them.

When a girl who has been in domestic service loses her health, or for
any other reason is unable to carry on her occupation, she is often
curiously detached and isolated, because she has had so little
opportunity for normal social relationships and friendships. One of the
saddest cases ever brought to my personal knowledge was that of an
orphan Norwegian girl who, coming to America at the age of seventeen,
had been for three years in one position as general housemaid, during
which time she had drawn only such part of her wages as was necessary
for her simple clothing. At the end of three years, when she was sent to
a public hospital with nervous prostration, her employer refused to pay
her accumulated wages, on the ground that owing to her ill health she
had been of little use during the last year. When she left the hospital,
practically penniless, advised by the physician to find some outdoor
work, she sold a patented egg-beater for six months, scarcely earning
enough for her barest necessities and in constant dread lest she could
not "keep respectable." When she was found wandering upon the street she
not only had no capital with which to renew her stock, but had been
without food for two days and had resolved to drown herself. Every
effort was made to restore the half-crazed girl, but unfortunately
hospital restraint was not considered necessary, and a month later, in
spite of the vigilance of her new employer, her body was taken from the
lake. One more of those gentle spirits who had found the problem of life
insoluble, had sought refuge in death.

A surprising number of suicides occur among girls who have been in
domestic service, when they discover that they have been betrayed by
their lovers. Perhaps nothing is more astonishing than the attitude of
the mistress when the situation of such a forlorn girl is discovered,