It was under such auspicious circumstances that she started out this morning to look for work.
Before following her in her round of seeking, let us look at the sphere in which her future was to lie.

In 1889 Chicago had the peculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresome pilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible.

Its many and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all quarters, the hopeful and the hopeless--those who had their fortune yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs had reached a disastrous climax elsewhere.

It was a city of over 500,000, with the ambition, the daring, the activity of a metropolis of a million.

Its streets and houses were already scattered over an area of seventy-five square miles.