the conduct
of buyer and seller. I did not know that in a large city there are
always hundreds of sewing-women begging from these hard employers the
privilege of toiling all day, and half-way into the night, in an
occupation which never brings even a reasonable compensation, while many
times the severity of their labors, the confinement and privation, break
down the most robust constitutions, and hurry the weaker into a
premature grave.

I was too young to reason on these subjects, though quick enough to feel
for my dear mother. When I saw her full heart overflow in tears, I cried
from sympathy. When we got into the street, and her tears dried up, and
her habitual cheerfulness returned, I also ceased weeping, and soon
forgot the cause. The memory of a child is blissfully fugitive. Indeed,
among the blessings that lie everywhere scattered along our pathway, is
the readiness with which we all forget sorrows that nearly broke down
the spirit when first they fell upon us. For if the griefs of an entire
life were to be remembered, all that we suffer from childhood to mature
age, the accumulation would be greater than we could bear.

On one occasion, when with my mother at the slop-shop, we found a
sewing-woman standing at the counter, awaiting payment for the making of
a dozen summer vests. We came up to the counter and stood beside
her,--for there were no chairs on which a sewing-woman might rest
herself, however fatigued from carrying a heavy bundle for a mile or two
in a hot day. And even had there been such grateful conveniences, we
should not have been invited to sit down; and unless invited, no
sewing-woman would risk a provocation of the wrath of an ill-mannered
shopman by presuming to occupy one. Few employers bestow even a thought
upon the comfort of their sewing-women. They seldom think how tired they
become with overwork at home, before leaving it with a heavy load for
the shop, nor that the bundle grows heavier and heavier with every step
that it is carried, or that the weak and over-strained body of the
exhausted woman needs rest the moment she sets foot within the door.

The woman whom we found at the counter was in the prime of life,
plainly, but neatly dressed,--no doubt in her best attire, as she was to
be seen in public, and she knew that her whole capital lay in her
appearance. I judged her to be an educated lady. Though a stranger to my
mother, yet she accosted her so politely, and in a voice so musical