Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (best book clubs .TXT) 📕

“No, sir,” she replied.

“Are you a stenographer or typewriter?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, we haven’t anything here,” he said. “We employ only experienced help.”

She began to step backward toward the door, when something about her plaintive face attracted him.

“Have you ever worked at anything before?” he inquired.

“No, sir,” she said.

“Well, now, it’s hardly possible that you would get anything to do in a wholesale house of this kind. Have you tried the department stores?”

She acknowledged that she had not.

“Well, if I were you,” he said, looking at her rather genially, “I would try the department stores. They often need young women as clerks.”

“Thank you,” she said, her whole nature relieved by this spark of friendly interest.

“Yes,” he said, as she moved toward the door, “you try the department stores,” and off he went.

At that time the department store was in its earliest form of successful operation, and there were not many. The first three in the United States, established about 1884, were in Chicago. Carrie was familiar with the names of several through the advertisements in the Daily News, and now proceeded to seek them. The words of Mr. McManus had somehow managed to restore her courage, which had fallen low, and she dared to hope that this new line would offer her something. Some time she spent in wandering up and down, thinking to encounter the buildings by chance, so readily is the mind, bent upon prosecuting a hard but needful errand, eased by that self-deception which the semblance of search, without the reality, gives. At last she inquired of a police officer, and was directed to proceed “two blocks up,” where she would find “The Fair.”

The nature of these vast retail combinations, should they ever permanently disappear, will form an interesting chapter in the commercial history of our nation. Such a flowering out of a modest trade principle the world had never witnessed up to that time. They were along the line of the most effective retail organisation, with hundreds of stores coordinated into one and laid out upon the most imposing and economic basis. They were handsome, bustling, successful affairs, with a host of clerks and a swarm of patrons. Carrie passed along the busy aisles, much affected by the remarkable displays of trinkets, dress goods, stationery, and jewelry. Each separate counter was a show place of dazzling interest and attraction. She could not help feeling the claim of each trinket and valuable upon her personally, and yet she did not stop. There was nothing there which she could not have used⁠—nothing which she did not long to own. The dainty slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and petticoats, the laces, ribbons, hair-combs, purses, all touched her with individual desire, and she felt keenly the fact that not any of these things were in the range of her purchase. She was a work-seeker, an outcast without employment, one whom the average employee could tell at a glance was poor and in need of a situation.

It must not be thought that anyone could have mistaken her for a nervous, sensitive, high-strung nature, cast unduly upon a cold, calculating, and unpoetic world. Such certainly she was not. But women are peculiarly sensitive to their adornment.

Not only did Carrie feel the drag of desire for all which was new and pleasing in apparel for women, but she noticed too, with a touch at the heart, the fine ladies who elbowed and ignored her, brushing past in utter disregard of her presence, themselves eagerly enlisted in the materials which the store contained. Carrie was not familiar with the appearance of her more fortunate sisters of the city. Neither had she before known the nature and appearance of the shop girls with whom she now compared poorly. They were pretty in the main, some even handsome, with an air of independence and indifference which added, in the case of the more favoured, a certain piquancy. Their clothes were neat, in many instances fine, and wherever she encountered the eye of one it was only to recognise in it a keen analysis of her own position⁠—her individual shortcomings of dress and that shadow of manner which she thought must hang about her and make clear to all who and what she was. A flame of envy lighted in her heart. She realised in a dim way how much the city held⁠—wealth, fashion, ease⁠—every adornment for women, and she longed for dress and beauty with a whole heart.

On the second floor were the managerial offices, to which, after some inquiry, she was now directed. There she found other girls ahead of her, applicants like herself, but with more of that self-satisfied and independent air which experience of the city lends; girls who scrutinised her in a painful manner. After a wait of perhaps three-quarters of an hour, she was called in turn.

“Now,” said a sharp, quick-mannered Jew, who was sitting at a roll-top desk near the window, “have you ever worked in any other store?”

“No, sir,” said Carrie.

“Oh, you haven’t,” he said, eyeing her keenly.

“No, sir,” she replied.

“Well, we prefer young women just now with some experience. I guess we can’t use you.”

Carrie stood waiting a moment, hardly certain whether the interview had terminated.

“Don’t wait!” he exclaimed. “Remember we are very busy here.”

Carrie began to move quickly to the door.

“Hold on,” he said, calling her back. “Give me your name and address. We want girls occasionally.”

When she had gotten safely into the street, she could scarcely restrain the tears. It was not so much the particular rebuff which she had just experienced, but the whole abashing trend of the day. She was tired and nervous. She abandoned the thought of appealing to the other department stores and now wandered on, feeling a certain safety and relief in mingling with the crowd.

In her indifferent wandering she turned into Jackson Street, not far from the river, and was keeping her way along the south side of that imposing thoroughfare, when a