One of my schoolmates, the eldest child of a widow who had five others to provide for, had just begun working for a shop situated a full mile from her mother's residence. She was a bright, lively, and highly sensitive girl of sixteen. The day after bringing home a heavy bundle of coarse pantaloons, she was taken down with brain-fever. It was believed that she had been overcome by the effort required of her young and fragile frame in carrying the great burden under a hot noonday sun. She languished for days, but with intervals of consciousness, during which her inability to finish the work at the stipulated time was her constant anxiety. Her mother soothed her apprehension by assurances that a delay of a few days in the delivery could be of no consequence; and so believing, in fact, she sent no message to the tailor that her child was ill and unable to complete her task. A week of suffering thus passed. Saturday came and went without the work being delivered to her employer. But the poor girl was better, even convalescent; another week would probably enable her to resume the needle. On Sunday I went to see her. She was quiet, and in her right mind, but still anxious about her failure to be punctual. I volunteered to call the next morning and inform the employer of her illness. I did so. He was in a mean shop, whose whole contents had been displayed in thick festoons, of jackets, shirts, and pantaloons, on the outside, where a man was pacing to and fro upon the pavement, whose vocation it was to accost and convert into a purchaser every passer-by who chanced even to look, at his goods. I was most unfavorably impressed with all that I saw about the shop. When I went in, the impression deepened. There sat the proprietor in his shirt-sleeves, a vulgar-looking creature, smoking a cigar; neither did he rise or cease to puff when I accosted him. Why should he? I was only a sewing-girl. I told him my business,--that my friend had been ill and unable to complete her work, but that she was now recovering, and would return it before many days. Putting on a sneer so sinister and vicious that it was long before I ceased to carry it in my memory, he replied,-- "It's of no consequence,--I've seen to it. She's too late."