious minds, this is at least indicative of loose
living and inherent vulgarity. The lewd joke, the abominable tale, is
the rule, I assert positively, and not the exception, among the lower
class of working girls with whom I toiled in those early months of my
apprenticeship. The flower-manufactory in Broadway was the one glorious
exception. I do not attempt to account for this exception to the gene