Lizzy Glenn; Or, The Trials of a Seamstress

Lizzy Glenn; Or, The Trials of a Seamstress is a women dressmaker fiction story written by T. S. Arthur, an American novelist known for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public.

Excerpts:

NEEDLE-WORK, at best, yields but a small return. Yet how many thousands have no other resource in life, no other barrier thrown up between them and starvation! The manly stay upon which a woman has leaned suddenly fails, and she finds self-support an imperative necessity; yet she has no skill, no strength, no developed resources. In all probability she is a mother. In this case she must not only stand alone, but sustain her helpless children. Since her earliest recollection, others have ministered to her wants and pleasures.