Los Angeles herald., 1892-03-01
TWO GIRLS IN GOTHAM.
How Glover Young Women Manage to
Live Pleasantly on u Small Outlay.


How Glover Young Women Manage to
Live Pleasantly on Small Outlay.
There are great many people of mod
crate means who would like to spend a
winter in New York, but who look upon
our big city as great devourer of money
and who fancy that those who live COM
fortably in smaller cities or the country
would be obliged to sojourn in garret
If they tried to make the same amount
"do" in New York. The facilities for
pursuing any given course of study,
such as music or any Of the branches of
art, are undoubtedly greater here than
elsewhere on this continent, but many
an ambitious woman looks at her purse
hopelessly, thinks Of the stories she has
heard of "New York prices" and gives
up her dream. There is no need Of it.
TO encourage such, listen to these facts
about the lives of two clever young
women whom know.
One is an art student; the other is en-
ployed as q private secretary. Their
means are ridiculously small, yet they
have one Of the cosiest homes in New
York, and for it they each pay $3.50 a
week. For twenty dollars month they
rented little fiat on the third stage, as
the Parisians say, of large apartment
house in q respectable but Questionable
block. 1t has a pleasant sitting room,
two bedrooms, each larger than the aver
age "hall bedroom" cunning little
kitchen and q good sized bathroom and
hall. Their gas bill averages eighty
cents month, and the fiat is heated by
steam heat without extra charge.
All the rooms are perfectly light, and
the sitting room has two big windows.
But it was not furnished, you say. No,
but in the same house other apartments
had been furnished by the landlord and
rented for thirty dollars each per month.
But these bright girls wanted their own
Lares and Penates, and how much do
you suppose their furnishings costt The
entire fiat was tastefully arranged and
yet for all the furniture the price paid
was less than sixty dollars. The floors
We're stained and in the sitting room
small ingram art square was used. There
were three pretty chairs, a table, book
shelves, bits of -brac, and each bed
room had comfortable wide cot.
At the windows dainty cream colored
curtains were looped aside, and the lit
tie art student gleefully told me they
cost "four and three-fourths cents a
yard" Sketches and engravings were
pinned lavishly on the walls, the oak
rocker had been deliciously cushioned in
crimson; in one of the embrasured win
dows the packing box Gin which our
china came" the secretary confded to
me with an air Of conscious pride, had
been converted into a window seat, with
bright shawl thrown over it and big
pillow in a slip of crimson cashmere for
a back. l looked around and it was so
sweet and dainty and homelike that
pined to stay re-especially when l
thought Of the $3.50 week each girl
paid for this haven of rest.
For the low priced New York board
ing house l have no good word. In the
most moderate priced of these where
young woman of refined tastes could
live, she would be obliged to pay for
cold hall bedroom with wretched food
at least six dollars week; she would be
thrown with undesirable people and
have none of the comforts of home.
These girls told me that they lived ex-
cellently, and that their food and fuel
cost them for the two but $3.50 a week.
But they were living without chap
eron? Yes, indeed, and neither was
over twenty-five; but these girls were
ladies, brought up in refined homes.
They were exposed to fewer annoyances
and dangers living happily thus than in
q third rate boarding house, which was
all they could otherwise have afforded.
If some ambitious little woman with
a slender purse who wants SO much to
have the advantages offered by some of
New York's great free institutions
as Cooper union, for instance, gives the
art student-reads this, let her profit
thereby, especially if she has some friend
who will join her in making bit of
home in our big city.-New York Cor.
Detroit Free Press.