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    236 SEAMSTRESSES AGAIN.

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Cit Everybody Knows That November Lias A...

    another -warehouse is approached , and where the dull whirr of sewing machines comes monotonously on the ear .

    On two or three days of the week this entry is crowded with women , who also swarm about tlie folding * doors .

    This is ' taking-in day , " and as the fog has cleared a little , you may see the motley . Here are little children trembling with

    cold and clinging company wistfully to the mother ; and here are young girls , with pretty faces , whose eyes flash scorpions now and then at some

    gentleman who leers meaningly as he passes by , while others laugh carelessly as if about arrived at the conclusion that anything was

    as good as waistcoat making . And there are younger girls looking pale and sickly , and old women who seem tanned and toughened

    and dried , looking like animated mummies . These can scarcely be said to livefor love and hope and joy are all extinct , and they are

    , moving on as a machine moves on a little while by the propulsion of a momentum which has ceased to be renewed .

    But there was one woman standing by the door , who , though she had the same sort of bundle as the rest , was clearly ' not of the

    sisterhood . She was a neat , elderly , motherly body , and young eyes were fastened on the kindly face just as you stand before some exquisite

    Madonna , -while a spell is being woven about the senses , and every thought is concentrated to a wondering admiration . Some shadow

    must have fallen athwart her path , or she had not been there ; and yet there was no line on the plumpfair eomplexionedbenignant

    , , countenance that told of vicissitude : there was , indeed , a shade of sadness upon it , but it was evidently . the reflex of outward objects

    merely , and arose not from within . She stood very patiently while first one and then another emerged from the warehouse with

    heightened color , or entered with frightened look . The cause for apprehension will be obvious wlien we explain that the work is

    taken in generally on Mondays , Wednesdays , and Fridays ; a , nd if one worker has half a dozen waistcoatsand a single button-hole be

    , condemned , she takes back the waistcoat to repair the fault , but can neither be paid for the work done , nor have more out till the next

    taking-in day . . At last it came to the turn of the good woman , whom we shall

    call Dorothy , to enter with her bundle . The gas was flaring- extrawarehouse vagantly where was a large stood fire the before foreman which , and was at sitting the a _iipper pompous end of gent the ' '

    , who was smoking a cigar and flinging his legs about as if it were a positive nuisance to have legs at all . Dorothy advanced to the

    foreman and submissively laid her waistcoats on the counter before himthere were but two .

    , " What ' s this ? " said he , as on looking over the second his quick pounced on a toothstitch or something else of the kind in the

    eye closing . "It won't do , " he added , emphasising the "do" in a most decisive manner , and he pushed back the offending waistcoat

    and gave the signal for somebody else to approach .

    236 Seamstresses Again.

    236 SEAMSTRESSES AGAIN .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1859, page 236, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121859/page/20/