daughter as he called her, and so her life, at least, was not
darkened in the least by the knowledge of the truth.

When Edith was about seventeen years old Mrs. Quintin finally
yielded to the ravages of that dread destroyer, consumption. The
poor girl wept sadly and bitterly at the loss of her mother, the
only one indeed the poor child had ever known, and poor Quintin wept
sadly as he thought of his wife's brief and unhappy career. He
removed with his daughter into furnished lodgings, not wishing the
child to be burdened too soon with the cares of house-keeping. What
he would not allow her to do for him, however, she soon became very
anxious to do for another, and the days of her mourning were not
long passed when she became the happy wife of a young man named
Wentworth, bookkeeper in one of the leading hardware firms in
Montreal. She has now children of her own, and the youngsters'
greatest delight is to gather round their grandfather's knee while
he astonishes them with stories. To them nor to no one else, however,
has he told, even as I have done, the story of the frail shop-girl,
who from being young and handsome, and the belle of her circle of
acquaintances, became a wretched and deceitful woman, diseased both
in body and mind, and finally sank into a premature grave.

Out on this heartless, brutal system, and the thoughtlessness and
ignorance which permit it! I hope the narrative given above may
cause some of those at least who engage in this barbarous system to
pause and give the great problem of life, capital and labor, a few
moments thought that they may see the error of their way, and that
poor Esther Quintin may not have died in vain.