What can she do? In what art or profession has she been educated? The world demands service, and proffers its money for labor. But what has she learned? What work can she perform? She can sew. And is that all? Every woman we meet can ply the needle. Ah! As a seamstress, how poor the promise for her future! The labor market is crowded with sewing women, and, as a consequence, the price of needle-work--more particularly that called plain needle-work--is depressed to mere starvation rates. In the more skilled branches, better returns are met; but, even here, few can endure prolonged application--few can bend ten, twelve, or fifteen hours daily over their tasks, without fearful inroads upon health. In the present time, a strong interest has been awakened on this subject. The cry of the poor seamstress has been heard; and the questions, "How shall we help her?" "How shall we widen the circle of remunerative employments for women?" passes anxiously from lip to lip. To answer this question is not our present purpose. Others are earnestly seeking to work out the problem, and we must leave the solution with them. What we now design is to quicken their generous impulses. How more effectively can this be done than by a life-picture of the poor needlewoman's trials and sufferings? And this we shall now proceed to give. It was a cold, dark, drizzly day in the fall of 18--, that a young female entered a well-arranged clothing store in Boston, and passed with hesitating steps up to where a man was standing behind one of the counters. "Have you any work, sir?" she asked, in a low, timid voice. The individual to whom this was addressed, a short, rough-looking man, with a pair of large black whiskers, eyed her for a moment with a bold stare, and then indicated, by half turning his head and nodding sideways towards the owner of the shop, who stood at a desk some distance back, that her application was to be made there. Turning quickly from the rude, and too familiar gaze of the attendant, the young woman went on to the desk, and stood, half frightened and trembling, beside the man from whom she had come to ask the privilege of toiling for little more than a crust of bread and a cup of cold water. "Have you any work, sir?" was repeated in a still lower and more timid voice than that in which her request had at first been made. "Yes, we have," was the gruff reply. "Can I get some?" "I don't know. I'm not sure that you'll ever bring it back again." The applicant endeavored to make some reply to this, but the words choked her; she could not utter them. "I've been tricked in my time out of more than a little by new-comers. But I don't know; you seem to have a simple, honest look. Are you particularly in want of work?" "Oh yes, sir!" replied the applicant, in an earnest, half-imploring voice. "I desire work very much." "What kind do you want?" "Almost anything you have to give out, sir?"