ork
of an obscure milliner, it would have been considered mean. Thus,
instead of a necessity for being extravagant, it struck me there was a
desire to be so, and principally in order that others, when they looked
on the display, might be awed into deference, if not into admiration, by
exact knowledge of the number of dollars which dangled from the
shoulders of the fashionable butterfly. This boastful parade of
information as to how much one expends in this or that article implies
an undertone of vulgarity peculiar to those who have nothing but money
to be proud of. The cultivated and truly genteel mind is never guilty of
it. Yet it somehow prevails too extensively among American women.
Display is a sort of mania with too many of them. A family in moderate
circumstances marries off a daughter with a portion of only two or three
thousand dollars, yet it is all laid out in furnishing a house which is
twice as spacious as a first start in life can possibly require. Not a
dollar is saved for the future. The wedding also has its shams. Costly
silver plate is hired in large quantities from the manufacturer, and
spread ostentatiously over tables, to which the wedding-guests are
invited, that they may admire the pretended presents thus insincerely
represented as having been made to the bride. When the feast is over, it
is all returned to the maker. Truth is sacrificed to display. The latter
must be had, no matter what may become of the former.

As I was animated by the common ambition of all properly educated girls
in my position, to pay my own way, so I worked with my needle with the
utmost assiduity. I worked constantly on such garments as my mother
could obtain from the shops, going with her to secure them, as well as
to deliver such as we had made up, each of us very frequently carrying a
heavy bundle to and fro. Should the tailor sell the cheapest article in
his shop, scarcely weighing a pound, he was all courtesy to the buyer,
and his messenger would be despatched half over the city to deliver it.
Not so, however, with the sewing-women. There was no messenger to wait
on them; their heavy bundles they must carry for themselves.

The prices paid to us were always low. As the character of the work
varied, so did the price. Sometimes we brought home shirts to make up at
only twenty cents apiece, sometimes pantaloons at a trifle more, and
sometimes vests at a shilling. No fine lady knows how many thousand
stitches are required