The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by HerselfRichardson, Dorothy
History
The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by Herself
Richardson, Dorothy
Women -- Employment -- New York (State) -- New York -- History -- Sources
Henrietta put her cup on the table and shot a suspicious glance at me
before she answered:
"Oh, off and on, and for five or six years, ever since my uncle died. He
was my guardian--that's his house up there."
I looked in the direction of Henrietta's pointed finger to a cheap
chromolithograph that was tacked on the wall between the windows and
immediately over the barrel where we were eating. I recognized it at
once as a reproduction of a familiar scene showing a castle on the
Rhine. I had seen the same picture many times, once as a supplement with
a Sunday newspaper. That this stately pile of green and yellow
variegated stones should be the residence of Henrietta's uncle and
guardian seemed obviously but a bit of girlish fun, of a piece with her
earlier talk regarding her aristocratic ancestry; for by this time I had
construed that strange story into a hoax that was never meant to be
taken seriously.
But one glance now at Henrietta's face showed me my mistake. It was
plainly to be seen that she had come to believe every word of what she
had told me.
My eye had traveled to the row of garments on the pegs behind the door
and had rested with curiosity upon a "lassie" bonnet and cloak.
Henrietta did not wait for the question on my lips.
"Them's my adjutant's uniform," she said, with a touch of pride. "You
didn't know I used to be an adjutant in the Salvation Army, did you?"
I shook my head.
"Well, I was, all right. Adjutant Faith Manners, that's what I was," and
rising, she limped across the floor, and burrowing in the depths of the
trunk, returned in a moment with an envelop which she handed me with the
command to read its contents. The envelop, postmarked "Pittsburg, Pa.,"
was addressed to Adjutant Faith Manners.
"But how does it come you have two names?" I inquired.
"Well," the girl replied slowly, "I thought as how it sounded better for
a professing Christian to have some name like that, than Henrietta.
Henrietta is kind of fancy-sounding, specially when you was an adjutant
officer and was supposed to have give yourself to Jesus."
I read the letter; it was a curious epistle, written in a beautiful,
flowing hand, well worded, and complimenting Adjutant Manners upon her
"persistence in the good work for Jesus," and winding up with the offer
of a small post, at a salary to be determined later on, in the Pittsburg
barracks of the Salvation Army. The name of the writer, which for
obvious reasons it is best not to divulge, was that of an officer who, I
have since discovered, is well and favorably known in Pittsburg. The
whole thing was a bewildering paradox. There was no doubt of its being a
bona-fide letter, nor of Adjutant Faith Manners and my room-mate being
one and the same person. And yet, how explain the ludicrous
inconsistency of such an experience in the life of such a girl?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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