Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Her house was plainly furnished. The "mutton chops with a few greens and
potatoes"--laughed at in a recent trial, as if indifference to one's own
dinner were a crime--might have served her. She often was no better
served. Her dress was conventual in its simplicity. Every farthing she
could save upon herself was saved for her poor.
You must please to recollect that she stood perfectly alone in the
world, and that there was not a human creature that could suffer by this
exercise of a sublime and universal charity. Such peculiar devotion to
one object is only permitted to those whom God has severed from their
kind, and marked out, as it were, for the generous career.
Her days were passed in visiting all those dismal places in this great
city, where lowly want "repairs to die," or where degradation and
depravity, the children of want, hide themselves. She sat by the bed of
the inmate of the hospital, pouring the soft balm of her consolations
upon the suffering and lowly heart. In such places her presence was
hailed as the first and greatest of blessings. Every one was melted, or
was awed into good behavior by her presence. The most hardened of
brandy-drinking nurses was softened and amended by her example.
The situation of the young women who have to gain their livelihood by
their needle had peculiarly excited her compassion, and to their welfare
she more especially devoted herself. Her rank and position in society
gave her a ready access to many fine ladies who had an immensity to be
done for them: and to many fine dress-makers who had this immensity to
do.
She was indefatigable in her exertions to diminish the evils to which
the young ladies--"improvers," I believe, is the technical term--are in
too many of these establishments exposed. She it was who got the
work-rooms properly ventilated, and properly warmed. She it was who
insisted upon the cruelty and the wretchedness of keeping up these poor
girls hour after hour from their natural rest, till their strength was
exhausted; the very means by which they were to earn their bread taken
away; and they were sent into decline and starvation. She made fine
ladies learn to allow more time for the preparation of their dresses;
and fine ladies' dress makers to learn to say, "No."
One of the great objects of her exertions was to save the poor
plain-sewers from the necessary loss occasioned by the middlemen. She
did not say whether the shops exacted too much labor, or not, for their
pay; with so great a competition for work, and so much always lying
unsold upon their boards, it was difficult to decide. But she spared no
trouble to get these poor women employed direct by those who wanted
sewing done; and she taught to feel ashamed of themselves those indolent
fine ladies who, rather than give themselves a little trouble to
increase a poor creature's gains, preferred going to the ready-made
shops, "because the other was such a bore."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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