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4 American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section Two could live as cheaply as one, he explained, and lie would save the expense of employing a type writer. Kmmy declined, with thanks. Breaking into the life of this great city did not seem as easy as she had supposed. By Saturday night she was thoroughly tired out and a trille discouraged. She did not confine her search for a position en tirely to those advertisers who wanted stenographers. While looking over the daily papers she saw many other notices of various sorts offering employment to women. Some of them she did not understand; others appeared to offer opportunities to make a living which she felt it might be worth her while to investigate. After all, she reasoned, it made little difference to her just what sort of work she did, pro vided it carried with it the chance to meet worth while men; she could always go back to her type writing if she were not pleased. One day, toward the end of the week, she cut out several of these adver tisements and went to the addresses given in them. She at once found a difference in the reception accorded her. During the earlier days of the week she had been offering for sale-solely her abilities as a worker—a stenographer—and had, in most cases, been met, somewhat to her chagrin, on that basis. On this day she found that she had entered a new market, a market in which wo men competed on a physical basis. She had thought that the field seemed bvercrowded, where even the slight measure of training necessary to operate a typewriting machine was the only requirement. Now she found that the number of such women was small indeed, com pared with that of the women who had nothing to offer but themselves. It amazed her to realize how many utterly un trained women were in search of work. At the very first place to which she went, the office of a manufacturer of women’ssuits, she found so large a crowd of girls ahead of her that she could not summon up courage enough to join their jostling and turbu lent ranks. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, pushing and crowding to be the first to enter. And it discon certed her somewhat to find that a very great many of these women were almost, if not quite, as good looking as herself. The pay named in the advertisement—twenty dol lars a week—had attracted her, as well as the fact that she had read of cloak and suit models who had married well. She had thought that her face, her figure, would give her a distinct advantage in those lines of employment in which good looks alone were paid for; it came as something of a shock to find that physical attractiveness was both plentiful and cheap, that there seemed to'be a hundred women with nothing but their good looks to offer in exchange for a living, to one who could offer training of even the most meagre description. The experience she had at this first place was repeated over and over during the day. One of her addresses proved to be that of a theatrical employ ment agency. Emmy did not know this until she arrived, whereupon she determined to wait and see what she was offered. The stage was by no means a bad place for showing off one’s wares. Here, also, she found a crowd of young women that jammed the dingy little outer office and over flowed into the hall. It was over two hours before she at last found herself in the agent’s sanctum. He was a small, dark, greasy-looking little man, and he eyed her covetously, asked her weight, felt her arms as he might have felt the legs of a horse, and offered her a position in the chorus of a traveling burlesque show. “You’re solid,” he said appreciatively, “right weight and age, and a bear for looks. We’re adver tising ‘twenty hot young birds—you provide the cold bottle.’ Pretty good tag, eh? Sixteen a week. Fights, of course, and you double for the living pic tures. Go out in two weeks. What do you say? ” Emmy said she would consider it and let him know. She escaped into Broadway, regretting her wasted hours. She knew the sort of men that patronize burlesque shows. Another address led her to the box office of a thea tre. A girl was wanted to take charge of the men’s coatroom. “ What we want,” a young man explained to her, “is a girl who can put up a good front—one that all the men will say is a pippin. No salary, of course—you get your tips. Big money in it, if you’re wise to your job. You know how it is with these guys. They’ll be wanting to hand you a line of hot air. You’ve got to come back at ’em with the quick stuff. If they see you’re a live one they’ll stake you to a quarter, and some of ’em are likely to ask you out to supper. The last girl we had got a swell guy on the string, and I hear he’s putting up big for her. Great chance, if you work it right.” Emmy did not take this position, in spite of the advantages which the young man pointed out. She walked down to Fourteenth Street, in response to an advertisement which said “Easy work and good pay for young woman with good figure.” She found her self at the office of a firm engaged in the manufacture of women’s underwear. They wanted a girl to pose, in combination suits, for photographs to be used in advertising their goods. It was a temporary posi tion only, and Emmy saw nothing in it for her. Chapter VI Wanted to “demonstrate kind of corset a new HE last place she visited was a store on Twenty-third Street, where a young woman was vvanted to “demonstrate” a new kind of corset. Applicants had been re quested to call between four and five o’clock. The pay was large— two dollars a day. She found at least thirty girls waiting in a small office, and their number was being steadily augmented. Emmy got into conversation with one of them, a very attractive girl, with red hair. She told Emmy that “demonstrating” consisted, in this case, in posing for several hours a day in her underclothes, putting on and taking off corsets of differ ent sorts, to show the superiority of the particular one she was to adver tise. Emmy became quite interest ed in this woman’s talk. She spoke plainly, and somewhat bitterly. “Yes,” she said, in answer to a remark from Emmy. “I’ve done pretty much everything. You see, my husband died four years ago—he was a clerk in a big office downtown — and ever since then I’ve been up against it. Wouldn’t care so much for myself, but there’s the kid. It’s a tough game, believe me, if you don’t know how to do something besides just look pretty. My sister’s a trained nurse, and makes twenty-five a week. Wish I was in her shoes. And 1 know a girl that took up designing, and makes fifty. I’m just a dub, I guess. Haven’t got any thing to offer but my shape.” “1 understand cloak models get pretty good pay,” said Emmy. “ Yes. I tried it for six months. It’s all a question of how far you’re willing to go. 1 ’ve lost two or three good jobs on account of being particular. I suppose I’d take a chance, same as most, if it weren’t for the kid; but 1 got to think of her. I handled that cloak model job pretty well for quite a while. Jollied the buyers along, and drew the line at anything more than dinner and the theatre, but when the boss’s son got after me I knew it was all up. I didn’t last more'n a week after that. Same way in stores and on the stage. I slapped a stage manager’s face once, for getting fresh. Glad I did, too, though it cost me my job. He was a dirty dog. Believe me, kiddo, if you can pound a typewriter, as you say you can, you're wasting your time here. Wish I could. You won’t get quite as much money, perhaps, but you'll last longer, unless, of course, you’re ready to play the game the way it’s played here in New York, and go the limit. You’ll get along, 1 guess,” she said, look ing Emmy up and down, “with your looks. But just figure for yourself what chance a homely girl, who doesn’t know how to do anything, has got in the game. I’d sooner be dead, believe me.”. Emmy did not wait to put in an application for the position as demonstrates She went home, and cut out another lot of advertisements for stenog raphers from the afternoon papers. The experiences of the day had shown her that even the little training she possessed gave her an enormous advantage over the woman who had none. It seemed to her that there was something unfair in the way things were arranged. There were just as many women in the world as men, yet altogether the latter were all, or nearly all, sent out into the world knowing how to do something whereby they might earn a living; women, as a class, could live only by attaching them selves, like a barnacle, to some man. She liked the simile—and told it to her mother. Mrs. Moran smiled her usual patient smile. “You have such strange ideas, Emmy,” she said. “Marriage is a sacred thing. You ought not to joke about it. When the right man comes along you’ll think very differently.’.’ Emmy thought it likely that she would, and went on reading her paper. Since con ditions, as she found them, made marriage a woman’s chief profession, she felt that she might as well pur sue it with something more in mind than board and lodging. The dread of poverty, always strong within her, had been intensified by her experiences since her arrival in New York. In this city, she very soon found out, there was no room for the incompetent. Competition was too keen. Those who came into the market place must come with something of value to sell. If they could offer but a fresh young body and a pretty face, the price they could demand apparently varied in proportion to their necessities. If confronted with starvation, Emmy knew that her price would not vary greatly from that of any other marketable flesh—a few cents a pound, perhaps. If she could, by supporting herself, fix her own price, she knew that even millions were not an impossi bility. The thought of the life insurance money in the bank reassured her. She reflected that she had that much to thank her father for, in any event. Mrs. Moran could not understand why Emmy had grown so hard in her outlook upon life. “ When I say that a woman should look forward to marriage, Emmy, as her duty in life, I do not mean that she should regard it as a means of making a living. There is the question of love to be considered. You seem al ways to forget that. If a man loves you it is perfect ly right that he should support you. It is his duty.” “ Exactly,” Emmy said, with a mischievous smile. “And if the man who loves me, and has to support me, has a million or two, so much the better, don’t you think?” “Why—yes—I suppose so. But you should not let that be the chief consideration. You should con sider a man’s character, and his—his honesty.” “I know, mother, but a man with money is just as likely to be honest as one without, isn’t he? Just because I’m practical you say I’m hard. I’m not at all. I believe in love just as much as you do; I mean to have it, too; and it seems to me that if a man with a lot of money offers to marry a poor girl like me, it’s the best evidence in the world that he loves her. Don’t you think so?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Moran, confused by the girl’s sophistry. “ But you might not love him.” “I probably would before I got through. I’ve read that they never do, in France, till after mar riage, but it seems to work very well.” Mrs. Moran had nothing to say to this argument. She was greatly worried about Emmy. All that she could do was to pray. She did that unceasingly, far into the night, when Emmy lay beside her, sleeping the untroubled sleep of youth. The week ended with Emmy no nearer her goal than she had been when it began. The discourage ment that she felt arose from the impatience of inex perience. It was this that caused her to write in her diary that Saturday night: “There’s not a man in this house worth knowing, except the newspaper reporter who sits next to me. 1 think I shall have a talk with him. He said last right that my eyes always made him think of a woman he met in Morocco last year. An Ouled Nail, he said, she was, or something of the sort. I wonder what he meant. He might be able to find me a position. If I don’t get something soon I believe I'll write to Mr. Borden, and send him my address. I wonder if 1 could make him marry me if I tried? ”