The herald., 1897-03-02
LITTLE HEROINE OF TIE CITY
Sells Ribbons In Store and Has Established
a Ereah Air Home for Children


There is a woman who sells ribbons
in a downtown shop. She went to work
there forty years ago, when the store
that now covers nearly block was
only little, narrow, passag age-l.ke place.
with one window. All these years she
has known nothing but ribbons-pink
ribbons, blue ribbons, every colored RIB
bons. She has seen mountains and
mountains of scrap ribbons disappear
vanish into the tenements round about,
and she has measured off miles ard
miles of blocks of ribbons to supply the
weddings and the funerals and the
christenings and festal days of that
dense neighborhood. Occasionally she
goes down to the wholesale houses AMI
buys fresh ribbons for her counter She
knows just what to buy, because she
sells the ribbons herself, and her EN-
plcyers know that she knows this, and
from time to time they have raised her
wages dollar or SO week.
She Is q single woman, small and
gray-haired and spinster- looking, and
she has looked at the world through
spectacles since she was a girl. She has
looked so long now that she has OBJ.
served certain things out of joint, and
has set about remedying some of them
with her savings from ribbon selling.
Selling ribbons brings her in touch with
young people, particularly with the lit
tie cash and stock girls In her own store,
who come to buy a yard or so for n
nickel or dime, and look longingly at
the tempting display of scarlet and or
ange and lemon colored sash ribbons
that are far beyond their reach. Cor
geous dyes are most sought after in
that neighborhood. Many of the people
hail from the east, and respondent col
ors please them.
The small, spectacled ribbon seller no.
ticed that many of the little ribbon buy
ers did not look prosperous or plentifully
fed or well clothed. Some looked pale
and dispirited, though scarcely old
enough to realize the reason. She
bought a small frame house on Long
Island with her bank savings, a small
house in little hamlet having an odd
Indian name, and, last summer, when
1t was stiflingly hot in the ovenlike ten
ements. she sent little tired out cash
girls there to recruit. She sent twelve
in turn. She paid their way down. and
each stayed the length of her vacation.
The frame house is close to the sea.
Anyone who has walked through Hester,
Forsyth or Rivington streets on a sum-
mer morning will know what "'tlie house
being close to the sea" meant to those
10 and 16-year-old girls. They were
"misfits" for the Fresh Air fund.
The little spectacled woman does not
want anybody to know about 1t or to
speak of it to her. She does rot dream
now that a newspaper writer bought.
yard of brown neck ribbon just so as to
look at her, or that another saleswoman
told on her Besides being small, she is
somewhat bent and has wrinkles on her
brow because of much concern about
ribbons. In outward appearance her life
Is as colorless and monotonou1 as the
everyday gray gown she wears in the
store with it's rubbed edges ard faded
luster. There is also a widow woman,
whom she employs to cook and care
for the cash girls while they stay at the
place with the queer Indian Eame. who
knows something of the real nature of
the ribbvl seller.-New York Post.