The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-07

This is the story of another Cinderella.
 A Cinderella, who worked in a Depart ment Store and who was poorer even than the Cinderella of the F airy Tale, who had step mother and two step sisters. She made S45O a week as cashier in a store, and she lived In a very ordinary boarding house-you can imagine how ordinary on that amount--and she was really worse off than the girl who had unfeeling relations, for any sort of fam | fly is better than having no human being to care whether you're living or dead and whether you get in at o'clock or Il o'clock at night.
 But our little Cinderella, because she was generally such a "beat-out" with the days work and the bad air in the shop and the poor food she ate-one can't let ones hunger have the reins when she's making only s45o a week and ironing her shirt waists by a fiickering gas jet and alarming and mending. and oh, so very many other things.
 Our poor little Cinderella was most dreadfully upset in her mind just at this stage of the game, and very discontented. The other girls in the store dressed better than she did and they went to better places for lunch, where they spoke to nice looking men, whom they explained that they met at this place and that place places which our little Cinderella, had a vague idea were safest to stay away from.
 Our little Cinderella wasn't perfect-ohl no, indeed! She was only human. and when you arc IT years old and pretty and big eyed and pretty mouthed, it's all the harder to right about face"-,away from the lights down town nights and the music and the light color and humanity of the crowds-yes it's pretty hard to go to your boarding house and into small, un- comfortable room, with no one to care for you in that gloomiest little corner in all the wide world.
 But that's just what our Cinderella did.
 There were memories back of her, and perhaps certain heredity that kept her face turned away from the places that she did not see, and would go home-some- times to read. but oftener to fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, and-DRBAMi
 once in a while she'd dream her favor ite dream about a Prince, of course. What else Is thehe for girl of 1T to dream about?
 The Prince of her dreams didn't look like the Prince in the Fairy Tales-he was more on the order of the young men who advertise i've fit and make 'ern~ clothes in the backs of magazines.
 But he was a dear anyway, and our little Cinderella loved to dream about him. Always she'd wake up from her dream just as he was saying:
 I'm coming-so be ready for me-"
 And then she'd think and think. and those 15 minutes or more of thinking were worth years of her life-her every days life.
 What troubled our little Cinderella most was that she knew she didn't Hook the part of the sweetheart of the Prince and 1t made her very unhappy.
 There was to be an Easter Lecture and Entertainment for working girls and our little Cinderella had been invited to at tend, but she hated lectures and enter tainments given by prosperous people worse than anything on earth. They all ways left her somehow loneier and poorer and colder than before, and she never felt so much like picked bird as she did the morning after some large, fat tightly harnessed up, rich. diamond be- studded old lady had talked about Con ditions of the Working Girls" or some equally dry subject.
 Our little Cinderella would ask herself bitterly if she didn't know better than anybody else the conditions the working girls faced, and if the large lady with the diamonds wanted to speak about them. couldn't she go and tell the rest of the world these things and not waste
 
 So-
 Our little Cinderella had passed up" most of the lectures and things, but her next door neighbor in the boarding house -"Maudie. the Manicure Girr--somehow persuaded her to attend this one, and at tend she did.
 The first person she saw was young girl who was singing-a girl so beautiful that she was in every way worthy to be- come the wife of the Fairy Prince she'd dreamed about, and so she sat and list ened entranced. electrifiedl
 Presently when the Beautiful Lady finished her song and went around and the working girls all shook hands with her-all save our little Cinderella who didn't. feel like she could even SD much as to touch her. she was so lovely. The Beautiful Lady sought her and before they knew 1t the two girls were meeting on a common plane-for the Beautiful Lady was quite as much fascinated by our little Cinderella as our little Cinderella was with the Beautiful Lady.
 The Beautiful Lady gave our little cia-