The Washington herald., 1911-08-24
The Girl Who Is Poor and
Pretty Asks
THIS INTERESTING QUESTION
She Sees the Glitter of the Pros
perity of the Other Women Who
Hard and Narrow Path, and
Sets to Wondering.
By DOROTHY DIX.

young girl, seventeen years old, look
ing at life with the clear. candid eyes Of
a child, asks me this question:
DOES 1T PAY GIRL TO BE
GOOD"
This girl is pretty and poor. She has
to work for her living. Her hours Of
labor are long and hard, and her earnings
only enough to pay for the bare necessi-
ties of existence. She has few pleasures
and no luxuries, and she sees the future
stretching before her, an arid highway
along which she must toll footsore and
weary, cold and hungry and discouraged.
Yet she has the natural impulses Of
her sex within her. She is no sense
less and passionless machine. She is all
quivering. throbbing girlhood. She longs
for pretty clothes to set of her beauty.
for amusement, for gayety, for feasting
and dancing and love-making.
At her side in the shop this girl sees
women, fiat-chested, anemic, withered,
toilworn, who have worked from youth
to age in the treadmill They are good
women, models of impeccable virtue. But
their lives have been as drab and fea-
tureless as the black gowns they wear
They have never had a frill or a furbe-
gown, or a jewel, or even a meal in a
smart restaurant.
This girl sees other women. She hears
the clang of their automobiles as they roll
up to the door Of the shop and she sells
them embroidered silk stockings, or real
lace, or swishy satin petticoats, or $50
hats. Her eyes are dazed by the gor-
geousness of their gowns, and the flash OF
their diamonds, and she listens enviously
f~ AlAsr 1lr Az.z
pers on roof gardens and gay parties of a
kind she only reads about. She knows
these are not good women, that a few
years, or months ago, they were poor
working girls, even as she is. and that
they did not get their money by honest
la bor.
Draws Comparison.
Nevertheless. as she looks at them and
at the worn and weary women who have
trodden the hard and narrow road instead
Of the primrose path, it is no wonder that
she asks:
Does it pay a girl to be good?'
Yes: it does pay a girl to be good little
sister, in spite of the fact that appear
ances are aginst it. 1t pays in many
ances are against it. 1t pays in many
science. Believe me, there is just one
person whose respect is absolutely nces-
sary to your happiness. and that is your
self. The day you lose the ability to look
yourself in the face something has gone
from you that takes all peace and COM
fort with it
You covet the pretty clothes these
women wear; but you, who sell bargains
in clothes. consider this proposition from
cold business standpoint Are few
willow plumes, a few yards Of chiffon, a
jewel or two, worth the price of a wom-
ans soul? Does it pay to walk in silk
attire when your silks cover a guilty
heart and other women draw away their
honest homespun skirts from your soiled
finery?
Does it pay to mortgage your future
for little present pleasure? Make no
mistake about this, little sister. When
you take the wrong turn of the road it
leads you away from all the natural hap
piness that every good woman has a right
to look forward to.
The Kind Men Dou't Marry.
The kind of man you would like to
marry will not be wiling to marry the
sort of a woman that you have become
He won't want his children to have a