her from attending evening school, where her persistence had taken her to the fourth year of high school.  She was thinking of college at the time of the interview.  Regina was a Russian revolutionist, and keenly thirsting for knowledge.  She talked eagerly to the inquirer about Victor Hugo, Gorky, Tolstoy, and Bernard Shaw.  With no less interest she spoke of the trade fortunes of milliners in New York, and her own last year’s experience.  She had worked through May, June, and July as a trimmer, making $11 in a week of nine hours a day, with Saturday closing at five.  During August and September and the first weeks in October she had only six weeks’ work, as a maker in a ready-to-wear hat factory, situated on the lower West Side over a stable, where she made $10 in a week of nine hours a day.

Regina and a girl friend had managed to furnish a two-room tenement apartment with very simple conveniences, and there they kept house.  Rent was $10.50 a month; gas for heating and cooking, $1.80; and food for the two, about $5 a week.  As Regina did her own washing, the weekly expense for each was but $3.67, less than many lodgers pay for very much less comfort.

The greatest pleasure the girls had in their little establishment was the opportunity it gave them for entertaining friends.  Before, it had been impossible for them to see any one, except in other people’s crowded living-rooms, or on the street.

Regina was engaged to a young apothecary student, whom she expected to marry in the spring.  Like her, he was in New York without his family, and he took his meals at the two girls’ little flat with them.

Regina’s father, who was living in Russia with a second wife, had sent her $100 when she wrote him of her intended marriage.  This, and about $40 saved in the six weeks of earning $10, were her reserve fund in the long dull season.

The inquirer saw Regina again a few days before Thanksgiving.  She was still out of work, but was learning at home to do some mechanical china decorating for the Christmas trade.

Among the milliners, several girls were studying to acquire, not only a training in a secondary trade, but the better general education which Frances Ashton, a young American girl of twenty, had obtained through better fortunes.

Her father, a professional man, had been comfortably situated.  Without anticipating the necessity of supporting herself, she had studied millinery at Pratt Institute for half a year.  Then, because it was rather a lark, she had gone to work in New York.  Most of her wage was spent for board and recreation, her father sending her an allowance for clothes.

After a year, his sudden death made it necessary for her to live more economically, as her inheritance was not large.  The expenses of an attack of typhoid one summer, and of an operation the next year, entirely consumed it.

In the year she described, she had been a copyist in one of the most exclusive shops on Fifth Avenue.  The woman in charge was exceptionally considerate, keeping the girls as long as possible.  She used to weep when she was obliged to dismiss them, for she realized the suffering and the temptation of the long idle period.