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DIMINISHING THE DEATH RATE.

WHAT NEW YORK BABIES OWE TO STERILISED MILK.

NATHAN STRAUS, native of Bavaria, now merchant prince and philanthropist of New York, tells in the November Forum how he has reduced the death rate in the Empire City for this year. He says that over 40 per cent. of the deaths in New York are those of children under five years of age; and he is convinced that impure milk is at the bottom of this great infant mortality. Ordinary milk acquires in the milking and carrying swarms of germs. He quotes an expert to the effect that :

If milk gave the same outward appearance of decomposition or fermentation as is shown by vegetables, fish, or meat, more than three-quarters of all the milk consumed in the metropolitan district would be condemned as unfit for human food.

Mr. Straus determined to save the babies' lives by supplying properly sterilised milk. He established a sterilising laboratory. The milk was procured from carefully inspected cows and stables. It was iced in transportation and until bottled. It was then exposed for twenty minutes to a temperature of 167 degrees Fahr., nine degrees higher than the point fatal to tubercle bacilli. No bottle of sterilised milk was allowed to be sold twenty-four hours after it had been sterilised.

HOW IT WAS DISTRIBUTED.

The demand was enormous. The laboratory was kept working day and night during the summer months. Order-books of one hundred coupons, for from two to five bottles of the milk, were given gratis and in any quantity desired to any physician serving the poor gratuitously, or to any charitable organisation. A sterilised milk restaurant and pavilion were opened on a river picr. Free lectures were given twice a week by medical experts on the proper care and feeding of infants. Booths for the sale of the milk were opened in the public parks.

The sales of sterilised milk for babies at the six depots aggregated, up to the end of September, 280,000 bottles, or over 2,500 bottles a day. No record was kept of the number of silk children for whom sweetened and diluted sterilised milk in bottles was prescribed, but it was estimated that a daily average of 700 babies were fed on this modified milk. It is safe to say that some thousands of children, who were sick, owe their recovery during the summer to its use. At the Park depots there were sold (up to September 30) 572,150 glasses at one cent cach, and in the height of the season the number of people employed was fifty-eight. The sales of milk in all of the places (depots and booths) aggregated 400,000 quarts.

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HOW TO PREVENT BLINDNESS AMONG children. SUGGESTION FOR OUR MUNICIPALITIES.

MISS CHARLOTTE SMITH, Writing in the Medical Magazine for November, has an article on Ophthalmia, which ought to be read by all practical philanthropists. She says that at the present moment there are as many as 7,000 totally blind and as many half-blind persons in England, who would not have lost their sight if the local authorities had taken the very simple precaution of issuing with the vaccination notices a small printed warning as to the need of taking care of the eyesight of the new-born child. Unfortunately the recommendations of the Ophthalmological Society have not been carried out by the Government. It would seem that it is too great a burden on the local registrars to ask them to include the following very small leaflet along with the vaccination notices:

The leaflet of the Ophthalmological Society is as follows:"Instructions regarding new born infants: If the child's eyelids become red and swollen or begin to run with matter. within a few days after birth, it is to be taken, without a day's delay, to the doctor. The disease is very dangerous, and if not at once treated may destroy the sight of both eyes.'" The Royal Commissioners were in favour of much more information being supplied gratuitously through Sanitary Authority or Post Office.

At present, however, not even this irreducible minimum of information is supplied to any one excepting by the municipalities. Here, as elsewhere, Glasgow leads the

way:

The municipal authority of Glasgow, under that distinguished sanatarian Dr. Russell, have drawn up a two-page leaflet of instructions to parents, which is distributed gratuitously to all persons registering the birth of a child by the local registrars. The number of copies distributed annually is 20.000, at a total cost to municipality of £5 per annum. The amount of instruction given in these brief "Hints on Management of Children' not only contains the advice urged by the Ophthalmic Society, but other much-needed directions as to proper food and clothing.

The only other town which has taken action in this direction is Manchester, and it is not the municipality which has done anything, but a voluntary association. Miss Smith says:

The Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association have issued instructions (under the sanction of Professor Ransome and others) of so simple a nature that no possible sane man could be found who would not wish it "God speed."

Miss Smith calls attention to the fact that 60 per cent. of the children born in England have not the advantage of medical attendance or skilled assistance. In several large towns, among which are Wolverhampton and Macclesfield, doctors are absent from no fewer than 90 per cent. of the births. This being so, it is still more important that the untrained midwife and the still more untrained mother should be told what simple steps should be taken in order to save the child's eyesight. Miss Smith, I am glad to see, is prepared to energetically agitate this question, and she concludes her paper as follows:

I shall be glad to receive helpers or to hear of any one who has individually brought the matter before his town council or (in the future) parish council.

FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT THE C. D. ACTS. A CRUSHING REPLY.

SURGEON-GENERAL SIR WILLIAM MOORE may be a good doctor, but he is about the lamest controversialist who ever appeared in print. In the Humanitarian for December, Professor Stuart has no difficulty in making such an exhibition of Sir William Moore as to fill that indiscreet gentleman's friends with profound compassion. Seldom, indeed, has any obstinate advocate of an evil cause given himself away more completely than Sir William Moore appears to have done in the present instance. The paper which he contributed to a recent number of the Humanitarian had already been published, with one alteration, in a previous publication. Mr. Stuart says:

The paper was neither more nor less than a reprint of one contributed by Sir William to the Provincial Medical Journal for August 1st, 1892. But there is one alteration which is of a most serious and important character. Instead of writing "It is now 1892," he has altered this into the words "It is now 1894." Now here is the point. That which he felt he "had reason to believe" in 1892, has been absolutely and entirely contradicted by statistics published since that date. It is not true that in 1894 "there is reason to believe that the same rate of increase has been maintained," on the contrary the official figures for 1891 and 1892 have shown that the increase had by 1892 been swept away. The total admissions for venereal disease in the English Army in India were 371 in the year 1888; they were, it is true, 504 in 1890, but instead of going on increasing they fell in 1891 to 401, and in 1892, the last year for which statistics are at present available, they had fallen to 378, so that they were then practically the same as they were before repeal.

Sir William Moore's argument in 1892 was a wrong argument, because his anticipation of what had happened between 1890 and that year was wrong. That anticipation has been shown to be utterly erroneous by the Blue Books published since his article first saw the light. These Blue Books were open to him as to the rest of the public when he reproduced his article in the columns of the Humanitarian.

Professor Stuart, not content with his slaying of Sir William Moore, takes occasion to demolish the writer whom in a moment of aberration Mr. Labouchere or Mr. Vowles permitted to air his nonsense in the columns of Truth. As some readers may have been dismayed by the ridiculous assertion that from one-third to one-half of the Indian Army was incapable of service because of this disease, it may be worth while to reprint the following passage. Professor Stuart says:

Figures are accessible to Sir William, and to the public as to that; and in the Indian Army, in 1892, there was an average of 2,039 men "constantly sick," or one man out of thirty-three. It is a big enough figure undoubtedly, and much to be lamented, but to speak of one thirty-third as if it were one-half is—well, it is of a piece with the rest of the article.

In the Bengal Army the figures as to sickness from this cause are as follows:

The number, which in 1888 was 24 96, had in 1892 risen to 30.00, a rise of 5'04 per 1,050. But even this, small as it is, cannot reasonably be attributed to repeal, for the number in 1884 was 18-69, so that in the five years preceding repeal, when the system was in full force, the number had risen by 6.27, or by a greater amount than during the same period since repeal took place.

As it is in India, so it is with the Home Army. The repeal of the C. D. Acts so far from enormously increasing the sick has practically left the total unchanged. Professor Stuart says:

During the three years before repeal, the numbers were 16-24, 1667 and 16-86 per thousand, whereas during the three years 1890, 1891 to 1892 those numbers were 17:07, 15:34 and 16:46. That is to say, in the latest recorded year, in the whole

Home Army of 100,302 men, 1,649 was the total average number which for all kinds of venereal disease was unable on any day to go on active service. The repeal of the Acts therefore in England has not increased the total amount of these diseases, and there is not the slightest warrant for the expectation that their re-enactment would in any way reduce it.

A FRENCH ST. THERESA.

ANTOINETTE BOURIGNON, a visionary mystic of the seventeenth century, who possessed at one time a European reputation greater in her day than that of Mme. Guyon in hers, was in a recent number of the Revue de Paris the subject of an analytical article by M. Reinach. Comparatively little has ever been published on this French St. Theresa, who at the age of four inquired of those around her the whereabouts of the country where real Christians grow,” and who, at the age of eighteen, put on record the first of her "talks with God." Antoinette's parents were bourgeois of Lille, who, far from approving her special sanctity, determined to get her married early. Terrified at this prospect, on Easter Day, 1636, this girl of twenty secretly left the city attired in a hermit's robe she had made for herself, and sought a desert, but after various adventures she had to reluctantly return home, not, however, before her parents had promised to respect her single life vocation.

Antoinette at one time of her strange existence became Superioress of an Orphanage, but her mystical teachings so worked on the imagination of her young flock that soon each child declared herself possessed by the devil, and Antoinette had to call in the ecclesiastical authorities to save herself from those who alternately denounced her as witch and fraud. In 1668, after much hesitation as to the wisdom of going into a Protestant country, she came to live in Amsterdam, being led to do so by the counsels of her celestial advisers, who told her that "Salvation does not depend on small differences in religion, but on the love of God and virtue ordaining that we must love those practising the right whatever may be their exterior form of belief." Henceforth she was known as the Amsterdam Visionary, and was pursued in turn by the Lutherans and the Jesuits. During the last years of her life the poor woman was hunted about from corner to corner of Europe like a wild beast, and she finally died in Switzerland on October 30th, 1680, in direst poverty, and discredited even among her former disciples. Some years after her death a revival of her peculiar doctrines took place, notably in Scotland, where some of her works were translated and eagerly read. Dr. Cockburn, a famous divine, wrote a lengthy book against her followers entitled " Bourigianism Detected," but this, however, made no impression on those who hailed in her a prophetess, and believed in the inspiration of her writings. On love, and the relation of the sexes, Antoinette Bourignon was strangely enough a precursor of Auguste Comte, although the one understood life as a Christian visionary, and the other was totally devoid of any religious belief.

Antoinette never admitted that women need suffer any of the disabilities not imposed on them by nature, and claimed for her sex liberty both of public speech and individual thought. "Men find it difficult to believe," she observed, "that the Holy Ghost can dwell equally at ease in the soul of a woman as in that of a man; but what difference there is between the sexes is wholly physical, and does not apply to the spiritual portion of each entity." On this and kindred subjects she wrote with considerable directness and freedom, and her works are interesting as examples of seventeenth century mysticism.

THE LOVELIEST QUEEN IN EUROPE. A CHARACTER SKETCH OF THE QUEEN OF ITALY. IN the Woman at Home Mr. Arthur Warren publishes a copiously illustrated sketch of the Queen of Italy. It begins thus:

Marguerite of Savoy, Queen of Italy, walks before breakfast in the palace gardens and gathers a bunch of flowers for the study table of her lord the king. If the weather be wet, or the season winter, she goes to the conservatory for the nosegay. Often in the afternoons she enters the glass verandah which opens upon the king's study at the Quirinal, and there she tends the blossoms and plants which his Majesty is fond of cultivating. In the north, at her country villa in Monza, Queen Marguerite spends much of her time in the royal gardens. So much does she love flowers, that she says, Indeed, I can never have enough of them!" Her favourites are carnations, violets, lilies of the valley, and the dark red velvet rose. And the violet is her favourite perfume.

Marguerite of Savoy is the loveliest of the queens of Europe. She is not only the best-looking queen, but she is the best educated one in Europe. She knows English, French, German, Spanish, and Latin thoroughly, and she speaks them as fluently as she does her own Italian. She is a good Greek scholar. She is not only acquainted, but she is familiar with the masterpieces of European literature; she quotes Petrarch, Dante, and Goethe, and she is so fond of Shakespeare that she has written for her own amusement a little work on his heroines.

The article is full of details as to the Queen's amusements and mode of life. The writer says:

A ROYAL MOUNTAINEER.

In Rome she is the Queen; at Monza she is the country gentlewoman; in the Alps she is a daring mountain-climber. She has that absolute indifference to all risk and danger which characterises the members of the house of Savoy. On the mountains she will lead where few care to follow-over glaciers, to the verge of precipices, on narrow, dizzy paths and treacherous ledges. She does not care for hunting, fishing, racing; mountain-climbing is her favourite sport. At Monza, too, horticulture is something more than a hobby with her. The gardeners say that she understands flowers and their cultivation as thoroughly as if she had made this the sole business of her life. There are flower beds at Monza which she permits no one but herself to cultivate during the period of residence there. She works in her garden every morning, and then she has it literally to herself, for all the members of the household, without exception, are excluded.

If she enjoys country life, she is nevertheless a stickler for courtly ceremony :

The Queen likes great receptions, dinner-parties, ceremonials of all sorts. But she also likes to drop ceremony when she goes away for her summer and autumn outings. When she is in Florence she often goes out unattended, save by a lady-in-waiting. She strolls by the Arno, visits the galleries, makes shopping expeditions, and takes a cab, for all the world as if she were a private person of no consequence. In Venice too she likes to steal out of the palace, and wander among the curious passages of the most curious city in the world; watch the crowds on the Rialto; talk with the gondoliers, and float up and down the canals like any tourist. There have been times when she was recognised on little jaunts of this kind, and when the loyal curiosity of her too enthusiastic subjects compelled her to throw dignity to the winds, and fly for shelter.

The following is Mr. Warren's account of her work-aday life:

A ROYAL DAY'S WORK.

Before noon she has finished her correspondence, and then, until the luncheon hour, she is engaged in some of the special labour which she has cheerfully taken upon herself. She receives the directors of charitable institutions; the committee of some working women's guild; she considers a project for organising an industrial or art exhibition; she receives depu

tations from undertakings which seek royal patronage; she discusses some new scheme of philanthropy; she encourages art in all forms, and assists women's work; she visits hospitals, asylums, orphanages, bazaars; she lends her presence, or her help, to any important organisation which seems to her to be designed for the welfare of humanity. So in the afternoon she makes her visits through the studios, the charitable institutions and the rest. But, for all that, she contrives to get time for her own pleasures: a private audience for distinguished persons; a little reception for her personal friends; and then, about half-past four, she goes for a drive through the city to some public park.

The Queen goes back to the Quirinal from her drive in the grounds of the Villa Borghese, and she proceeds to the King's study, where she sits for an hour with her husband. She reads to him, or talks with him, or plays, perhaps, on one of the musical instruments with which she is an expert performerthe piano, the mandoline, the lute, or the lyre. The King and Queen make it a point that nothing shall interfere with this hour which they spend together before dinner. The dinner is served at seven, and the party is usually a small one, comprising their Majesties, the Prince of Naples when he is in town, the Marchesa Villamarina, a gentleman-in-waiting, and a guest or two.

JAMES GORDON BENNETT.

IN the Cosmopolitan for November there is an interesting article upon "The Chiefs of the American Press." The said chiefs are James Gordon Bennett, Mr. Pulitzer, and Mr. Dana of the Sun. It is illustrated with the portraits of the three great editors or proprietors. The following statement concerning James Gordon Bennett will be new to most people who imagine that he is fooling away his time in Paris in a fashion rather worthy of a gilded butterfly than of a working journalist. The writer of the article says:

The real Mr. Bennett works in an office at 120, Avenue des Champs Elysées, the floor cluttered an inch deep with letters, the table before him piled with unread messages, and the smug valet at the door for ever gliding in with despatches from all parts of the world. There he sits, immersed in a thousand cares, strong, acquisitive, suspicious, generous, quarrelsome, the master of many secrets, and the incarnation of international gossip. No man among his three thousand editors, reporters, and correspondents does so much labour as he. Nothing is too minute to escapo his alert mind. knows what the cook is doing in his kitchen at Bougival; what Bismarck is arranging for the mortification of the German Emperor; what the Herald will say to-morrow about Tammany Hall; what the Brazilian rebels intend to do next week; and what the police court reporter said when he was discharged in New York last week.

He

Mr. Bennett lacks two qualities which his father possessed -humour and self-control. But he is intuitive to a startling degree. His random guess is usually more certain than the ordinary man's deliberate judgment. He works furiously, wearing out those around him, and flashing out ideas on the most opposite subjects almost in the same breath. His hero is Napoleon, and his philosopher, Machiavel. He despises what is commonly known as fine writing; and as the shadow cannot have what is lacking in the substance, the Herald has never been famous as a literary production. Mr. Bennett writes or dictates many of the most distinct hits that appear in the Herald, and no aggressive editorial has appeared in its columns for years, that has not been based upon a rough sketch cabled by him from Paris. The feudal influences of Europe are to be observed in many of his public utterances, and at times he is completely out of touch with American sentiment and the fundamental national policy.

Impersonal journalism is Mr. Bennett's goal, and co-ordination is his plan. He hopes in time to make the Herald a sort of headless committee of the public good, working through a select council of editors, rather than through the will of any single man.

THE CABINET AND ITS SECRETS.
BY SIR T. WEMYSS REID.

IN Cassell's Family Magazine, Sir T. Wemyss Reid has a gossipy article concerning "The Cabinet and its Secrets," in the course of which he brings out very clearly how surprising it is that Cabinet secrets should be so well kept. A secret that is known to twenty people is usually regarded as no secret at all; but Cabinet secrets are usually known to a score of persons, and yet they have seldom, hardly ever, leaked out. Sir Wemyss Reid says:

It is all the more surprising that these secrets should be kept so well, seeing that they cannot be confined entirely to the actual members of the Cabinet. The private secretaries of the Prime Minister and of at least one or two other Ministers know

many of the most important secrets. Yet there is only one recorded instance of a private secretary betraying his chief. Nor is this all. When the Cabinets are being held small dispatch boxes are constantly being sent roun 1 among the members. These contain the most confidential documents, important dispatches, drafts of Bills, memoranda addressed by individual members of the Cabinet to their colleagues, and the comments of the latter upon them; and all these documents are printed. It is true that each bears upon it the words; "Most secret:

The person into whose hands this precious document fell was a confidential private secretary, who promptly sealed up the Cabinet secret and dispatched it to its owner. Notwithstanding all this secrecy, however, there are occasional stories of scenes which have taken place in the Cabinet. With one of these Sir T. Wemyss Reid concludes his article:

There is another and still more memorable scene of the same kind of which I have had a private account. On the second of March last, Mr. Gladstone was present at a meeting of the Cabinet for the last time. He knew it, and his colleagues knew it, but the outer world did not know. That he was about to retire was by this time known to all; but only the initiated knew that this was to be his last Cabinet. The nan who had been present at a greater number of Cabinet meetings than any other Englishman of this century, he who had in four suc cessive Ministries presided over the secret deliberations of his colleagues,

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THE CABINET ROOM.

(From Cassell's Family Magazine.)

for the use of the Cabinet." But, remembering how other private and confidential documents have become public, one may well wonder at the almost complete immunity from disasters of this kind that these Cabinet documents have enjoyed. They are printed, I ought to say, in the confidential printing department at the Foreign Office, where the subordinates are as trustworthy as if they were private secretaries or even Cabinet Ministers themselves.

Accidents happen sometimes, of course; but it is wonderful how even then good fortune seems to follow the attempt to guard these august secrets from the profane gaze. When the Home Rule Bill of 1893 was being prepared by the Cabinet, and when the most intense curiosity prevailed everywhere as to its character, a member of a certain famous club went up to a table in the club library to write a letter. He noticed that some printed documents had been left on the table by the gentleman who last sat there, and he was about to push them carelessly on one side when his eye caught certain words. Among the documents was the secret draft copy of the Home Rule Bill.

was now meet

ing them for the last time, and meeting them simply to say farewell There was a pathetic scene at that particular meeting of the Cabinet. One who was present has so far violated the secrecy of his office as to tell me that nearly all were in tears as for the last time they gathered round their veteran leader and silently shook hands with him. No more would they hear his voice in the innermost councils of the State; the foremost figure in the Parliamentary

life of their time was passing from them. Such a meeting was an event of historic interest, and it has furnished a subject which the painter will probably some day make his own.

Cassier's Magazine has now an office of its own at 33, Bedford Street, Strand.

AT the present time, when every one is lauding the Japanese to the sky, it is interesting to note what a writer who has had a good deal of experience among the Chinese in the Straits Settlements has to say. Mr. Eastwick feels impelled to send to the Humanitarian an enthusiastic eulogy of John Chinaman. He says:

As a citizen, the Chinaman is a very desirable acquisition in our colony, seeing that he is a careful, methodical, patient, and persistent toiler, a keen and sagacions trader, and a peaceloving man. In addition to this, his conduct as a son, a husband, and a father is most exemplary, and deserves the greatest praise.

HOW POPULAR NOVELISTS WORK.

A GROUP OF INTERVIEWS.

THERE are several papers in this month's magazines made of interviews with living novelists, in which they let the public more or less into the secret of how they work.

MR. GILBERT PARKER.

In the Young Man Mr. Gilbert Parker, who is to write their gerial next volume, explains how it is that he finds it necessary to wander off to the uttermost ends of the earth between the production of his novels. He says:

I worked at night for years, and I never awoke fresh in the morning; the body is a very sensitive machine, which requires a good deal of grooming and shepherding. My friends, and perhaps others, wonder why I suddenly start off to the Continent, or Mexico, or Labrador, or the United States; I do it because I feel that there is danger in keeping, as I am disposed to do, too closely to my work. What may appear as eccentricity in making these sudden long journeys is a very deliberate method of life, which has at least produced this result: that I am always fresh in feeling, and I am younger at thirtytwo than I was at twenty-one. ́

I have almost arranged with Sir Donald A. Smith, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company (to my mind one of the most remarkable men in the world), who is granting me facilities which I believe have never been given before, to take a journey which has been in my mind for years. My plan is to go up through Canada to the Saskatchewan Valley, from there to the Peace River country, and thence by Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake to the Mackenzie River or the Coppermine River. I propose to winter at Hudson's Bay Fort, and in the spring to come down in a south-easterly direction with the great flotilla of fur-laden canoes, to York Factory on Hudson's Bay, and then to take the yearly ship home to London.

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Well, I have done a good deal of that work myself in bed. If I have reached any crucial point in a story, if I am ́embarrassed as to which of several courses to adopt, I can practically. think of nothing else till it is settled; it is the last thing I can think of on going to sleep at night and the first on wakening in the morning. The story of “Mehalah,” I remember, was thought out in the course of one sleepless night when I had my living of Mersea, in Essex. I had spent the greater part of the day with the superintendent of the coastguard, who had taken me in his boat to a deserted old house on the dreary marshes. In this uncanny place, in fact, we had eaten a frugal lunch. When I went to bed the spot haunted te, and almost unconsciously I began to make it the scene of a story. The very next day I started writing out the story, and gave all my leisure to it till the book was finished.

As I

As a rule I write one novel a year. People have got an impression, I think, that as a novelist I am much more prolific; this is probably because two or three books of mine have happened to appear simultaneously, owing to publishing arrangements with which you are doubtless familiar. have told you, I work hard at a book when once it is begun ; but its preparation occupies me not a little time. I do not keep note-books, but trust entirely to my memory for incidents, impressions, etc. I think out my plot and my characters without having recourse to paper, and, before actually beginning the MS., merely make a précis of the contents of each chapter. Occasionally I take a character from real life, considerably modifying it, however, in doing so.

MISS M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.

In the Young Woman Miss M. Betham-Edwards gives the following account of the way in which she does her work:-

"In summer I rise at 6.30 a.m., take half an hour's stroll on the Downs, read for half an hour some favourite classic (I have now in hand the Prometheus of Eschylus, which I almost

know by heart), then I work till 1 p.m., allowing no interruption. A little rest after lunch, a walk, tea-often partaken with sympathetic friend or friends, sometimes the excuse for a little reunion. Then, from five to eight in my study again, this time to read, not write, and give myself the relaxation of a little music. Occasional visits to London or elsewhere, two months or more in France every year-this is my existence." "Which of your books, Miss Betham-Edwards, best gives your views of life?"

.

"The Sylvestres,' Disarmed,' The Romance of a French Parsonage, and Felicia. If I am asked my opinion as to the secret of a happy life, I should say, first and foremost, the conviction of accomplishing conscientiously what as an individual you are most fitted for; next, the cultivation of the widest intellectual, moral, and social sympathies (especially in the matter of friendships); and lastly, freedom from what I will call social superstitions-that is, indifference to superficial conventionalities and the verdict of the vulgar; in other words, the preservation of one's freedom, of what the French call une vie de dégagée.

"I may here say, once for all, that I began to write without any thought of money or fame, simply and solely because I felt it my vocation."

SARAH GRAND.

The Woman at Hom describes Sarah Grand at home. In the course of the article the interviewer thus reports the authoress's views on the "Heavenly Twins":—

"I think," said Sarah Grand slowly, "that the time was ripe for such a book. I had the strongest conviction that there was something very wrong in the present state of society, and in the Heavenly Twins' I did what I could to suggest a remedy. That the thought of cultured readers, both in England and America, had been 'running in the same direction, was shown by the welcome which my theories received. I have had the kindest letters from entire strangers, thanking me for speaking out so fearlessly. Medical men, too, have written, commending the accuracy of the physiological parts of the book. One reviewer, I may mention, suggested that it would be well for me to take a course of physiology. The fact is, that for five years I made a close study of the subject under eminent medical men. I should greatly deprecate any change that would tend to make women less womanly. My theory of the relations of the sexes is not to lower the woman, but to raise the man."

Mrs. Sarah Grand refused to tell even the title of her new book. Her lips are sealed upon any work on which she is engaged. She says:

Contrary to the practice of a well-known novelist, every bit of whose work is hammered out in conversation before he puts pen to paper, and who discusses each character, each scene, even the slightest incidents and dovetailings, I never speak of my unpublished book. To my work such a method would be fatal. My ideas would become common when passed from lip to lip. I think it is not enough to lock only one's manuscript in a bureau; I have to keep the whole delicate process of creation concealed from any outside criticism.

The interviewer gives the following details concerning Sarah Grand's sympathy with the poor of her own sex :— She has interested herself in the poor girls of London. She goes every Thursday evening when in town to Mrs. Frederic Harrison's Girls' Guild at Newton Hall, Fetter Lane, and there she joins like a sister in the amusements and occupations of the members. "This summer," she told me, 66 we have provided our girls with very pretty uniforms for gymnastics, and many of them look charming in them-you would hardly know them for the pale, pinched-looking London work-girl."

Servants, too, have long attracted Madame Sarah Grand's warm sympathy. She is making a study of the character of a little servant-girl from the country, who may some day play her part among the great ladies of Morningquest.

He says Sarah Grand is one of the best dressed women in the Pioneer Club. She regards with disgust the pleasure some women take in dressing like men.

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