One united sentiment of respect dominates them, and the profaner and the cynical jeerer are greeted with general reprobation.

The morning is another time when I love to watch the Parisians. How different the matinal from the nocturnal Paris! In the evening the streets are full of pleasure-seekers and idlers, of people going to clubs, theaters, concerts, beer-halls; and, too, of gamesters, drunkards, and rascals. In the morning the streets belong to the workers. The evening seems feverish, double-faced, reeling; the morning is sober, honest, diligent. A sort of special confraternity is established among these persons of the day's first hours. They are brothers in Aurora. There is mutual respect because each one knows that early rising has been necessary for work, and generally all address each other by the "thee" and "thou" so long as the sun is not too high above the horizon. We see beneath the surface of this Paris which has so many aspects, first a gulf, where by their contact is accelerated the decomposition of the corrupt elements of society, of all that is ripe for nothingness. We see, nevertheless, as well, that there is beneath the surface a crucible of the future, a Paris of trembling impulses of pity, given to justice,

devoted to the most noble and the most holy works.

I will finish this too rapid view of the sources of a higher life hidden in the heart of this great city, by saying a few words about its idealist reawakening of the last few years. If this movement had been characterized only by certain canvases from great painters, illustrating religious subjects; or certain plays, in which the inner life and the dramas of conscience were promoted to the first rank, it would be still but a small affair. But idealist preoccupations have gained ground among the elect of youth, in the world of thinkers, and, above all, of educators. At present idealist preoccupations do not agitate the masses of the people, nor even the majority of those who call themselves cultivated. But they have the expansive character inherent in leaven. It is not in the official gatherings of religion, but here and there, in certain homes constituted by inner affinities, and entirely spontaneously, that their action is, above all, realized. Strange circumstance, the men of the old belief have most often regarded them with suspicion.

One of those who go most resolutely forward along these new

avenues of

thought is M. Paul Desjardins, the founder of L'Union pour l'Action Morale. This Union has become a rendezvous for men belonging to all intellectual and religious centers. Their only

aim is to establish a mutual support so as to make better use of existence. They are equally watchful in regard to every manifestation of moral life, and little matters its confessional color or the absence of that color. They essay all in becoming day after day more faithful to

days the influence of an idea which for the first time found its realization in the Congress of Religions at Chicago. This idea has powerfully excited the attention and worked upon the mind. The inertia and ill will of the high Catholic clergy, and. in general, of the titled representatives of our old confessions, may perhaps prevent the renewal of the Congress of Religions, but in this event there will be a movement of a different form. The idealist impulse, the aspiration towards a mutual understanding, the fraternal communion of believers of diverse denominations, will bring about the birth of a vast meeting-place, both free and religious, where whoever feels any faith or hope in his heart may greet brothers. Perhaps in the dawn of the new century this old Paris, which has lost nothing of its faith in humanity or in the future, sball see this simple, grand, and consoling spectacle of men of good will, belonging to all peoples and to all the horizons of moral and religious thought, forgetting that which separates them in order to affirm that which unites them, marching towards the unknown morrow, their gaze fixed upon the Father who is in heaven.

their personal convictions, resisting exclusive and sectarian tendencies, religious or political. The circular, the result of the collaboration of many of them, is certainly one of the loftiest and most human endeavors of our times.

A little review, "L'Art et la Vie," written by a group of courageous and absolutely independent young men, full of ideal faith, witnesses for its part that it is born in the spirit of our times, a spirit weary of mediocre life and of insipid and vulgar materialism, a spirit ardently thirsting for something purer and more

ideal.

All elements of moral and religious fermentation have felt in these latter

A

MONG the many schemes for improving the mental and physical condition of the poor, unfortunate, and degraded, none have proved so wise and far-reaching as those which have sought to influence the little child. It has been said that what the child is before eight years of age he will be all his life" The child is father to the man," If this be true, the influence which surrounds him during his childhood has the greatest effect upon his after life, and the day nursery is therefore the foundation upon which to build the structure of character; for, taking the child in his earliest years, often indeed in earliest infancy, nursery training is the first in the chain of educational influences which aid the State in making the useful citizen, this influence holding sway over his mind and heart on through the kindergarten period, the public school, and over the threshold into the whirl of life's exacting activities.

Some scientific minds have suspected a possible danger that, in some cases, the nursery may assume a responsibility which should be borne by the parents; that mothers not obliged to work for a living may be tempted to do so, and

thus, at the expense of the sacred relations of home life, shirk the burden of child-rearing to earn money for the gratification of selfish ends. This danger is fully recognized in the fact that in large cities every well-managed day nursery employs some system of investigation by which a check may be placed upon emotional administration. The most efficient plan is the employment of a special visitor, who shall visit the families after six o'clock P.M., when there is the best possible opportunity to learn whether the stories carried to the matron are true. In other instances city missionaries, parish visitors, or visitors from charity organization societies are employed. With this safeguard there is little danger that the nursery will prove a mistaken form of benevolence. This brings us to the primal question: "Shall we influence first the mother or the child?"

It is an accepted law of nursery work that only the children of mothers obliged to support themselves shall be admitted. This rule, in common with all rules in connection with work among the poor, must be enforced in the broadest sense consistent with mercy and justice. Hard

times, scarcity of work for men, illness, insanity, desertion, all pre-ent exceptions and conditions which must be taken into consideration. Those who are closely associated with this work appreciate the importance of uplifting the home life of the poor, and that good judgment is needed in deciding what cases are to be admitted. It must not be forgotten that the nursery is better than a bad home, and that, in the effort to avoid injustice to the home idea, we may not do justice to the child.

When day nurseries were first started in this country, years ago, following the example of the French crèche, they were simply for the physical care of young children whose mothers were obliged to work away from home. As kinder garten and industrial training have appealed to public intelligence, they have been included in the nursery régime, until now the best equipped have these features added, and the training of mind and hands is as important a factor as the care of the body.

The Nursery and Child's Hospital in New York City was incorporated in 1854 for the maintenance and care of the children of wet nurses and the daily charge of infants whose parents labor away from home." It was to be open at 5:30 A.M., and mothers must call for the children "not later than 7:30 in the evening, and must pay six cents for their care from their daily wage." This was the first step in the movement taken just ten

years after the foundation of the Crèche Association in Paris.

een.

Ten years later Miss Biddle organized "The Day Nursery" in Philadelphia, and for fifteen years longer these two were the only ones in this country. In 1878, however, there was a spontaneous movement toward their establishment in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. In the years following until 1892 the number gradually increased in various cities, New York having the largest number-eight: At the time of the first Day Nursery Conference in New York, November, 1892, ninety nurseries were reported to the committee. In 1893 the nursery exhibit at the World's Fair created an extensive interest, and the growth during the four years intervening has brought the number to very nearly two hundred, as reported to the committee in charge of the Conference just held in Boston. In New York alone the number has grown in four years from eighteen to thirty eight.

If we could learn in each case of the need which demanded the establishment of a nursery to meet it, we should find that almost every kind of industrial, social, and missionary enterprise which touches the mother or the home, at some point leads inevitably to the nursery. The conditions of our civilization, which increasingly compel the labor of women, involve the consideration of other care for the children a fact recognized by a corporation which employs many women,

and has now opened a day nursery in connection with the factory, in which the children are tended and trained while the mothers labor for their daily bread. The same thing has been done by the owners of a cigar-factory in one of the cities of Portugal.

The greater number of nurseries are independent organizations, but many are adjuncts to social or religious movements. Social settlements, almost without exception, add this