The second is made up of girls who have to earn their own living and make their own way in the world.  These have a special need to know something about business.  People as a rule are valuable in proportion to their knowledge—­those who know nothing being simply worth nothing.

One great reason for the work of girls and women being poorly paid, is that few know anything about either the principles or the practice of the most ordinary business affairs.  We shall try in these articles to put girls in future on a better footing, and to make them in business equal, at any rate, to any average men.  In this way there is a good chance of doubling their usefulness and value, and of more than doubling their independence.

Nothing is done all at once, and in business, as in everything else, if you mean to build high you must begin low.  A girl who wishes to be a business woman must start with accumulating the same sort of knowledge as an office-boy.  We shall therefore try to deal with the subject simply and from the very beginning.  You may sometimes be tempted to say, “Oh, we knew that before,” but another girl may not have been so fortunate, and her ignorance must be taken as our reason for pointing out what appears to be familiar facts.

We begin with the subject of business letters, and the first thing we shall say about them is—­Be very particular about their appearance.  There is a proverb, to be sure, warning us that appearances are deceitful, but that proverb is only true occasionally; in general we may safely draw an inference as to the writer from the look of her letter.  An ill-folded, clumsy, up-and-down-hill, blotted, greasy-looking letter almost certainly comes from an untidy house and a stupid girl, whereas a neat, carefully-written epistle suggests just as surely the opposite.

In friendly letters our correspondents know something about us beforehand, but in business we may be writing to perfect strangers, who can only judge of us by the figure we cut on a sheet of note-paper.  To secure prompt attention and a polite reply, no plan works so well as putting good taste into the appearance of letters.  They are really a part of ourselves, and a girl should as soon think of sending them marked with carelessness to either a friend or a stranger as of going to make a call in a patched frock, a faded hat, and gloves with holes.

An indispensable point in a business letter is to have the meaning quite clear.  It must say exactly what the writer intends, leaving nothing to be guessed at.

And after clearness the next point is shortness.  A brief letter makes far more impression than a long one, besides which it usually gets attended to at once.  We have known a man open a lady’s letter on a matter of business, and, seeing it a long rigmarole, put it at once in his pocket and let it lie there forgotten for a week.

That long letters receive most notice is a mistake into which girls fall very often, but she who aspires to be a real business woman must give herself to the study of such short epistles as that of the officer who sent in as his official report, “Sir,—­I have the honour to inform you that I have just shot a man who came to kill me.—­Your obedient servant, ——.”