So, after several disappointments, Christie decided that her education was too old-fashioned for the city, and gave up the idea of teaching.  Sewing she resolved not to try till every thing else failed; and, after a few more attempts to get writing to do, she said to herself, in a fit of humility and good sense:  “I’ll begin at the beginning, and work my way up.  I’ll put my pride in my pocket, and go out to service.  Housework I like, and can do well, thanks to Aunt Betsey.  I never thought it degradation to do it for her, so why should I mind doing it for others if they pay for it?  It isn’t what I want, but it’s better than idleness, so I’ll try it!”

Full of this wise resolution, she took to haunting that purgatory of the poor, an intelligence office.  Mrs. Flint gave her a recommendation, and she hopefully took her place among the ranks of buxom German, incapable Irish, and “smart” American women; for in those days foreign help had not driven farmers’ daughters out of the field, and made domestic comfort a lost art.

At first Christie enjoyed the novelty of the thing, and watched with interest the anxious housewives who flocked in demanding that rara avis, an angel at nine shillings a week; and not finding it, bewailed the degeneracy of the times.  Being too honest to profess herself absolutely perfect in every known branch of house-work, it was some time before she suited herself.  Meanwhile, she was questioned and lectured, half engaged and kept waiting, dismissed for a whim, and so worried that she began to regard herself as the incarnation of all human vanities and shortcomings.

“A desirable place in a small, genteel family,” was at last offered her, and she posted away to secure it, having reached a state of desperation and resolved to go as a first-class cook rather than sit with her hands before her any longer.

A well-appointed house, good wages, and light duties seemed things to be grateful for, and Christie decided that going out to service was not the hardest fate in life, as she stood at the door of a handsome house in a sunny square waiting to be inspected.

Mrs. Stuart, having just returned from Italy, affected the artistic, and the new applicant found her with a Roman scarf about her head, a rosary like a string of small cannon balls at her side, and azure draperies which became her as well as they did the sea-green furniture of her marine boudoir, where unwary walkers tripped over coral and shells, grew sea-sick looking at pictures of tempestuous billows engulfing every sort of craft, from a man-of-war to a hencoop with a ghostly young lady clinging to it with one hand, and had their appetites effectually taken away by a choice collection of water-bugs and snakes in a glass globe, that looked like a jar of mixed pickles in a state of agitation.

Mrs. Stuart.

Madame was intent on a water-color copy of Turner’s “Rain, Wind, and Hail,” that pleasing work which was sold upsidedown and no one found it out.  Motioning Christie to a seat she finished some delicate sloppy process before speaking.  In that little pause Christie examined her, and the impression then received was afterward confirmed.