Female clerks, it always seemed to me, must necessarily give out first in their feet. That incessant standing, from morning to night, must be more trying to them than to men. Many women, I know, can walk miles more easily than they could stand for half an hour.
After making a purchase at a store quite late in the afternoon, I said to the young girl who waited upon me,—
"How very tired you must get of us women, day after day!"
"There is a great difference in them," she civilly replied.
"But don't your feet ache sadly?" I asked. "That always seemed to me the most trying part of it."
She smiled as she pulled from under the seat, behind the counter, a stool.
"I thought that mitigation of weariness was against all regulations in stores," I replied.
"Not in this," was her answer. "Mr. —— has always allowed his female clerks to sit down when they were tired."
Now, I was so pleased at this that I should like to give that employer's name in full on this page. Here was a man who was wise enough, and, above all, humane enough, to look on their side of the question. In doing so, of course, he did not overlook his own. In doing so, he may also have known that there is a point when even a woman's india-rubber patience, may be stretched too far. He may have known that, when soul and body gave out, and a customer came in at that trying moment, and the "last ounce" having been "laid on the camel's back," the article inquired for they "did not keep!" I say he might have been keen enough to have known this. I prefer to believe, that being a good, kind-hearted man, he tried to make service for these young girls as light as he would wish it made for his own young daughters, were they in that position. It is very certain that, which way soever we look at it, it is an example which other employers would do well to follow.