Page:The Business of being a Woman by Ida Tarbell.djvu/192

 The girl goes forth to seek work. She has almost invariably the idea that work outside the home has less of drudgery in it, i.e. less routine and meanness, more excitement. She is unprepared for the years of steady grinding labor which she must go through to earn her bread in any trade or profession. She learns that work is work whether done in kitchen, sewing room, countinghouse, studio, or editor's sanctum, and all that keeps the operations which consume the bulk of the worker's time in any of these places from being drudgery is that he keeps before him the end for which they are performed. The first disillusionment comes, then, when she faces the necessity of a long steady pull for years if she is to "arrive."

A second comes when she finds she must prove to a busy, driven world that she is worth its attention; she must do