CHAPTER XVII.
The winter was a rather open one, with but little snow. Matters were somewhat better in Yerbury, but bad enough, Sylvie Barry thought. The churches began their usual work,—parish aids, clothing-clubs, and sewing-societies. It was as she said: they begged from the rich to give to the poor. Women met to make or to alter over garments, and devise means to render the poor more comfortable. There were so many miserable homes, so many inefficient wives and mothers, who were ignorant of the commonest principles of economy. They could live on meal-mush, they could go in rags, but the science of thrift was utterly unknown in many instances.
Sylvie had done her share of church work as a growing maiden. Every year there had been some mission, and a sewing-school.
"And yet it doesn't seem to do much good," said she. "The girls learn to hem a handkerchief, which a sewing-machine can do in ten seconds: they sew a few patches together, and perhaps make an apron. By the next winter they have forgotten all about it. And some of their mothers do not seem to care."
"The mothers need educating," Miss Morgan began, with a decisive nod of the head. "They were married out of shops and factories, and know very little, and have brought up their children to know less. I'm not one of the kind who can see no good in the world's progress, and who want to go back to the days of spinning-wheels, wax polish for tables and chairs, and a day spent every week scouring the brass andirons and candlesticks and door-knobs, and various other matters; but I do think we have gone to the other extreme. Women dawdle away half their lives. It is of no use to make clothes, you can buy them cheaper; it is of no use to mend, to do this or that, and so they do nothing."
"I was struck with a contrast I saw yesterday," returned Sylvie. "I had occasion to go to the Webbers,—you know the little cottage on Alden Street, Miss Morgan, where they always have such pretty flowers in the window. Mr. Webber works at satchel-making, and even in good times did not earn very high wages. They have a garden, in which they raise the most wonderful succession of crops; they keep some chickens, which they manage to have laying most of the time; and they have five children. It was quite late in the afternoon. Mrs. Webber sat by the window, making lace, on a cushion, at which she realizes about a dollar a week; Christine, the eldest girl, who still goes to school, was crocheting a baby's hood,—she does a good deal of work for Mrs. Burnett's fancy-store, and yet is a very smart scholar; Amelie, the next one, was darning the stockings; the boy, who comes third, was out-doors, tidying up the chicken-house; and the two little girls were in the corner, cutting and sewing patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them. The house is always clean, the children are well and rosy, and play about a good deal, and Christine last year earned thirty dollars. Her mother puts half the money she earns in the bank for her marriage-portion. I was so glad it wasn't in Yerbury Bank! You wouldn't believe, that, though she is not quite sixteen, she has almost a hundred dollars saved up. And I must tell you, also, there was a most savory smell of the supper cooking. Altogether, it was so tidy and thrifty, with the clean, bright, and not unpretty faces, that I thought it would make a charming 'interior,' if only some Dutch artist could do justice to it in his minute, pains-taking way. Then I went to the Coles, who live around in the next street. The gate was off its hinges, and the two big boys were firing stones from the street at a post in the yard. They were ragged and dirty. I went in the house, and found the mother and the two girls in the sitting-room. I do not believe there was a piece of furniture whole, and every thing was dusty and shabby, with that close smell some people always have in their houses. Mrs. Cole sat by the window, in a listless manner, doing nothing. Martha had her baby on her lap, asleep, in a soiled and ragged dress, while she was reading; the little girl, who is about twelve, was cutting up some pretty pieces of silk into nothing, that I could see, but a general litter over the table. The kitchen looked dreadful. I had some baby-dresses for Martha, that Mrs. Kent gave me: so I unrolled my bundle, and displayed them. 'Oh,' said she, 'they are long, aren't they! and I've just put my baby in short dresses.' If you could have heard the kind of helpless, dissatisfied tone in which it was uttered! I had half a mind to bundle them up, and take them back. 'You can shorten them,' I answered, 'and some of them will make two dresses.' 'Yes,' she answered reluctantly, 'only I should want something for yokes and sleeves.' Then her mother came to inspect them, and she was rather more gracious. But I could not help contrasting the two families. Mr. Cole is a carpenter, and has earned very good wages. Martha ran a machine in the shoe-shop, bought a melodeon, and took two or three quarters' music-lessons; purchased a very handsome set of amethyst jewelry and two pretty silk dresses when she was married. And in the two years of her married life, her husband has done next to nothing, although he is a steady, pleasant fellow. Now he is at Pittsburg, earning just enough to pay his own board. She has her sewing-machine, but she doesn't know how to make any kind of garment decently. When they had money they bought every thing ready-made. She paid Miss Gilman twenty-two dollars to make her two silk dresses. If she had put one of them in some plain, simple garments, how much more serviceable it would have proved!"
"Such people are hardly worth helping," Miss Morgan said sharply.
"Isn't it a faulty system that makes them so?" asked Sylvie, drawing her brows into a little, perplexed frown. "Martha worked for two years, and earned a good deal of money. At one time she made ten dollars a week. It was just one thing,—fine stitching on shoes,—yet one would think she would understand a sewing-machine so completely that she could do any thing with it. But she actually hired part of her baby's wardrobe made; and the dresses she bought,—cheap coarse-trimmed things, I should have been ashamed of. Christine Webber wants to study for a teacher; and, as there is so little for girls to do, I think she will. She will make wiser investments of her money than Martha Cole, and think of the kind of wife her husband will get!"
"The era of prosperity was too much for some people," said Mrs. Darcy, with her motherly smile. "I used to wonder six or seven years ago, how it was that so many middle-class people could afford a servant, or fancy they needed one. A little more time spent in household duties would not have injured the women; and, if they had accustomed the children to take a part, it would have been much better for them. Then so much sewing was hired; and, although the income looked large, the expenditures swallowed it all up, and no one was any better off. How few had any stock of underclothing, bed-linen, or useful and durable articles!"