among the
machines, stopping before each, and courteously addressing and entering
into a brief conversation with the several operators in turn. Sabrina
was working a machine between my sister and myself. When he came to her,
he had more to say than to any of the others; and while conversing with
her, the proprietor came up, and, speaking to her on some business
matter, addressed her by name, "Sabrina."

The stranger heard it. He gazed on her long and silently. Sabrina was
his own child, for whose discovery he had come among us! There could be
no mutual recognition by face and feature, because neither had ever seen
the other before,--the heartless parent had never kissed or fondled his
own child!--they had lived total strangers. There was no excitement at
the moment, nothing that could be called a scene,--no symptom of remorse
on the part of the one, nor of affectionate recognition by the other. I
could know nothing, therefore, of their relations to each other, even
though I saw them at the very moment the parent was identifying his
daughter. All these curious facts were communicated to us afterwards.

That very evening Sabrina quitted her employment at the factory, and was
taken to her father's house, acknowledged as his child, her future to be
made by him as cloudless as in the past his own shameless neglect had
caused it to be gloomy.

If in such a refuge as this factory there were gathered many examples of
the ups and downs of life, it was a blessing that such an establishment
existed. Here was a certainty of employment at wages on which a woman
could live. But, generally, such factories accommodated only what might
be called the better order of workers,--that is, the least necessitous.

The press had been for years exalting the character and attainments of
the working-women of New England, celebrating their thrift, their
intelligence, their neatness, even their personal loveliness, until the
fame of their numerous virtues has overshadowed, at least on paper, that
of all others, extending even to European circles, and becoming a theme
for foreign applause. But from what I have seen of the working-women of
my native city, I am satisfied that their merits have been undervalued
as much as their numbers have been underestimated. Both in the
sewing-school and in the factory, there were girls who were patterns of
all that is modest, beautiful, and womanly, many of them graduates of
the public schools, and worthy to be w