even less, the highest rate never exceeds twelve per cent., and only reaches that in localities where the capital is inadequate to supply the wants of the applicants. Any surplus over the expenses of these establishments and the sums required to carry on their operations, is from time to time handed over to the hospitals or Bureaux de Bienfaisance, to augment their resources. Those grants, however, are but periodical and rare. By the receiver all moneys are received and disbursements made, and it is his duty to see to the proper collection of the revenue and to enforce its payment from those who may be in arrear. He is also empowered to receive all gifts and legacies, under the sanction of the Préfet, when they do not exceed 300 francs ($60). When above that sum it is necessary to have the Minister's approbation, before obtaining which, all documents connected with the transaction must be forwarded for his inspection. The "Maire," as official president, has the right of inspection whenever he may consider it right to exercise it; he then not only satisfies himself that the accounts are rightly kept, but sees that the balance of cash is actually forthcoming and tangible. The salaried inspectors-general of the "Bureaux de Bienfaisance" appointed by the government have also the same right of inspection, but they never exercise it unless specially called upon to do so by the Préfet, sous-Préfet, or Maire of the commune in which the receiver is supposed to be a defaulter. Each month the committees are obliged to make a report of their receipts and expenditure to the Municipal Councils, besides annual account of their proceedings, which is furnished every year between the 1st and 15th of April. An honorary secretary, one of their own body, keeps a register of their deliberations and correspondence, and they are authorized to arrange their own times of meeting and to decide

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on the number of agents they require to employ, and the duties to be assigned to each. All members of those committees must reside within the district for which they are appointed, and services rendered in the Bureaux de Bienfaisance are considered "as public services rendered to the state, and as such count as claims for admission to the order of the Legion of Honor." The committees may name as assistants other ladies or gentlemen of the neighborhood to aid them in the distribution of relief, but those latter take no share in their deliberations or decisions, the members nominated by the government alone having the right to grant or reject all applications for assistance. Sisters of some religious institution devoted to the succor of the poor are always attached to each bureau, one of whom visits the dwelling of each applicant, and reports upon his case before a decision is come to by the committee; she then herself dispenses at their homes whatever aid may be accorded to the necessitous. Amongst these sisters there is always one, a regularly educated apothecary, who compounds from their own chest, and administers the medicine ordered by a doctor, without the authority of whose prescription she is forbidden to act. Relief, which is limited as far as possible to food, firing, and clothes, is invariably given at the dwellings of the recipients by means of orders on the different tradesmen with whom the bureau has entered into contracts for the supply of the articles required either for maintenance or clothing, as the rule acted upon is to endeavor to maintain those feelings of affection which ought to subsist between the different members of the same family, and to use the words of the ministerial instructions, "to assist the sick and indigent in their own homes not only effects a great economy, but to that must be added the consolation which fathers and mothers naturally feel at being tended

in their own beds by their own children, or which children must equally experience at having their wants and wishes ministered to by their parents." The government omits no opportunity of impressing on the minds of the members of the Bureaux de Bienfaisance the grave responsibility of their charge, and of stimulating them to exertion. "The men" (says the instructions) "called to the functions of guardians of the poor will estimate the importance of the ministry confided to their care, and they will omit nothing which can add to the relief of the unfortunate by their example and good administration they should excite the charity of their fellowcitizens." The members of the Bureaux hold their meetings under ordinary circumstances three times a week, in one of the public buildings of the commune, either the “Mairie,” or “Palais de Justice," where such exist, and there the person seeking relief must make his application. If the case be one of extreme urgency measures are immediately taken to afford the necessary succor, if not, a note is made of the applicant's address, and the particulars of his statement. His dwelling is then visited, and his character, antecedents, and present circumstances minutely inquired into by a member of the Bureaux, by a religieuse attached to the establishment, or by both, if the case be doubtful, before the next day of meeting, and upon their report based on the information received placed either on the temporary or permanent list, or his demand for aid is altogether rejected.

The first duty of the committee is to ascertain that the applicant for relief is domiciled in the commune; the residence of the mother at the time of the child's birth being the place at which the latter is legally entitled to claim public assistance. Up to the age of twenty-one, every French person has a right to relief

without going through any formality whatever; after attaining their majority, they must reside for six months in the commune to acquire the right which they before enjoyed as minors. All persons not born within the commune must reside for twelve months after the date of their inscription on the books of the municipality, before they can claiın the right of domicil to entitle them to relief, but they will be considered as preserving their rights in their former domicil until the time necessary to establish them in the new one shall have expired. The municipality may refuse the right of domicil to persons without passports or official certificates to prove that they are not vagabonds. Those who marry, and reside for six months in a commune, have the right of domicil there, and military men (sailors or soldiers) with honorable certificates of having fought in the service of their country have a right to immediate domicil wherever they may choose to settle. Persons seventy years of age or recognized as infirm without hope of recovery, as well as those of any age who in the interval of delay necessary to establish their right to relief, shall be afflicted with illness brought on by the exercise of their occupations, must be received in the nearest hospital, and every person in absolute want must be at once relieved, whether domiciled or not.

We have never seen a statistical account of the number of persons receiving public relief throughout France, but it appears from the Budget of the municipality of Paris that during one year 106,193 individuals seeking aid were inscribed on the books of the different Mairies, and that the expense of their support amounted in round numbers to about $700,000. We have also had access to the statistics of several departmental communes, including towns of considerable importance in the manufacturing districts, for the same

period, all of which exhibit a remarkable similarity to those of Paris, both as regards the numbers relieved and the individual cost. From these statistics, which may fairly be taken as demonstrating the average of pauperism in France (except in the exclusively rural districts, where it is naturally less), it appears that the number of persons generally receiving temporary or permanent relief from the Bureaux varies from 14 to 16 per cent. of the gross population, and that the cost of relief administered to each only amounts to about $7, indisputable evidence that the vast majority inscribed upon their lists must belong to the former class, and a clear proof that outdoor relief, when it can be strictly administered, is the least burdensome to those who pay for, as well as the most acceptable to those who receive it. It is true, however, that independent of the relief accorded to the poor under sanction of the law, very large sums indeed are dispensed in France through the medium of charitable societies; that of St. Vincent de Paul has hitherto expended about half a million dollars annually, and the "Dames de Charité,' established in every considerable town and many of the rural communes, disburse perhaps as much. This latter society consists of the most influential ladies of each locality, who devote themselves especially to the relief of the class termed in their vocabulary "pauvres honteux," who need only occasional and temporary relief, but who are too proud to proclaim their poverty by seeking the aid of public charity. The "Dames de Charité" have their regularly constituted Bureaux, con

sisting of honorary presidents and secretaries, and they are bound under a penalty, always enforced, to attend the meetings held once a fortnight, when special districts are assigned to each of them, with lists of the individuals whom they are required personally to visit.

In most countries the persons who once become public paupers rarely cease to continue so, because they lose all sense of shame under the ordeal to which they are subjected before receiving relief, and are afterwards brutalized by their companionship and treatment in the workhouse. In France, while the wants of the family are supplied without a public exposure, the children are preserved from pollution by being still continued under the care and control of their parents. The able-bodied French poor require and only seek temporary relief, as is evident from the very small sum annually expended ($7 per head) on the support of all descriptions of paupers; it is well known that they invariably, and of their own free will, decline further aid from the charitable societies so soon as their improved circumstances permit them to dispense with it. And this spirit of decency and desire to maintain themselves by their own hard-won earning, so generally prevalent amongst the distressed poor in France, may, we think justly, be attributed to the fact that there the law under which public charity is granted aims at "succoring the unfortunate without causing them a blush," and that it is administered by men who never cease to remember "that misfortune does not obliterate shame or destroy self-respect."

FOR more than four years the three names painted on the doorway of No. 9 Old Inn remained unaltered. The house itself was the smallest in the Inn.

All the other houses contained six sets of chambers; No. 9cramped up in a corner-had only three sets. They were each occupied by a single tenant, and their names, as painted on the doorway, were “Mr. Bolt, 2d floor;” “Mr. Hay, 1st floor;" "Mr. Frith, ground floor."

I was Mr. Hay, of the 1st floor. Mr. Bolt of the 2d floor and I were not on speaking terms. We had We had frequently met on the stairs and in the passage under our common roof. I knew him very well by sight. He was a tall, thin man, some years younger than I, pleasant-looking, notwithstanding a broken nose and huge red whiskers. He had a noisy, blundering way of moving about; always rushed up the stairs three at a time, kicking and banging his great boots against the woodwork. "That is Bolt!" I used to say, as his footsteps came tumbling up to my floor, and then went tumbling up to his

own.

I don't know whether he broke his nose over those stairs before I went to No. 9, but I always expected that he would break it again whenever I heard him return home. Now Mr. Frith of the ground-floor was different in every way. I knew him equally well by sight; but he and I, likewise, were not on speaking terms. He was short and inclined to be stout. He never seemed in a hurry. He never made a noise, except on his piano, and even the tone of that was soft and subdued like himself.

So we three-the noisy gentleman on the 2d floor, the musical gentleman on the ground-floor, and myself-I don't know what the other two called me, probably the gentle

man with the dog-lived for four years in the same house, and yet were strangers to one another. It seemed part of one's daily life constantly to see Mr. Frith, or to hear Mr. Bolt come tumbling up the stairs; part of one's daily care to prevent becoming acquainted with either; part of the pleasure of one's vacation to get away from them, as it was to get away from the bundles of law papers and clients' letters.

So last autumn, when I went to Switzerland, I endured the sea-passage; bore patiently the sleepless night journeys by rail, and the hot morning drive by diligence, cheered by the thought that I was adding mile after mile to the distance between me and Old Inn and everything connected with it. And all for what? For the very first person I meet at Chamouni to be Mr. Frith in tweeds, instead of Mr. Frith in broadcloth. He was standing just inside the salle-à-manger, looking for a seat at the long table, at which the diners were already assembled.

As I enter he turns round, and we look at one another defiantly, with a sort of "Well! I have as much right here as you,” and then face to the right and left respectively. He goes down one-half of the table and I go up the other, hoping to put the whole length of it between us. There is no vacant seat on that side, so I walk round the end to the other side, and, to my disgust, see that he has done the same. We face each other again, are obliged by necessity to converge towards the same point, and finally seat ourselves near the centre of the table, with only a little Frenchinan between us.

The first two courses we eat in silence, either staring at our plates or at the wall before us. Pending the third course the Frenchman turns to Mr. Frith, but that gentleman, not

wishing to look my way, tries hard to escape the proffered conversation. The Frenchman, however, who speaks English very well, has no intention of being shaken off, and common courtesy forces Mr. Frith

to answer.

"Do you come from London ?” again begins the little tormentor as soon as the dessert commences. "Yes."

"Ah! it is a fine city, that London. I know it well. From what part of London do you come ?" "Old Inn."

"Indeed! Do you know a Mr. Smith at Old Inn ?"

"No."

"Then you

pushes back his chair. and this gentleman," touching Mr. Frith's arm, "are travelling together, and I have separated you and prevented your talking. I am sorry. Will you take my seat and be next your friend ?"

He is just rising for us to exchange chairs, when I put my hand upon his shoulder and whisper, "Thank you. I thank you. that gentleman.”

No. I do not know

"Nine."

Not overpleased, the Frenchman turns to me, and Mr. Frith, very much pleased, turns away from us both.

"And are you from London, too?" he begins, as though I had taken a part in the previous conversation.

Mr. Frith's back being towards us, I don't mind answering the little fellow, seeing that he doesn't care whether I come from London or Timbuctoo, but that it is simply impossible for him to eat his dinner in silence. So I say, "Yes, I come from London. All Englishmen seem to live in London, don't they?"

"Oh! but it is such a large city! From what part of London do you come?"

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"What!" he cries, forgetting now to speak in an undertone; you two live in the same house and you do not know one another! Ah, well!" putting a hand on our arms and smiling at both of us, "you will know one another now, and be great friends for the future.'

There is no help for it. "I shall have great pleasure," says Mr. Frith, with a freezing bow. And I bow likewise and in a like manner, but say nothing.

Then follows a pause, during which the diners begin to leave the table; so we three rise and stand by our chairs, still with the Frenchman in the middle.

"Come!" he says, presently, and suddenly laughing; "you two have been making fun of me. Is it not so? You are friends travelling together."

Mr. Frith immediately denies this statement, and, having done so, walks away to a window, which looks out upon Mont Blanc. After what has passed, I feel that the one who first leaves the room will be obliged to make some remark, or do some little act of courtesy to the other; and to avoid the burden of doing this being thrown upon me, I go into the recess of the window next Mr. Frith's, and likewise stare