Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/89

 was just beginning to invade educational circles, and I belonged to what was perhaps the first sewing-class in the high school of a large Eastern city. In September we started setting stitches, sewing seams and making buttonholes. By commencement day, in June, we were expected to be able to cut, fit and make a garment. My dainty stitches and accurate work in the sewing-class helped materially to raise my general average. In fact, my neatly-made percale dress was awarded the highest possible percentage, but later in the summer, when I tried to wear that dress, it looked—well, in a kindly spirit, we will call it queer.

In the same class, almost rubbing elbows with me, was a girl whose sewing nearly drove our dear old teacher distracted. Her stitches wandered over the material at their own sweet will. Her buttonholes were a class scandal. Her garment fell to pieces, unless some of us helped to fasten off the thread-ends. But the little mull dress which she made for her graduation stunt was distractingly dainty, albeit none of us could vouch for the steadfastness of its seams. She was marked very low by the conscientious judges of needlework, but later in the summer, on the boardwalk at Cape May, N. J., that little frock added several scalps to her proposal belt.

A few years later that girl opened a profit-