The dross of earth is cast away;
She leads him by the hand.
Through heaven's blue sea her white wings
play:
He nears the happy land.

She parts the wave that beats him back;
He breasts life's surge no more:
His feet, upon an angel's track,
Have touched the immortal shore!

THE POINT OF THE NEEDLE.

THERE are some cases which, the more they
become tedious by frequent urging, the more
it is necessary to insist upon, in season and
out of season. One of them is that of the
overworked milliner's girl, for whom there is
no help but in the feeling and action of those
whom it does not bore to be reminded that
a great pitched battle is seldom more deadly
to men than the gaiety of a London season
is to the pale army of girls who live by the
most wretched fripperies of fashion, and that
fewer, perhaps, die by the bayonet than by the
needle. An inquest, during this last season, on
the body of a milliner's girl who had not
withdrawn the wreck of her life to obscure suffering,
but who, to the annoyance and regret of all
right-minded employers, died ostentatiously at
her work in one of the best-regulated houses in
the trade, was a nine days' wonder; and during
the nine days it was proper to say things that
seemed good and suitable for the occasion. But,
when the nine days' wonderment were over, the
topic was considered stale, and in the way of
talk thenceforward unfit for human food, because
the talker, like the diner, must needs have his
food fresh.

While the talk lasted, we learnt that, with a
few exceptions, all is as it used to be twenty
years since, when the evidence taken led to
the formation of an "Association for the Aid
and Benefit of Dressmakers and Milliners."
The association had a committee of ladies
of fashion who were also ladies of sense;
among them the Duchesses of Sutherland and
Argyll, the Countesses of Shaftesbury and
Ellesmere, Lady Jocelyn, and Miss Burdett
Coutts, who met weekly; and a committee of
gentlemen, including Mr. Grainger, Dr. Bissett
Hawkins, and Mr. Tidd Pratt. This association
had an office in Clifford-street, under the
management of Miss Newton, and for twelve
years it laboured, insufficiently supported by the
public, to induce the principals of dressmaking
and millinery establishments to limit the hours
of actual work to twelve a day, and to abolish
Sunday work (in this latter respect it
succeeded); to promote an improved ventilation
of the milliners' workrooms and sleeping-rooms;
to induce ladies to allow sufficient time
between the order and the expected delivery of a
new dress; to help with loans of money some
deserving girls out of the temptations of distress; to
supply on the country club principle, good and
cheap medical relief; to establish also, a provident
fund, and a registry. In the year 'fifty-five Lord
Shaftesbury introduced a bill for regulating hours
of work in milliners' establishments; but, after
receiving evidence, the committee of the House
of Lords reported against it: not doubting the
need of it, but questioning the power of enforcing
its provisions, considering the timidity and
helplessness of those for whose benefit the
measure was designed. The failure of this
proposal to restrict them, made employers bolder
in exaction, and there was never more need of
the work of the association than when, after it
had done much good, chiefly for want of public
support it ceased to exist. A last effort was made
in 'fifty-six, at a great meeting held in Exeter
Hall under the auspices of the Early Closing
Association, but the men in attendance on that meeting
were to women as three to one. The ladies
of England never did, and do not yet, as a body,
thoroughly perceive how much it rests with
them to improve or maintain the unhappy
condition of the milliners' workwomen. In
London alone, the number of dressmakers and
milliners' workwomen exceeds fifteen thousand.
They commonly begin to bear the unwholesome
strain upon their systems while their bodies are
developing for health and sickness in their after
lives. They become apprentices between the age
of fourteen and sixteen; and at, sixteen or seventeen
they begin under the full strain of over-
work to "complete their education:" working
in the busy season of the year continuously for
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, hours a
day.

It was difficult to get any girls, and almost
impossible to get the older hands, to give evidence
that might seriously damage them with their
employers; yet more than enough was told. One
witness had worked without going to bed, from
four o'clock on Thursday to ten o'clock on
Sunday morning. One had seen some of her
companions faint two or three times a day.
Though the fainting is of a deadly kind, it is so
common, and the haste is so great, that girls are
often left to recover as they may. One
remembered a companion obliged to work till
midnight, though she was unwell. " Her
illness increased, and when the doctor was
called in, he said she ought to have been in
bed weeks ago. They did not make her work
after the doctor said she could not work; she
was obliged to go to bed. She never got up
again, but died a week after she had advice."

There are in the season no meal hours; there
are meal minutes; and Sir James Clark truly
said, that " the mode of life of these poor girls
is such as no constitution could long bear. A
mode of life more completely calculated to
destroy human health could scarcely be contrived."
Mr. Dalrymple, of the Ophthalmic Hospital,
testified that all forms of eye disease are
produced, not seldom actual blindness, by
continuous fine work carried on during so many
hours by artificial light. Dr. Hodgkin
testified, from his experience among many
hundreds of out-patients at the London Dispensary
and Guy's Hospital, that, as to milliners' girls,