The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-03-07
THE QUEST FOR VARIETY.
YOUNG WOMAN SEEMS TO FIND
TIN BACKING ENVELOPES.
She Gets So a Week For Doing It and
Spends as Much For Trifes-Girl
In a Settlement House.
New York SUM-

/ outside OF mere home matters on which
! to center talent and attention, be any
sign of advancement, then fair proper
ZION or the sex are making noble head
/ way. Now, there is Miss A, a well-ap-
| pearing, well-appointed young woman, in
! no way stinted as to some comforts and
| dress essentials. She goes down to a
/ business office and backs envelopes for So
a week. The s. isn't circumstance in
/ the enigma. Miss A spends more than
| that every week on chocolates and mes
| senger boys. One of the head men of
| the office suggested that she did it just
| for the excitement but / looked into the
matter, and there is absolutely no ex-
! element about that office or the work.
| The envelopes are all alike; the same peo-
| pie are in the same places every day in
| the year and unless there is SAVIOR of
adventure in swinging down from Harlem
! each morning hanging on to an IL" car
! strap, or risking the chance of a seat on
| the return trip at night, Miss AS bust
ness seems to me to bar out even the
chance OF variety. It's true, as a type
| writer told me one day. "A girl in bust
| ness feels that she is adding her little
share to the worlds activity. That was
nice little sentiment on the wage-earn-
ers part but the typewriter had the vi
tai, neyer-ceaSing excitement of earning
her daily bread and keeping some sort
| OF roof over her head. whereas Miss A
put that's enough of Miss A. Now, take
MISS &; totally different type of girl,
and with motives almost as batfiing-that
Is, II women have motives.
Miss b. is as trim and rounded and
good to look upon as Miss A She re-
minds me of Il fair, inviting, unwritten
traced upon it, or of the soft, plant clay
ready for the modeler's formative experi-
ment. Miss B. is responsive, absolutely
unSDoiled. and innocent as yet that she
Is moved by impulse or that there is such
a thing as sell analysis in human reckon
| ing; Miss B, lives in a settlement house.
l think that's the right name for it. 1t
IS d place where young women who wish
to study sociological problems at first
hand, or near range, are made comfort
able during their novitiate, and are per-
mittcd to have callers in between times.
MISS b. is no more in need of living
wages wages than Is my. young woman who
looks into her face that she has been
we'll fed and well housed and well cared
for all her life and that no concern or
care Tor future exigency need cross her
What made you go into this? I
ASKED aio her one day between whiles of lis
tening to another enigmatical young
woman across the settlement house par
ior, who was coaching an alert-looking
foreign quarter young man in the telling
points of debate and dialogue as taught
IN ner pattern of woman's college.
well. 1 don't know, was Miss BIS
smiling answer to my question. 1 live
IN a little Wisconsin town, you know,
and it's very. dull there in winter-noth-
ing gong on. put this answer away in
my mind for future turning over in hopes
or solution; but until l can get at Miss
get a better insight into her sociological
STUDIES or what she calls going on, | am
as much at sea as ever
NOW, again, only yesterday | brought
up short against another Illustration of
the pre- failing mania for activity in the
worlds World affairs This was the case of
MISS C.-robust, Pennsylvania raised and
as strictly good value as the broilers or
the tempting scrapple that come to us
from Philadelphia. Miss c. is a trained
/ nurse. Only d short time ago she towed
a diStemoered friend of mine thro 1gh a
SlX-Weeks fit of aggraYation. l Glanced
IN at the nurses headquarters, where
their unoccupied time, TO order sorle NUT \
ton broth for an invalid neighbor. and
M nad Mis-! Miss Cs history sketcn9d for me
waited for the broth
DO wish these women would stop
going into trained nursing Just for the
excitement OF the thing, she said. They
never nave the patience to put up with
the peoples whims and so get into ali
sorts of Wrangles that are setback to
me the other nurses who, are working for
girl who went out just as you came i'm.
mas her back up about something utterly
unreasonable that will prejudice both the
physician and patient and make it hard
Tor me to get her another place as good
here 1 was staggered again, for never
IN my widest imagination had / dreamed
nursing for the excitement of the thing /
BacklnS envelopes or even probing INTO
lll-smelilng tenements and keeping tab
on dlSpoSSeSS cases for a judges inspec- (
tlon seemed to my mind more tolerable-
more promising of satisfaction to the ex-
cltement craving faculties.
DO they-do many trained nurses 90 /
into the business for the eXcitemeut?' 7 =
asked, as paid for the broth and a little /
something besides for the way the pack ;
age was put up.
Indeed, yes; you wouldn't believe how
many, came the response. Why, the ma !
IRON ana superintendent of every hospital .
IN the country will tell you what a time /
she has with the Eighty Independent feel |
ing nurses. and with the firtatious doc
tors, and all that. young woman like
Miss c.. for instance, lives in a small I
town, with nothing to occupy her after
she leaves school. and she gets into per-
feet fever to go somewhere and do some
thing that offers novelty and has spice
to 1t. Her folks can't object to her enter
ing the nurses profession. because it /
sounds noble and all that, and so off she
starts and stays. too. Trained nurses see
lot OF life as they go from house to
mousse, and find entertainment and ex-
element of the roughened seamy kind
On, yes. lots of women go into nursing for
the excitement. although. OF course the
known
= Now, wonder thought as L walk
ed away with my broth and my new ink
ling if ever there was a young man who
went to backing envelopes or diving into
dispossess cases, or waiting hand and
foot on sick and cranky and contagion-
UCeti lHS people, just LOT the excitement
those avocattons Offer
Miss A, Miss 3. and Miss c. have
come under my observation in the most
casual way, but today | hear of thirty
other women to match them only on an
other me. *, the acquaintance of some
people l know, is mastering up recruits
for new music hall about to be opened,
getting the women for odds and ends of
hurlesque, horse play and farce work He
advertised for thirty handsome young So
ciety ladies' for metropolitan productions,
number of applications and kind of women
that responded Whole strings of them,
three times the number needed, and few
with whom the weekly wages to be paid
cut any figure.
''Of course. they weren't any of them
people in the social sense
that term, society, was only put in as
bait-but they were refined looking and
evidently accustomed to leisure and to
having pretty much their own way. Y.
is a good judge of human kind; not apt
Besides, these women did not have any
of the trade lingo and catch expressions.
They are women who have sufficient
income to live on and who sit around and
do nothing and lead such lack-lustre lives
that they snatch at the chance for eX-
he said. I think some of them
are married, either with husbands pen
stoned off or away travelling for some
house, perhaps willing, like their wives,
to go into the thing for the excitement it
offers But imagine any woman able to
Db HeI OWu IilSlItSS anu dDle 10 uTGSS as
those women were dressed some with 500
street gowns and with good furs and
umbrellas and things that
cost solid money. coming here to drudge
and rehearse in these draughty halls and
put up with all sorts OF Treatment and
hear the women professionals who are
really interested about the wages. haggle
about the IS a week that they will get and
when it shall be paid, and who will fur
nish the extras and all that
Il am told that the appearance of these
women made such an impression on the
that he was ready to read a
homily on the subject to the professional
applicants who had been advertised for in
a trade paper and who presented quite a