Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/279

Rh those ladies who employ me simply because other ladies employ me. I like to work for a lady who puts confidence in me, and treats me accordingly as I merit. I have had ladies come to me and give me double price, not because they had any respect for me, but merely to have it to say they had Iangy to dress their heads, who dressed the hair of Mrs. So-and-So.

"There are numbers of ladies you must flatter all the time you are dressing them, by saying they are much handsomer than others; or, if they happen not to be in the higher circle, you must make out as if you thought they were, as their chief talk is their acquaintance with Mrs. So-and-So; but I can not do that, for I can not flatter anybody; I would sooner die than do so. I have known ladies who, having wealth and a reasonable position in society, were so anxious to get into a circle they considered a little higher than that they occupied, they would crouch and bend, wire in and out, to get in, and often would go to people they had no acquaintance or business with, and tell them something they had heard, for the purpose of speaking to them.

"Affairs in our Queen City are not managed as they used to be; for I remember the time when a lady would never for a moment think of speaking disparagingly of another in any way; but now the ladies have got a habit of talking about others to make themselves grand; they pick to pieces and talk about every lady they know; some will talk to their hair-dresser, and some to their milliner or dressmaker, about Mrs. or Miss This-or-That, and pick her to pieces. There can not the slightest thing occur among a certain set, either in their own family or among others, but