Litchfield enquirer., 1878-03-21
d STORY OF THE WINTER.

a good housekeeper and mother. has two or | three occupations at her command and can
 turn seamstress, teacher or boarding-house
 keeper with almost equal facility, or if readier
 with her pen than usual, her fatal versatility
 persuades her to try writing for a living. The
 painful for belief. The story following reads
 like the invention of pathetic imagination,
 but, with slight disguises to avoid recognition
 by ythose most concerned, is strictly true to it's Saddest detail sS ns aTs5 @'st's1 @s@
 You want to hear how women succeed in getting employment said the editor in her I tiny office, not much larger than head ac- Etress's dressing room in theater It is dis.
 nal apprenticeship. sfAny time you want to
 be depressed by hearing l can tell you; sad
 things enough. Not that men are so much bet
 ter of in these times, either.
 letter from valued acquaintance was
 handed me one afternoon, hoping that my ex-
 perlence could suggest some opening for the
 lady bringing it, who had written little, and
 was anxious to do something for the family.
 Pm getting hardened ill the business, and
 when blooming piece of girl, with fash
 ionable hat and long ribbons, comes for some
 thing to scribble, to find her in five button gloves instead of three-button ones, or to buy
 a sealskin sacque, and spend the Winter in
 Washington, don't feel called on to give her
 the benefit of my hard-e earned experience little
 as 1t may be when there are so many needing
 a hand to lift them out of the icy waters of
 want and distress.
 More anonymous, as our fourth column man
 says. The lady who brought the letter was
 in the reception room, rather handsome per
 senage, carrying herself admirably, with just
 the becoming ditf1dence of one entering an un-
 tried career, and her modest toilet, though in-
 expensive, was tasteful and stylish to a de- gree. Men are not more sensitive to skill in
 dress than we black silk and linen collar wo-
 men, who are too taken up with doing to
 know how we look, and hardly know our selves in mirror. "What on earth can do
 with this shade of elegance?" I thought at
 first sight, but sitting down by her she told
 ne briefly and effectively her position. Her
 husband had held place of trust in a busi
 ness firm, which nearing bankruptcy, by de-
 gGees, dropped all their expensive subordinates
 and left him without income, except what he fcould pick up by commissions, buying pictures
 and ceramics, for which he had as cultivated
 a taste as any man in the country. They had
 owned house up town, and always lived in
 good style. But, taken out of an easy place and certain income, MT. Florence had seen all
 his property drift out of his hands, putting a mortgage on the house to live on, which was foreclosed, and the property sold for less than | the debt. As her husband had been out of
 business for three years, with no prospect of getting anything regularly to do, she must
 take up something to provide for her children
 for" she said, with frank and touching digni- ty, ''we are without the necessaries of life. This winter, over and over again, my children have gone to bed without food or fire, and their father has come home from running around to collect money for work he has done, without a cent"
 1 That gives you turn to hear does it? It always does me often as l have to hear it from well-dressed women who look as if they had l just stepped out of their carriages. By the way, do you want to buy a cashmere shawl, 1 worth three hundred when it was new, five | years ago, and looking as if it had never been worn? Or a cameo necklace or set of Span | ish point faces? Because if you do,' a woman l 1 know would be wonderfully glad to let you have them all for hundred and fifty dollars, | to pay her doctor and grocers bills, and get bread and cheese for her three year old baby to live on month or two longer. No, Pm not setting up for an exchange broker, but this is a monte de psete for such as happen to need it. Mrs. Florence had sold and pledged all her sil- yer, china and fine furniture long before, and all she had left was some halfworn dresses, which, as she had always been in habit of dres- sing we'll and literally, allowed her to make good appearance on very sad heart and un- satisfied hunger. A real camePs-hair shawl looks handsome, while the threads hang to- gether, when the pawnbroker wouldn't give fifty cents for it. Am 1 obtrudlng disagreea- ble realities? People lament my loss of re- finement and sensibilities. 1 say my ceramics with K, and attend both Philharmonics and the Water Color Exhibition, but the realities come home so that can't help trying to make petty, fine people feel what others quite as well bred and sensitive as themselves have to un- dergo.
 l gave Mrs. Florence note to k., the pub fisher, who found her a trif1ing commission young Yale graduate has just written to the office intimating that he would accept litera- ry editorship or any other that might be lying around vacant, or even do dramatics, at the ''merely nominal rate, being beginner, of thirty dollars week." This woman went home to her children, without dollars worth of provisions or coal in the house. having eaten nothing since morning, as 1 afterward found l out, encouraged beyond measure at theapros- | pect of certainly earning ten dollars the com | ing month She was educated with unusual | thoroughness had always been used, if not to wealth. to pleanty and good style. She would | have no difficulty in getting a governness' place, but there were her four children, un1er | ten years old, and as always happens, when a | woman has to support family, none of her | relatives knew how to do anything for her. | An old mother-in-law and two aunts, chronic | invalids on small incomes, and who couldn't | on any account be bothered with the care of 1 children, were all the near kindred she had | This gently-bred woman dismissed her one lit- | tie servant and did her own washing, carried l coal and played cook for four hungry mouths, l and in the intervals wrote her sketches and | came down with them from Harlem often | walking, for want of the eight cents for car fare. She must keep up, for her husband, not | being born woman, or made for trouble as the sparks are to fly upward lost energy and | heart when months wore away, and no situa tion offered itself such as he could accept. He had fine feelings, suppose. knew New York artist once, and a good one too, who used to hang out his wifes washing on the roof and cook the dinner, before they got fa nous, but this was another kind of man.
 The children stayed at home, and indoors, because their shoes were worn out of all shape and they had nothiug but summer clothes to wear. The mother worked and wrote, day and night, and made enough to keep the fire alight and something to eat in the house, though often it was only crackers and tea One piece of good fortune befel them. Half the houses in the neighborhood were vacant, [ and as no tenant would be likely to take their place, they were suffered to stay month after month, without paying rent. How could they, when they had not dollar to pay The land lord would not have been much benefited by seizing Mrs. Florence's half worn wardrobe, or her cracked crockery or spoons with the plat ing rubbed off. And K. used through the hol- idays to tell of the fifty dollar baskets of flow CTS he ordered, and the parties he gave, this and that notable, while he was paying this wo- man $5 an article, till I wanted to fly at him, and shake him into sense of injustice. My God, if you men once knew what it was to grow faint with hunger, with no means of SUD- plying it, or hear child cry for food without mouthful to give it, you would find way to equalize these things very soon.
 There seemed no way to get help for them. I couldn't do much, with debt and doctors bills and publishers going back on their en- agreements; and friends helping me out of my own troubles. W, couldn't send them dollar, fer his family were keeping perfect hotel for company, as he used complacently to say, and his children were the best dressed in town, and then 1t might get the Florences used to depend ing on him. and that was so disagreeable The | Ks couldn't do anything more for they had