, and I found no work but to stitch in my
little room far up under the roof, and all the long hours bringing so
little,--never more than two and a half francs, and days when it was
even less; and then I found how one must live. I was proud, and wished
to tell no one; but there was an _ouvriere_ next me, in a little room,
even smaller than mine, and she saw well that she could help, and that
together some things might be possible that were not alone. She had her
furnace for the fire, and we used it together on the days when we could
make our soup, or the coffee that I missed more than all,--more, even,
than wine, which is for us the same as water to you. It was months that
I went not beyond fifty centimes a day for food, save the Sundays, and
then but little more, since one grows at last to care little, and a good
meal for one day makes the next that is wanting harder, I think, than
when one wants always. But I am glad that I know; so glad that I could
even wish the same knowledge for many who say, 'Why do they not live on
what they earn? Why do they not have thrift, and make ready for old
age?' Old age comes fast, it is true. Such years as I have known are
double, yes, and treble, and one knows that they have shortened life.
But when I say now 'the poor,' I know what that word means, and have
such compassion as never before. It is the workers who are the real
poor, and for them there is little hope, since it is the system that
must change. It is the middleman who makes the money, and there are so
many of them, how can there be much left for the one who comes last, and
is only the machine that works?

"All that is true of England, and I have had two years there, and thus
know well; all that is true, too, here, though we know better how we can
live, and not be always so _triste_ and sombre. But each day, as I go by
the great new shops that have killed all the little ones, and by the
great factory where electricity makes the machines go, and the women too
become machines,--each day I know that these counters, where one can buy
for a song, are counters where flesh and blood are sold. For, madame, it
is starvation for the one who has made these garments; and why must one
woman starve that another may wear what her own hands could make if she
would? Everywhere it is _occasions_ [bargains] that the great shops
advertise. Everywhere they must be more and more, and so wages lessen,
till there is no more hope of living; and, becau