RUTH RESUMES HER OWN STORY
I had no idea what I was undertaking when I went to New York. I had had
no experience with the difficulties that exist between announcing you
intend to live your own life, and living it. The world is a bewildering
place for one unused to it. All the savoir-faire and sophistication
acquired in reception-rooms didn't stand me in very good stead when it
came to earning my own living in New York City. I was timid, full of
fears--imaginary and real. I had been to New York many times before, but
the realization that I was in the big city alone, unanchored, afloat,
filled me with panic. I was like a young bird, featherless, naked,
trembling, knocked out of its nest before it could fly. Every sound,
every unknown shape was a monster cat waiting to devour me. I was
acutely aware of dangers lurking for young girls in big cities. For two
or three days I had all I could do to control myself and keep my nerve
steady.
I arrived on a cold, gray, cloudy morning; unaccustomed to reaching
destinies unmet; my heart torn and bleeding; nobody to turn to for help
and advice; no plan formed in my confused mind; afraid even to trust
myself to the care of a taxicab driver. For such a timid pilgrim in
quest of freedom, to start out in search of an address she treasures
because of the golden apple of immediate employment that it promises,
and to learn on arrival that the position already has been filled, is
terribly disheartening. To wake up the second morning in a two-dollar
hotel room, which she has locked and barred the night before with all
the foolish precautions of a young and amateurish traveler, to pay a
dollar for a usual breakfast served in her room and a dollar-and-a-half
for a luncheon of nothing but a simple soup and chicken-à-la-King, and
then to figure out on a piece of paper that at such a rate her fifty
dollars will last just about two weeks, is enough to make any young fool
of a girl wish she had been taught something else besides setting off
expensive gowns. I didn't know what I ought to do. I didn't know how to
begin. I was so self-conscious, at first, so fearful that my being at
that hotel, alone, unchaperoned, might be questioned and cause
unpleasant comment, that I stayed in my room as much as possible. When I
look back and see myself those first few days I have to smile out of
self-pity. If it hadn't been for my lacerated pride, for the memory of
Tom's arrogance and Edith's taunts, I might have persuaded myself to
give up my dangerous enterprise, but every time I rehearsed that scene
at the Homestead (and, imprisoned as I was, I rehearsed it frequently),
something flamed up in me higher and higher each time. I could not go
back with self-respect. It was impossible. I concluded that I might as
well get singed in New York, as bound in slavery by Tom and Edith.
As soon as I became fully convinced that my lot was cast, I ventured out
to look for cheaper accommodations.
Ever since I have been allowed alone on a railroad train, the
Y. W. C. A. has been preached to me as a perfectly safe place to ask
advice in case of being stranded in a strange city. So I trudged down
there one late afternoon and procured a list of several lodging-houses,
where my mother's young parlor-maid could stay for a week with safety
while we were moving from our summer house. I didn't know whether I
could bring myself really to undress and get into the little cot in
the room which I finally engaged, but at least the room had a window.
I could sit by that. I had been assured that the place was reputable.
I moved down there in a taxicab one rainy Saturday afternoon. Lucy had
sent me my trunk, and I had to convey it somehow. I didn't sleep at all
the first night. There was a fire-escape immediately outside my open
window, and there was not a sign of a lock on the door. On Monday I
bought a screw-eye and hook for fifteen cents, and put nails in the
sash for burglar stops.
At first I used to crawl back to that smelly little hall bedroom at the
earliest sign of dusk; at first, if a man on the street spoke to me, I
would tremble for five minutes afterward; at first the odor of the
continual boiling of mutton bones and onions that met me every time I
opened the door of Mrs. Plummet's lodging-house used to make me feel
sick to my stomach. I became hardened as time went on, but at first it
was rather awful. I don't like to recall those early experiences of
mine.
I learned a great deal during my first fortnight at Mrs. Plummet's. I
never knew, for instance, that one meal a day, eaten at about four
o'clock in the afternoon, takes the place of three, very comfortably, if
aided and abetted in the morning by crackers spread with peanut butter,
and a glass of milk, a whole bottle of which one could buy for a few
cents at the corner grocery store. The girl who roomed next door to me
gave me lots of such tips. I had no idea that there were shops on shabby
avenues, where one could get an infinitesimal portion of what one paid
for a last season's dinner-gown; that furs are a wiser investment than
satin and lace; and that my single emerald could be more easily turned
into dollars and cents than all the enameled jewelry I owned put
together. The feeling of reënforcement that the contents of my trunk
gave me did a lot in restoring confidence. The girl next door and I
reckoned that their value in secondhand shops would see me through the
summer, at least. Surely, I could become established somewhere by fall.
I didn't know how to approach my problem. I didn't know what
advertisements in the newspapers were the false ones. I felt shy about
applying for work at stores and shops. For whom should I ask? To what
department present myself? What should I say first? One day I told a
benevolent-looking woman, one of the officers at the Y. W. C. A., the
truth about myself, that I, and not my mother's parlor-maid, was
occupying the room in the lodging-house. Not until that woman put her
hand kindly on my shoulder and advised me to go home--did I realize how
determined I had become. New York had not devoured me, the lodging-house
had not harmed me. I had found I could sleep, and very well, too, on the
lumpy, slumped-in cot with the soiled spread. No one climbed the
fire-escape, no one tried my locked door at night. I had pawned my last
winter's furs, but my character seemed quite clean and unsmirched. Go
home! Of course I wasn't going home. Not yet. The lady gave me a list of
reputable employment agencies at last. If Mrs. Plummet's hadn't daunted
me, employment offices couldn't either, I said. I was told to provide
suitable references.
Now references were just what I couldn't very well provide. I had left
home under disagreeable circumstances. I tried to make it clear without
too much detail that, except for my sister, my connections with my
people were severed, and I couldn't apply to Lucy. I hadn't even given
her my actual address. She would be sure to come looking me up, or send
some one in her place. Very likely she would ask my brother Malcolm to
drop in on me sometime. I was in deadly fear I would run across him on
the street, and if Malcolm had ever smelled the inside of the house
where I roomed, I fear his nose never would have come down. If Lucy had
ever seen the dirt on the stairs she would have pronounced the house
disreputable, and dragged me home. Secrecy was my only chance for
success, at least for a while. I would have to discover what could be
done without references.
It was due to a little new trick I learned of looking on at myself that
it was not impossible for me to seek a position through an employment
agency. I had become, you see, one of those characters I had read about
in short stories dozens of times before--an unemployed girl in New York,
even to the hall-bedroom, the handkerchiefs stuck on my window-pane in
process of ironing, the water-bugs around the pipes in the bath-room. It
was this consciousness of myself that made many of the hardships
bearable--this and the grim determination not to give up.
I told the lady in charge of the intelligence office where I first
applied that I was willing to try anything, but thought I was best
suited as a mother's-helper, or a sort of governess. She shrugged when I
told her I had no reference, but occasionally she gave me an opportunity
for an interview.
There was something about me that, lacking a reference, impressed my
would-be employers unfavorably; possibly it was the modish cut of the
hundred-dollar spring suit I wore, or the shape of my hat. Anyhow, they
all decided against me. If I had persisted long enough, I might have
found some sort of place, but on the fourth or fifth day of my ordeal in
intelligence offices, something happened.
I was sitting with the rest of my unemployed sisters in the little inner
room provided for us off the main office, when I glanced through the
door to see Henrietta Morgan and her mother. I looked hastily away. Here
I had been avoiding Fifth Avenue and the region of shops, for fear some
of my old friends about New York (and I have many) might run across me,
and stupidly I had walked into the very place infested by them. I
accomplished my escape easily enough. Naturally Mrs. Morgan wasn't
looking for me in such a place, but I didn't take the chance again.
I was lonely and discouraged many times during that first bitter summer
of mine in New York. I felt no charity for Edith, no forgiveness for
Tom. I hadn't wanted to leave home--not really--I hadn't sought an
experience like this. They had forced me to it. If only Tom hadn't
treated me like a naughty child! If only Bob--oh if _only_ Bob--(no,
there were some things I could not dwell upon. It was wiser not to).
Some pains are dull and steady. One can endure them and smile. Others
recur at intervals, occasioned by some unimportant detail like a man on
the street selling roasted chestnuts, which reminds one of saffron woods
in late October. Such pain is like the stab of a sharp stiletto.
Mine is the same old story of hope and despair, of periods of courage
occasioned by opportunities that flickered for a while and went out. I
was not utterly without employment. The first three dollars I earned at
directing envelopes in a department store made me happy for a
fortnight. It was a distinct triumph. I felt as if I had been initiated
into a great society. I had been paid money for the labor of my hands!
The girl who roomed next to me had helped me to get the position. I was
not without associates. There were twenty-five girls besides myself who
carried away in their clothes each morning the odor of Mrs. Plummet's
soup-stock. Mrs. Plummet let rooms to girls only, and only rooms. We
didn't board with Mrs. Plummet. I wondered how she and old Mr. Plummet
ever consumed, alone, so much lamb broth.
For a fortnight I was a model for trying on suits in a down-town
wholesale house; several times the Y. W. C. A. found opportunities for
me to play accompaniments; in October when the suffrage activities began
I was able to pick up a few crumbs of work in the printing office of one
of their papers. But such a thing as permanent employment became a
veritable will-o'-the-wisp. I was strong and willing, and yet I could
not--absolutely _could not_--support myself. I tried writing fiction. I
had always yearned to be literary, but the magazines sent all my stuff
back. I tried sewing in a dressmaker's shop, but after three days the
Madam announced that her shop would be closed during August, the dull
season. She had hired me simply to rush a mourning order. From one thing
to another I went, becoming more and more disheartened as fall
approached, and my stock of clothes and jewelry, on the proceeds of
which I was living, became lower and lower. My almost empty trunk
stared at me forlornly from its corner; it foretold failure. What should
I do when the last little frumpery of my old life had been turned into
money to support my new one? To whom turn? I could not ask for help from
those who had admonished and criticized. I had written Lucy weekly that
I was prospering. I could not acknowledge failure even to her. I bent
every nerve to the effort.
One day in a magazine that some one had discarded in a subway train I
ran across an advertisement for "a young lady of education and good
family, familiar with social obligations, to act as a private secretary
to a lady in a private home." I answered that advertisement. I had
answered dozens similar before. This, like the others no doubt, would
end in failure. But I couldn't sit and fold my hands. I must keep on
trying. I answered it--and six others at the same time. Of the seven I
had a reply only from the one mentioned above.
It was a unique reply. It was typewritten. "If still interested in the
position referred to in attached clipping reply by complying to
requirements enclosed--and mail answer by the evening of the day that
this communication is received.
"1st. Write a formal acceptance to a formal dinner.
2nd. Write a few words on suffrage appropriate to an older woman who is
mildly opposed.
3rd. Write a polite note of refusal to the treasurer of a charitable
institution in reply to a request to donate sum of money.
4th. Write a note of condolence to an acquaintance upon the death of a
relative.
5th. Write a note of congratulation to a débutante announcing her
engagement.
6th. Write an informal invitation to a house-party in the country.
7th. Acknowledge a gift of flowers sent to you during an illness."
I sat down with zest to this task. It was an original way to weed out
applicants. I spent the whole afternoon over it. It was late in the
evening before I had all my questions answered, neatly copied, sealed,
and dropped inside a green letter-box.
A day or two later I received in the same non-committal typewritten form
a brief summons to appear the following morning between twelve and one
o'clock at a certain uptown hotel, and to inquire at the desk for
Miss A. S. Armstrong.
It was a clear starry night. I pinned a towel over my suit, put it on a
coat-hanger, and hung it securely to the blind-catch outside my window.
I didn't know who Miss A. S. Armstrong was, but at any rate I would
offer up to the stars what I possessed of Mrs. Plummet's soup-stock.