girl find pleasures more highly colored?  Occasionally she would coax or scold her father into taking her out somewhere, but this occurred less and less frequently, for she was made to feel that his health required absolute rest when his business permitted it.  If she had had kind brothers the case would have been greatly simplified, but thousands of working-girls have no brothers, no male companions save those acquaintances that it is their good or, more often, their evil fortune to make.  Without a brother, a relative, or a friend deserving the name, how is a young girl, restricted to a boarding-house or a tenement, to find safe recreation?  Where can she go for it on the great majority of the evenings of the year?  Books and papers offer a resource to many, and Mildred availed herself of them to her injury.  After sitting still much of the day she needed greater activity in the evening.  Belle was not fond of reading, as multitudes on the fashionable avenues are not.  The well-to-do have many other resources—­what chances had she?  To assert that working-girls ought to crave profitable reading and just the proper amount of hygienic exercise daring their leisure, and nothing more, is to be like the engineer who said that a river ought to have been half as wide as it was, and then he could build a bridge across it.  The problem must be solved as it exists.

To a certain extent this need of change and cheerful recreation is supplied in connection with some of the mission chapels, and the effort is good and most commendable as far as it goes; but as yet the family had formed no church relations.  Mildred, Belle, and occasionally Mrs. Jocelyn had attended Sabbath service in the neighborhood.  They shrank, however, so morbidly from recognition that they had no acquaintances and had formed no ties.  They had a prejudice against mission chapels, and were not yet willing to identify themselves openly with their poor neighbors.  As yet they had incurred no hostility on this account, for their kindly ways and friendliness to poor Clara had won the goodwill and sympathy of all in the old mansion.  But the differences between the Jocelyns and their neighbors were too great for any real assimilation, and thus, as we have said, they were thrown mainly on their own resources.  Mrs. Wheaton was their nearest approach to a friend, and very helpful she was to them in many ways, especially in relieving Mrs. Jocelyn, for a very small compensation, from her heavier tasks.  The good woman, however, felt even more truly than they that they had too little in common for intimacy.

There is one amusement always open to working-girls if they are at all attractive—­the street flirtation.  To their honor it can be said that comparatively few of the entire number indulge in this dangerous pastime from an improper motive, the majority meaning no more harm or evil than their more fortunate sisters who can enjoy the society of young men in well-appointed parlors.  In most instances this