We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The idea that somebody thought well of her, that somebody believed in her, and that a lady pretty, graceful, and admired in the world, seemed really to care to have her do well, was a redeeming thought. She would go and get some place, and do something for herself, and when she had shown that she could do something, she would once more make herself known to her friends. Maggie had a good gift at millinery, and, at certain odd times, had worked in a little shop on Sixteenth Street, where the mistress had thought well of her, and made her advantageous offers. Thither she went first, and asked to see Miss Pinhurst. The moment, however, that she found herself in that lady's presence, she was sorry she had come. Evidently, her story had preceded her. Miss Pinhurst had heard all the particulars of her ill conduct, and was ready to the best of her ability to act the part of the flaming sword that turned every way to keep the fallen Eve out of paradise.

"I am astonished, Maggie, that you should even think of such a thing as getting a place here, after all's come and gone that you know of; I am astonished that you could for one moment think of it. None but young ladies of good character can be received into our work-rooms. If I should let such as you come in, my respectable girls would feel insulted. I don't know but they would leave in a body. I think I should leave, under the same circumstances. No, I wish you well, Maggie, and hope that you may be brought to repentance; but, as to the shop, it isn't to be thought of."

Now, Miss Pinhurst was not a hard-hearted woman; not, in any sense, a cruel woman; she was only on that picket duty by which the respectable and well-behaved part of society keeps off the ill-behaving. Society has its instincts of self-protection and self-preservation, and seems to order the separation of the sheep and the goats, even before the time of final judgment. For, as a general thing, it would not be safe and proper to admit fallen women back into the ranks of those unfallen, without some certificate of purgation. Somebody must be responsible for them, that they will not return again to bad ways, and draw with them the innocent and inexperienced. Miss Pinhurst was right in requiring an unblemished record of moral character among her shop-girls. It was her mission to run a shop and run it well; it was not her call to conduct a Magdalen Asylum: hence, though we pity poor Maggie, coming out into the cold with the bitter tears of rejection freezing her cheek, we can hardly blame Miss Pinhurst. She had on her hands already all that she could manage.

Besides, how could she know that Maggie was really repentant? Such creatures were so artful; and, for aught she knew, she might be coming for nothing else than to lure away some of her girls, and get them into mischief. She spoke the honest truth, when she said she wished well to Maggie. She did wish her well. She would have been sincerely glad to know that she had gotten into better ways, but she did not feel that it was her business to undertake her case. She had neither time nor skill for the delicate and difficult business of reformation. Her helpers must come to her ready-made, in good order, and able to keep step and time: she could not be expected to make them over.

"How hard they all make it to do right!" thought Maggie. But she was too proud to plead or entreat. "They all act as if I had the plague, and should give it to them; and yet I don't want to be bad. I'd a great deal rather be good if they'd let me, but I don't see any way. Nobody will have me, or let me stay," and Maggie felt a sobbing pity for herself. Why should she be treated as if she were the very off-scouring of the earth, when the man who had led her into all this sin and sorrow was moving in the best society, caressed, admired, flattered, married to a good, pious, lovely woman, and carrying all the honors of life?

Why was it such a sin for her, and no sin for him? Why could he repent and be forgiven, and why must she never be forgiven? There wasn't any justice in it, Maggie hotly said to herself—and there wasn't; and then, as she walked those cold streets, pictures without words were rising in her mind, of days when everybody flattered and praised her, and he most of all. There is no possession which brings such gratifying homage as personal beauty; for it is homage more exclusively belonging to the individual self than any other. The tribute rendered to wealth, or talent, or genius, is far less personal. A child or woman gifted with beauty has a constant talisman that turns all things to gold—though, alas! the gold too often turns out like fairy gifts; it is gold only in seeming, and becomes dirt and slate-stone on their hands.

Beauty is a dazzling and dizzying gift. It dazzles first its possessor and inclines him to foolish action; and it dazzles outsiders, and makes them say and do foolish things.

From the time that Maggie was a little chit, running in the street, people had stopped her, to admire her hair and eyes, and talk all kinds of nonsense to her, for the purpose of making her sparkle and flush and dimple, just as one plays with a stick in the sparkling of a brook. Her father, an idle, willful, careless creature, made a show plaything of her, and spent his earnings for her gratification and adornment. The mother was only too proud and fond; and it was no wonder that when Maggie grew up to girlhood her head was a giddy one, that she was self-willed, self-confident, obstinate. Maggie loved ease and luxury. Who doesn't? If she had been born on Fifth Avenue, of one of the magnates of New York, it would have been all right, of course, for her to love ribbons and laces and flowers and fine clothes, to be imperious and self-willed, and to set her pretty foot on the neck of the world. Many a young American princess, gifted with youth and beauty and with an indulgent papa and mamma, is no wiser than Maggie was; but nobody thinks the worse of her. People laugh at her little saucy airs and graces, and predict that she will come all right by and by. But then, for her, beauty means an advantageous marriage, a home of luxury and a continuance through life of the petting and indulgence which every one loves, whether wisely or not.

But Maggie was the daughter of a poor working-woman—an Irishwoman at that—and what marriage leading to wealth and luxury was in store for her?

To tell the truth, at seventeen, when her father died and her mother was left penniless, Maggie was as unfit to encounter the world as you, Miss Mary, or you, Miss Alice, and she was a girl of precisely the same flesh and blood as yourself. Maggie cordially hated everything hard, unpleasant or disagreeable, just as you do. She was as unused to crosses and self-denials as you are. She longed for fine things and pretty things, for fine sight-seeing and lively times, just as you do, and felt just as you do that it was hard fate to be deprived of them. But, when worse came to worst, she went to work with Mrs. Maria Wouvermans. Maggie was parlor-girl and waitress, and a good one too. She was ingenious, neat-handed, quick and bright; and her beauty drew favorable attention. But Mrs. Wouvermans never commended, but only found fault. If Maggie carefully dusted every one of the five hundred knick-knacks of the drawing-room five hundred times, there was nothing said; but if, on the five hundred and first time, a moulding or a crevice was found with dust in it, Mrs. Wouvermans would summon Maggie to her presence with the air of a judge, point out the criminal fact, and inveigh, in terms of general severity, against her carelessness, as if carelessness were the rule rather than the exception.