TEMPTATIONS.
Until you have lived the life of the working girl, lady, reading this page, you cannot know what their temptation is—how hard it is to keep away sin and shame. By all the doors at which temptation can enter to you, it enters to them; and by many other doors of which you know nothing by experience. It comes in the guise of friendship to them, who are utterly friendless in the world. It comes in the guise of love—and do you think the poor girl never yearns for the caressing touch of love's palm on her aching brow? never longs to be folded in the comforting embrace of love's strong arms? Ah, she knows the worth of love! It comes, too, through womanly vanity, as it does to her happier sisters, who sit higher in the social scale. But in addition to these, temptation comes to the poor girl through the tortures of a hunger which gnaws upon the vitals—of a cold which chills the young blood with its ice—of a weariness under which the limbs tremble, the head reels, the whole frame sinks prostrate.
"If you were starving, and could not otherwise get food, possibly you would steal it. I would. If hunger will rouse strong men to active crime, how easy must it be for it to lead the poor girl to a merely passive sin! Yet she struggles with a bravery which few would give her credit for—with this, as with all her temptations. There was Agnes—, a beautiful girl of seventeen, who resisted the temptation that came to her through her own employer. He discharged her. Unable to pay her board, she was turned into the streets. It was a bitter day in January. For four days she wandered the streets, looking for work—only for work. 'I envied the boys who shoveled snow from the sidewalks. I would gladly have done their work for half they got.' Hungry, she pawned her shawl. When that was gone, she went twenty-four hours without a crumb, shivering through the streets. At night, she slept in the station- house—without a bed, thankful for mere shelter. Again and again she was tempted; but she did not yield. She found work at last, and leads her cruel life still, patiently and uncomplaining. There was Caroline G—-, who came from the West to New York, fancying the great city would have plenty of work to give her. She, too, wandered the streets, and slept at night in the station-house. On the third day—which was the Christian Sabbath—mercy seemed to have found her. A gentlemanly appearing person spoke to her, and learning her want, offered to give her a place as seamstress in his family. He lived a short distance in the country, he said, and took her to a hotel to stay till next day, when they would take the cars for his home. The hotel was an elegant one; the room given her was hung with silk and lace; but she preferred the hard floor of the station-house, that night, to its luxurious state—for her 'protector' was a wolf in sheep's clothing."