Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/134

 be learned in one trade school or another, and thus save her the period of humble service through which her aunts and great-aunts passed.

In reply I can only say that the apprenticeship cannot be escaped. Millinery cannot be learned from books. Its theory can be presented by means of charts and blackboard drawings, but the finger—your fingers—must be come familiar with, and deft at, the various forms of stitchery. Familiarity and deftness come with practice, not with the study of theory. If the reader thinks she would like to become a milliner, provided she did not have to serve three or six months making bandeaux, then let her enter a trade high school, or elect the domestic arts course in her last years at school, and get what theoretical and practical training the public schools offer. Then when she enters the millinery shop—and enter it by the learners' door she certainly must—shetmay know how to make bandeaux, and, if she proves this to the milliner and trimmer, she will soon be intrusted with a better grade of work.

But if the reader has any idea that she can take a "get-the-salary-quick" course at a private school which offers to teach millinery in three to six months at a tuition fee varying from $15 to $50, and immediately secure a position as trimmer in a good shop, she is