Our Saturday Night
Ten Miles for Ten Cents
This Saturday night we wish to talk with the little girls whose parents ay read this chapter, or who may be able to read it themselves. It is about a little girl in the great city of New York.
We want little girls in the country to read it, and to tell us, as some of them will, it they had not rather live in little homes there that here in the city where the houses are all in a row, and whole families of poor folks live in clessars, garrets, and little rooms, not so large as the kitchen or dining-room where thousands of the little girls we are writing to eats their dinners or suppers
This afternoon the air was raw and cold. Overcoats, shawls and furs felt good. We were in our room up-town, two miles away from the downtown office, where the men work over types and presses to print paper. In the grate a nice coal fire burned brightly and we were working at our writing, thinking how glad we were that Saturday night had come again, so we could rest excepting to write our regular chapters after dark, when the e was a little timid, tiny knock on the door-so light and softly we hardly noticed it.
Then there was another little knock. So we arose from the desk and opened the door, for it is not polite to shout aloud==”come in,” when can step and open the door.
A little girl not nine years old came in. She was a poor little girl, with coarse clothes, and a tired look on her face.
“Come in, little one. Come t o the fire and be warmed. What is your name?”
She told us, and told where she lived, and that her father was killed in was and that her poor mother was sick.
“What do you do?”
“I work in a milliner shop on fourteenth street, sir.”
“Are you a little milliner to make little hats and bonnets?”
“no sir; I only carry home the work for the ones who come to buy things of the madam.”
“What have you in that bandbox, all strapped so nice?”
“That is a hat-box, sir. I carry home hat and bonnets in it”
“Ah! I see you are a little errand boy?”
No sir. A little errand-girl.”
“I mean a little errand girl to do boy’s work?”
”Yes, sir.”
“How much do you earn?”
“The madam pays me two dollars a week.”
“What do you do with the money”
”Take it home to my poor mother.”
“What does she do?”
”She work at anything when she is well enough.”
“What kind of work?”
Sewing for anybody that wants her to.”
“How much does she earn?”
“I don’t know sir. Sometimes four or five dollars a week, when she is well.”
“do you have many errands to do?”
”Yes sir, I must be there at 7 o’clock in the morning, and keep busy till 6 at
night.”
“Well, you don’t have to be running around all day, do you?”
“Yes sir. I get back then go right out again somewhere else.”
“Well, tell me what you came here for Have you a bundle or a bonnet for me?”
“No, sir I ran all the way from Forty-first street here (Sixteenth Street)
“After I took a hat home for a lady t see you, then I will run again, to lose no time.”
“Well .little one, what can I do for you?”
“I don’t know, sir. A man who gave me this little shawl said if I would come to you may be you would give me a pair of little shoes, for may be you had a little girl who had some all worn out for her, but I could ear them.”
On her little feet were shoe much too large for her given her by a young lady. They blistered her feet, and she said they hurt her so when she walked she could hardly step. And se showed us where the blister were, raw and painful.
“That is pretty when you have to walk so much. You have been away up to Forty-first street!”
“O! that is not much, sir. Yesterday I went up to Harlem, and last week I went up to Harlem twice up to One Hundred and Twenty-ninth street, between Second and Third avenues.”
It is a walk of five miles there and five miles back.
“Did you go there to carry bundles for the madman who hire you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should think she would pay your car-fare-five cents each way.”
“She says she can’t afford it, and if I can’t walk she will get another girl to do errands.”
“And you have to stop on the way?”
“Yes, sir-with two bundles.”
Then she told us more-how poor her mother was, and how they had to go hungry, and sleep on the floor. It took us but a few moments to go stairs, and then over into Third avenue, where a shoemaker said he could fit her, and he did very nicely. We had no time to wait to see, but she ran back to tell us she had them, and how happy her mother and she were. She came after the day’s work was done, then went to rest in her little home, where there are not such nice little things as many of our Little girl readers have in their homes.
We wish all the little girls who have nice things, and are always unhappy because they do not have more, could go with us and see the poor children of this city, where there is so much poverty, and where children or grown people may walk the stone-covered streets for miles and days, without finding so much as a chip, or a stick or a piece of bark, of which to make a fire to warm their little bare hands and feet.
Then we thought how much happier we were in our hearts to know we has done some good today. We feel better than if we had spent that money for liquor to treat friends, for now it does good, and makes a little sufferer happy, as we wish every on the world could be not only this but every other soul.
Title: Ten Miles for Ten Cents
Author: Unknown
Location: Unknown
Year: Unknown
Media: Newspaper article, glued to Page 174 of the Ledger of Captain W. B.
Blair
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