United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The young men's and the young women's Bible classes undertook to supply Sitles with a broom-machine, a class of girls took Aunt Parm'ly under their wing, other classes knew of other cases of need, and so each class had its hands full. But Willie could not get any class to see that Widow Martin had a sewing-machine. That was left for his own; and how should a class of eight boys do it?
I had no sewing-machine, and but few acquaintances. By working fifteen or sixteen hours a day, I made thirty or forty cents. That was not enough to live on. Then work failed me altogether, and, piece by piece, every thing I had went to the pawnbroker's. On a gloomy December morning, I was turned out of my room, and left on the pavement with a ten-cent-piece for my fortune.
Here she hesitated for some time between the sewing-machine and her knitting-needles, but finally settled upon the latter, and a pair of socks for her husband which she had begun a year ago. But she presently despaired of finishing them before he returned, three hours hence, and so applied herself to the sewing-machine.
Prudence and Alice Gordon were at the table, which was covered by a litter of tweed dress material and paper patterns. Prudence was struggling with a maze of skirt-folds, under which a sewing-machine was almost buried. Alice was cutting and pinning and basting seams at the other end of the table. Sarah Gurridge was standing beside the open window watching the rising of the storm.
The house was like the others, one of a long row, and dull and dark and dingy, but from its basement came a baby's wailing, while from the floor above, as the hall was entered, could be heard the rapid click of a sewing-machine. Four flights of steps were mounted; then Carmencita took the key from her father's pocket and opened the door. "This is our suite," she said, and courtesied low.
It is fortunate that my wife has saved up this money to buy a sewing-machine, so that we can pay back your contribution in full." He paused; no one of us spoke a word. "Mr. Nash," he continued, and his face was good to see, "I am the minister here. I am convinced that what the community needs is more of a religious and social spirit, and I am going about getting it in the way the Lord leads me."
And her rumpled hair, pushed back from her forehead, gave her the look of a Botticelli boy angel. It seemed to merge into tongues of flame where the lamplight caught it. The window was wide open and the sudden opening of the door caused a draught, though the night was singularly still. The lamp flickered. Meg rested her hand on the handle of the sewing-machine, and the whirring noise stopped.
I couldn't in decency come any earlier; could I, Nan? It's just half after eight. And if you're going to keep me standing at the gate, as if I were a sewing-machine agent instead of a very old friend, I may conclude to take offense and regret that I called." "Oh, I'm sorry! Please forgive me, Donald. I'm so much alone so very lonely I suppose I grow suspicious of people and their motives."
Even for this day a starvation wage is the rule; the sewing-machine operative, for example, while earning a wage of fifteen or eighteen pence, furnishing her own thread and being forced to pay rental on the machine. A portion of a wage table is given here as illustrative of rates, and used as a reference table before the preparation of Mr. Booth's book, which gives much the same figures:
The first excitement I furnished my wife on that trip occurred about an hour after our departure from Grand Haven, and, was in the shape of a horse trade. We were traveling through a thick, heavy wood, when we met a sewing-machine agent. I saw at once that he was driving an animal that exactly matched the one we brought from Chicago. I bantered him for a trade.
Word Of The Day