Experience—A Dear School.
A New York correspondent of the Providence Press, relates the following interesting item of history:— She was born a “lady,” as the world says. She had a loving father who spared no means to give her the brilliant accomplishments of station. She had a troop of friends—gay flatterers hovered around her beauty and wealth. One she married, and rich and imposing was the wedding. But the married life ran out of course. The husband, after spending the fortune of his wife in reckless living and wild-cat speculations, and involving the father in disaster, and fretting her life away by inches, eloped one day and left the young mother of his child alone, with debts and disgrace, and her own sad heart; alone, to work for her living as best she could, or starve if work she could not. The deserted woman pined away at first and shed bitter tears, and became faded and broken. One day she awoke to the stern fact that she must work or starve. She could not go back to her father, and her pride kept her from former friends. What did she do? In vain she told over her list of talents. Every chance seemed closed to her. By sewing she could not earn enough to live and pay the rent. Her music she had neglected after marriage. The doting father had given her ornament and froth in her education--nothing to which she could put her hands for support. At this time a man said to her, “Come down to my farm, this season, and work in the strawberry field.” Nothing but dire necessity made her go. The man was kind to her, and the work light. All the season she worked for him and in open air, and with the plain, regular living, her heart came back to her. She became healthful and hopeful as in former days. Here was her chance. When the season was over, she said to her employer: “Take me into your business! I have shown what I can do. My past life I shall drop. I will become a business woman!” He thought she was jesting at first; but she was in earnest. Her offer was accepted. For three years this woman acted as clerk and manager for one of the large produce raisers of New Jersey. The details of the business came into her hands. No better salesman than she; no better executive. At last she bought an interest, afterwards half of the business. It seems that her whole life had been held by somebody else; from being a nervous, timid woman, she grew into a sound, brisk, worker. She made a good home in New Jersey for her child and aged father; and to-day there is no more popular dealer in the market and no more capable woman in New York, and no finer appearing lady anywhere, than this self-made woman, who can daily be seen managing her extensive business in Washington Market, associated with marketmen, but never forgetting, nor do they, that she is a lady, and commanding all the respect due to her sex.