| Show I A SELFMADE WOMAN I i A Nightgown iEfodcl Was the Beginning ning of Her Fortune I Here is a true story of a young womans failure and success as a breadwinner bread-winner In New Yorl She came to the city from a little country town Intending to go on the stage That was live years ago She was I hartsome and had a talent for dress and perhaps a taent for acting but of I that no one can speak with much assurance j assur-ance for she has never had any chance to act She besieged managers and I I agents only to meet with plentiful snubs from the responsible ones her only I I I chances of engagements came fr6m the i shakiest of traveling concerns and as she had no money to spend in paying her own way home from remote parts of life coun trr as she disliked walking long distances dis-tances and had always a level head she would not leave the city In the meanwhile as she was very clever at sewing and demonstrated it in her own clothes she managed among the actresses she encountered to get some > employment for her needle She worked I extraordinarily well for inferior prices and among dressmakers that is a method sure to furnish bread if not butter For she most unsettled a year was a unsetted unhappy creature and only making enough to keep soul and body together The only chance she cot for appearing I on the stage was in a chorus of a comic opera She did not find the atmosphere very congena and when she was requested i re-quested to appear in tights and very little else she gave up her position and her histrionic ambitions at the same time I She settled down to attend to her dressmaking 1 dress-making for all i was worth I At that time she was living in a wretched little room In which she slept 1 I and sewed and cooked and ate She lived Ion I-on the cheapest food mainly rice for I two weeks to save money enough to I carry out a little scheme she had in her I head This was to make a nightdress after a pretty novel idea of her own and then try and sell it as a model to one of the big shops i She succeeded and got S20 for i Now I she was enough ahead to try another step I she had conceived as likely to advance her She went to a young actress who was to appear in a new costume part of the ISth century and offered to make one of her gowns for nothing i the actress ac-tress would give her the benefit of her influence in getting more work The actress ac-tress had none too much money herself and our heroine managed by some arts and arguments to get the job Enough of the preliminary steps and let us look at the dressmaker as she is now She rents a beautiful house on one of the good cross streets near Fifth avenue Part of the first floor she lets to a l fashionable physician and his is the i only sign that appears on the dwelling sho Is too swell for a sign She has two or three lodgers and the rest of the house ei is de by herself and the 3 seamstresses seam-stresses she employs Last summer in the dull season she went to Newport and cleared 600 in two months She dresses very beautifully herself her-self and gives her costumes a little touch of picturesqueness that advertises her talent to the theatrical folk who are still her chief customers She says their patronage I pa-tronage is the only connection with the stage she wants now She is still young and handsome and certainly has a fair prospect of a fortune at as early an age as the successful selfmade man gener j i ally achieves it i I I |
