I was still looking on, hardly thinking of what I saw, when my eyes fell on an advertisement, pasted on the window of a sausage-and-ham shop at the corner.  In large written characters it ran: 

     Seamstress Wanted.  Good Wages. 
     Apply No. ——­ Washington Street.

How little are the things on which our destiny seems to hang!  In a moment I was remembering what Mrs. Oliver had said about my being a good seamstress; and, almost before I knew what I was about, I was hurrying up the side street and knocking with my knuckles at an open door.

A rather fat and elderly Jewess, covered with rings and gold chains, and wearing a manifest black wig, came from a room at one side of the lobby.  I explained my errand, and after she had looked me over in a sort of surprise, as if I had not been the kind of person she expected, she said, in a nasal and guttural voice: 

“Vait!  My daughter, she speaks very vell Ainglish.”

Then turning her head over her shoulder, she pitched her voice several octaves higher and cried, “Miriam,” whereupon there came tripping downstairs a Jewish girl of about eighteen, with large black eyes, thick black hair, and such a dear good face.

I repeated my application, and after the girl had interpreted my request to her mother, I was asked into the lobby, and put through a kind of catechism.

Was I a seamstress?  No, but I wished to become one.  Had I aiver vorked on vaistcoats?  I hadn’t, but I could do anything with my needle.

Perhaps the urgency of my appeal, and more probably the pressure of her own need, weighed with the Jewess, for after reflection, and an eager whisper from her daughter (who was looking at me with kindling eyes), she said,

“Very vell, ve’ll see what she can do.”

I was then taken into a close and stuffy room where a number of girls (all Jewish as I could see) were working on sections of waistcoats which, lying about on every side, looked like patterns for legs of mutton.  One girl was basting, another was pressing, and a third was sewing button-holes with a fine silk twist round bars of gimp.

This last was the work which was required of me, and I was told to look and see if I could do it.  I watched the girl for a moment and then said: 

“Let me try.”

Needle and twist and one of the half vests were then given to me, and after ten minutes I had worked my first button-hole and handed it back.

The daughter praised it warmly, but the mother said: 

“Very fair, but a leedle slow.”

“Let me try again,” I said, and my trembling fingers were so eager to please that my next button-hole was not only better but more quickly made.

“Beautiful!” said the daughter.  “And mamma, only think, she’s quicker than Leah, already.  I timed them.”

“I muz call your vader, dough,” said the Jewess, and she disappeared through the doorway.