217. Traveling Companion.—If you have a good education and can make yourself agreeable, your services ought not to go long begging for an engagement in this delightful occupation. Watch the advertisements in the daily papers; better yet, insert an advertisement of your own, modestly stating your qualifications. The remuneration depends upon the wealth and liberality of your employer.
218. Paper Flowers.—This has become a distinct trade. You can learn in a few months. There is a paper flower store in Broadway, New York, which does an immense business. There are great possibilities in this line in every city.
219. French Perfumer and Complexion Expert.—How does this sound?—Madame Racier, French Perfumer. Equip yourself with perfumes, essences, tinctures, extracts, spirit waters, cosmetics, infusions, pastiles, tooth powders, washes, cachous, hair dyes, sachets, essential oils, etc. All ladies like perfumes. Once let it be known that you are an authority on the subject, and you will lack neither patronage nor profits.
220. A Woman’s Hotel.—A hotel exclusively for women would no doubt be a paying investment. More than fifty thousand ladies without male escorts stop every year in the hotels of New York City. A very large proportion of this number would patronize a cheap, clean, well-kept place, fitted up and conducted solely for the comfort of ladies.
221. Guide for Shoppers.—A department store in New York recently made a census of its customers, and from the count kept for a single week it was estimated that 3,125,000 persons passed through its doors every year. This for a single store. But there are thousands of stores. Vast numbers of these people are from the country, and do not know where they can trade to the best advantage. What a field is here for a shoppers’ guide! Ascertain what stores make a specialty of certain goods, what ones sell the cheapest in certain lines, and what days they make bargains in certain wares. Show by what routes the places are best reached, where to dine, etc. Fill a little book with just the information a shopper wants to know; call it “The Ladies’ Shopping Guide,” put it on the market at ten cents, and you can sell millions of them.
222. Bicycle Instruction.—Why, may not a woman teach “the wheel” as well as a man? Many women are restrained from learning through the dislike of falling from the wheel into the arms of a strange man, commonly a negro. A woman’s bicycle academy would pay in any large city.
223. Cooking School.—Madam Parloa and Madam Rorer have set the example, and they will be sure to have many imitators. A course of instruction in cooking, costing $10, is a vastly better investment to any young woman than a course on a piano costing $100, or many times that sum. First, learn the art thoroughly yourself and then teach it to others. There is money in this, but it needs taste, tact and work.
224. The Boarding House.—One who has a taste for cooking and a little marketing skill can do well in this somewhat overworked and not always paying business. The gains increase from zero with one boarder, in geometrical progression, until $1 a head is realized with twenty boarders. Profits, $20 a week. With great skill and management this may be doubled.
225. Pen Engraving.—If you have a circle of one hundred friends, and can secure their patronage, you can make a fair living for one person at engraving cards. A lady with a large calling list should engrave $500 worth of cards a year. Expenses, $25. Remuneration for work, $475.
226. A Ladies’ Restaurant.—A restaurant where delicacies pleasing to ladies are made a specialty would surely pay. A lady who recently established one adjoining a large department store has been obliged to enlarge her premises to accommodate her crowd of patrons.