to the supple grace of some of the teachers.
The girls see this grace, but will not believe,
till convinced by the feel, that there are no
stays to account for it.

"And what have you got on?" said one of
the ladies, feeling in like manner. "Why,
you are perfectly walled-up. How can you
bear it?"

"Why," answered the girl, "I have got
only six-and-twenty whalebones."

The lady obtained some anatomical plates,
and formed a class of the older women, apart
from the rest, to whom she displayed the
consequences, in full, of this fatal practice.
At the moment, they appear to disbelieve the
facts; but a little time shows that they have
taken the alarm:—to what extent, the dress
of their daughters, as they grow up, will
probably indicate.

The number on the books of this school is
about one hundred; the average attendance
is about fifty. The eagerness to attend is
remarkable; and the dread of losing their
place through non-attendance is testified in
the strongest ways. Many are detained late
at their work on Friday evenings; but they
come, if only for a quarter of an hour; or
if prevented, perhaps send a supplicating
note that their place may not be filled up.
Some few, who work in over-heated rooms all
day, really cannot give their minds to study
at night. These may be expected to go off
to parties and balls at the public-houses;
and the younger ones, perhaps, to take
dancing lessons at such houses, at half-a-
crown a-quarter, instead of what they can
get at these schools for thirteen-pence, and a
penny for the copybook. But there is one
woman who, too weary to learn much, comes
for the solace of seeing cheerful faces in a
warm, bright room. She toils to support a
sick husband, whom she is always nursing,
when not earning his bread. She is welcome
here; and she must hear many things interesting
and amusing to her mind. The eagerness
to learn is beyond description—not only the
preliminaries of reading and writing, but the
facts of the world. "What is this?"  "What at
that?"  "Tell us this;"  "Tell us that," is
forever the cry, on the discovery that they
are ignorant of the commonest things that
are before their eyes;—on the belief, too, that
their teachers know everything.  What a
change from the days when they were saucy
and rude, in their inability to conceive of their
being treated with respect and politeness by
ladies, whom they had supposed to be, somehow,
"against" them!  While one class is
fixed in attention to the superintendent, their
eyes moving only from their Bibles to her
face, and from her face to their Bibles; while
there is a strange sight to be seen (of which
more presently) in the arithmetic class;
while a dozen more are writing at the desks
with an earnestness perfectly desperate,—
who are those two—the pair sitting with
their backs to the rest, and holding a book
between them?  They are sisters; workers
at the steel-pen manufactory.  The younger,
herself not young, is teaching the elder to
read,—the one patient, the other humble,
over the syllables they have arrived at:—
both much too earnest to be ashamed. It is
a pretty sight.

The oddity about the arithmetic is, that
the scholars have to admit two sorts, or to
unlearn one. They have a good deal of
reckoning to do every day,—most of them.
They reckon their work by "grosses;" and
they are quick in calculating their wages:
but all the slower are they for this in doing
sums on the slate. That beautiful girl, who
makes a perpetual tat-tat on her slate, has
to multiply four figures by nine. By the
long rows of little strokes, we imagine that
she has made nine marks many times over,
and that she proposes to count them. She
will thus learn, at all events, the convenience
of the multiplication table. And so will that
other,—untidy but absorbed,—who is counting
her fingers, from one five minutes to another,
with many a knitting of the brows, and many
a sigh the while. They do learn arithmetic
to some purpose: and they learn something
else by means of it:—nothing less than
that it answers better to some of them to stay
at home and keep house, than to earn wages
in the manufactory. Some of the hucksters,
from whom household articles are bought,
are themselves very ill-educated; and it may
often happen that, without any evil intention,
they may set down a penny in the shilling
column of their books, and so on. With
great satisfaction, a wife here and there now
finds herself able to check such mistakes.
When, added to this, she has become a
reasonable thinker and planner, can understand
her business,—can make and mend,
and buy and economise, and suit her ways to
her means; she may easily find that it
answers better, as regards mere money, to
stay at home, than to work at the factory.
The great truth will be more evident still
when the kitchen is opened, and the world
of economy and comfort belonging to that
department is revealed to minds at present
wholly dark in regard to it. The women
think they can cook, as before they thought
they could reckon and could sew.  They will
soon see.

Here, then, we find ourselves brought
round, through our sympathy with one order
of observers, into sympathy with the other two.
We see what the demand for female workers
is, and how it has sprung up; and, when
we learn that, owing to this demand, women's
wages have risen of late twenty per cent., we
are not disposed to try to counteract the
natural tendencies of things by declamation.
Again, we share the recoil with which others
see young girls trooping through the streets
to the factories, and wives locking their
doors,—every morning turning their backs
upon their homes. And now, we have a