Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/46

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34
Side Talks with Girls

she took to doing dinner cards. They were marvellously artistic, but because of the time devoted to each she had to ask a higher price than people were willing to pay. She worked along with a brave heart, and one day sold a picture for seventy-five dollars; that seventy-five dollars was mortgaged to the extent of fifty, but she paid her debts and started to work again. A woman friend sat for her and the picture was sold, because this special woman was the model. A little cooking was done on the gas-stove, but the body was not well cared for, and after three years of struggling, after three years of trying to sell pictures, souvenirs, dinner cards, or anything that the public seemed to demand, she broke down, and casting paintbrushes to the wind, married. With what result? Broken in spirit, weak and impoverished in body, she was only able to live long enough to bring into the world a sad-eyed little baby, to kiss it once, to turn her face to the wall, and to close her eyes to this world forever.

WHAT DO I MEAN?

That is what you are asking, and this is what I have to say. I have no desire to seem to wish to crush a laudable ambition in any girl, but I do most earnestly pray that my girls all over the country will think over this picture of girl life in