mend them. When weather permits, they go as far as the ramparts or the suburbs. Finally, for several years, thousands of little Parisians have been sent to spend a summer month by the sea or in the country. Sometimes the expense of these outings is met by the funds of the city wards or the funds of the schools; sometimes by charitable associations, some times by individuals. I know young ladies, belonging to our best families, who are permitted by their parents to entertain, close to their own country-seats, a colony of little children from Paris. These young ladies employ their time in watching, instructing, and caring for the poor and often sickly children, and in putting a little joy into their sad exist

ences.

One of the most interesting works in behalf of infancy is that founded in 1870 by Madame de Pressensé. After the executions and banishments of that terrible time, this great-hearted woman gathered together, in a suburb of Paris, the Communists' children, fed and educated them. Friends, moved by the otherwise miserable fate of these unhappy orphans, helped the work, which has continually prospered while its form has changed. It is now an asylum for children whose mothers are ill and must go to a hospital. The primitive establishment has been replaced by a fine structure, located in the Rue de Gercoué, XIV. Arrondissement. The house is directed by Mademoiselle Vieux, for many years devoted to the work among poor children. There is no sacrifice for the little ones of which this admirable woman is not capable. Formerly, when the house was small and an infirmary was lacking, she put all the sick into her own room, so as better to care for them during the night. Five years ago she broke her leg, and since then has been an invalid. She can hardly drag herself about, and her sufferings are often extreme. But she would rather die than not to be constantly surrounded by children; even their cries and turbulence do her good. Besides, she has an extraordinary influence upon them. I have seen one look from her put in order whole assemblages of rude and rebellious boys whom the most energetic men could not discipline. In the summer, with all the inhabitants of her house (chickens and

rabbits included), Mademoiselle Vieux goes to Nogent sur Vernisson, where Madame Georges d'Eichthal's countryseat becomes her home.

Two years ago, at Ormesson (in the department of Seine-et-Oise) there was formed a hospital for tuberculous children. This hospital was built with the help of thousands of little and big purses. One could subscribe for a single brick. Almost all the children of Paris who have a few pennies to spend have had the honor of bringing their offering to this work of mercy.

For a long time the children morally neglected, or those whose parents are unworthy, also the poor little ones who beg in the streets, had excited special attention. The lamented ex-Premier, Jules Simon, placed himself at the head of a Société de Sauvetage de l'Enfance Abandonnée. This society declares that vicious or criminal parents who martyrize or corrupt their children have forfeited the right to them, and takes to itself the charge of the education which the parents had compromised. Monsieur Buisson, Director of Primary Instruction, and Madame Kergomard, Inspector-General, have organized a system of overseership exercised by numerous citizens. This consists of gathering from the streets the beggar-children, making them go to a school, and, if necessary, caring for them. The members of this society discovered in a part of Paris called the Cité Jeanne d'Arc an entire population of rag-pickers, whose children by hundreds had escaped from the obligation of going to the public schools. Poorly clad, covered with vermin, incapable of renouncing for certain hours the liberty of vagabond life, these children would be, in an ordinary school, elements of trouble, corruption, and uncleanness. It was therefore decided to put them in a special school, the entire programme and methods of which should be adapted to their needs. Meanwhile, some young people, full of zeal, hired rooms in this abandoned quarter, and in the evening gathered there the better-natured children in order to give them a rudimentary education and also certain distractions.

Nor have the needs of older youth been forgotten in these enterprises of good and fecund solidarity. Every evening in

every quarter of Paris courses of study and lectures take place in lyceums, primary schools, private institutions, and even private houses. There, whoever will may learn history, design, singing. The churches have created endowments and offer in certain well-arranged clubs, like the Catholic Clubs, healthy instruction and a degree of intellectual and moral culture to young people waylaid by the temptations of the street and the grog-shop. In such work the Comte de Mun and the Abbé Naudet have accomplished most meritorious results, and it would be a grave wrong to them to suppose that concealed thoughts of ecclesiastical policy had exclusively inspired them. The Protestant Church has its institutions, its house of apprentices in the Rue Titon, founded by Pastor Dumas, its Christian Unions (Y. M. C. A.) spread throughout the whole city. The center of the latter is in the magnificent structure built some years since by French subscriptions encouraged by the splendid

THE LATE LOUIS PASTEUR

One of the greatest modern discoverers and contributors to the science of healing. Founder of the Pasteur Institute.

At

gift of an American, Mr. Stokes. about the same time that clubs for young men were instituted, restaurants for young women workers were established, where may be found not only healthy nourishment at low prices, but also a readingroom, and society which presents no peril.

This is the place to mention the association of fraternal aid and social studies established a dozen years ago by Pastor Fallot. This courageous man, who has inspired the Protestant Church with a salutary interest regarding social questions, wanted to unite in friendly meetings day-laborers, students, employees, shopkeepers, and capitalists, in order to bring them to understand themselves and each other, mutually to educate themselves, and to love each other. In this generous enterprise he has spent his force and his health, and, if one cannot say that his work has met with rapid success, it has at least become the point of departure of a large number of analogous endeavors both in Paris and in the provinces.

THE COUNT DE CHAMBRUN

The philanthropist who conceived the idea of a "Musée Social," and then endowed it with $400,000.

In the large cities there is a particularly interesting class of young men, the soldiers. Deprived for a certain time of family life, huddled in immense barracks, they are often at a loss to know how properly to spend their hours of leisure. Therefore, in the vicinity of the barracks, rendezvous for soldiers have been established. There, between six and ten in the evening, they are sure to find fire, light, games, meetings, paper for writing home, good reading, and almost a sort of family nest.

For workmen without work there have been founded not only a quantity of free employment agencies, in the Mayor's offices (each arrondissement in Paris has a Mayor), at the churches, and at the offices of professional syndicates, but also temporary asylums for men and women, refuges for the night, working-places. Assistance through work, of which Pastor Robin in the Belleville quarter is one of the oldest pioneers, helps the victims of strikes.

All winter long, in the street itself, a society, simply and practically established, offers to every hungry passer a dish of hot soup and a bit of bread. This society is called the "Bouchée de Pain."

Among the works aiming to socially reinstate and morally influence poor souls fallen to the last degree of misery, there is, above all, one which merits particular mention, and that is the work among the women liberated from the prison of St. Lazare, a work which has existed for twenty-six years. It was created by the niece of the almoner, Mademoiselle Michel de Grandpré, and successively directed by the founder, by Madame de Barrau, and by Madame Isabelle Bogelot, the present directress. The domain of this work has become constantly greater. At first destined principally to help the prisoners as soon as they had emerged from St. Lazare (which was the only prison for the women of Paris), aid is now equally offered to the accused (arrested or not); to unhappy women, whom misery or involuntary vagrancy brings to the stationhouse of the great city; to wanderers of every condition-with the exception of women leading a bad life, who are cared for by other institutions. For a long time the activity of the work was partly paralyzed by the impossibility of receiv

ing the children of the prisoners (it would have been unjust to have condemned them to prison with the mothers); of receiving the women without refuge, in danger of complete ruin; of receiving the freed women who had no relatives or whose families had refused to take them on their departure from prison. This lack has been filled by the creation of small, temporary asylums, due to Madame Bogelot's happy and profitable initiative. Each of these little asylums looks like a workingman's house. It is under a woman director and her assistant. Both of them, by working for their living and thus giving good examples, assure the fair deportment of the others. Each house receives food proportionate to the number of women, girls, or infants present-six or eight at the most. Thanks to the solidarity of these enterprises, and to the incessant labors of the Director-General and her collaborators, the length of sojourn of the freed women and the others in these little asylums, where they regather force and courage, diminishes progressively, the average sojourn having become, from 11 days in 1893, 8.5 in 1894, and 6.3 in 1895. Inversely, the proportion of the number of situations found to the number of entrances be

comes annually greater. The placing in situations and the sending back to homes are, besides, facilitated by the secretaries, who do not busy themselves alone with the liberated women, but, in visits to the station-house, to the prisons of St. Lazare and Nanterre, sustain and comfort the prisoners susceptible of moral resurrection, and prepare their rapid placing in situations at the end of their punishment. The personnel of this work is composed of women and men; among the members elected each year are a Catholic almoner, a Protestant pastor, and a rabbi.

In speaking of this endeavor it is im possible for me not to mention the name of Mademoiselle Dumas, who died here some years since at the age of ninety. She had consecrated her whole life to visiting prisons and hospitals. We have now a series of societies whose work is the visiting of hospitals. Can we write the name of these refuges of human misery without remembering what is silently done by the Sisters of Charity, by the deaconesses, by the nurses; without say