most kind to me, but I work hard. To give you an idea of what we are sometimes obliged to do here. Last week we had a large dancing party. We were to have seventy people. Just two days before it came off all our servants left. We could not put the party off, and were obliged to do everything ourselves. The night before I was obliged to remain up and make all the pastry for the supper. The next day I was nailing down carpets, hanging up curtains until half an hour before the people arrived. A good governess will get the better paid in England. However, I would not go back for anything. I like the life here, the freedom suits me.

Before leaving England she was governess in a very good family, but suffered much from loneliness and may be from want of exercise. Another lady of the same party, writes:

Mrs. (the lady who received them) has found me what I think will be a very nice situation in New South Wales. I go from here by train to Warwick, and then drive 100 miles through a most beautiful part of Australia, and I am looking forward to seeing it. I am sure I shall like this country, the colonists all seem so friendly and nice. I think if I am not happy here it will be my own fault.

The third of the same party has not written to us direct, but we hear through her friends that she is very happy "riding and driving and helping in domestic work. Her dance-music is much appreciated in the evening." Riding, indeed! here in England to mount a friend is about the extremest point of munificent friendships, and certainly such chances do not come in the way of a woman who earns her own living. I daresay Miss S. has to saddle and perhaps even to catch her horse herself, but no woman worthy of such privileges could call that a hardship.

Lately we have begun to send good governesses to New South Wales, and hope soon to hear accounts of our first arrivals. The North West of Canada will also offer homes for some, but at present we have formed no organisation there, though we are daily expecting letters to say they are ready to receive ladies.

I pass now from the daughters of professional men, who alone will be welcome as governesses in the colonies, to those of tradesmen and small farmers, who find employment as clerks or shop-assistants. In many cases the mothers of these girls were themselves superior domestic servants, but they will not let their daughters go to service, and prefer, as more genteel, the com

paratively unhealthy and inactive lives of the shop and office. Perhaps we should not be severe on them for wishing their children to rise in the world, but it is hardly possible not to regret it, for while every other branch of female labour is decidedly overstocked, that of really competent and superior servants is by no means fully supplied. To train rough girls in the refinement and niceties of English service is well-nigh impossible, and the girls who now go to shops to the ruin of their health and strength might easily find comfortable and healthy employment in large and well-ordered English households. However, I suppose they will not do this, but perhaps they may do it in another country, although the service they must take will hardly be such as they might have in England. Still, it offers a better prospect than the business-girl has at home; to judge by the circumstances of one of this class who has wisely resolved to go as a servant to the colonies under the auspices of the Women's Emigration Society.

For a good many years I have been employed in Postal duties, and I was in one situation three and a half years; since then I have been at a Post Office two years and three months, and left last September. Notwithstanding I had the best references, I was two months before I could get another situation, and then at a lower salary than I had been receiving, however I was glad to get one at all, but since coming here I find it a most miserable home. I am closely confined to the office from 8 a.m. to 8.30 or 9 p.m., I have all the accounts, telegraphy, &c., to do, besides assisting in the shop, and I only get £14 per annum, and yet there are plenty glad to come for that, or even less.

Surely in face of such statements girls should weigh well the cost of this genteel life, and consider the improbability of their earning sufficient to support the ailing middle age which must follow.

I fear that service is the only opening for any number of these girls in the colonies, though some few can obtain employment behind the counter. Naturally, in a country where women are scarce and men plentiful, the former are required for those duties which no man can perform, rather than for those which lie within the province of each, but which women, under the increasing necessity of working for themselves in England have been able to wrest from men by accepting salaries just sufficient for one person, but not suf

ficient to keep a wife and family, such as men-clerks would require. If girls of this class, with some strength in their arms, will only make up their minds to colonial service, I am sure they will never regret it. The position of servants in the colonies, too, is different from what it is in England. In Canada, girls taking service with farmers will often stipulate to take their meals with their employers. In Australia they indulge themselves in horse exercise. A Queensland lady told me that finding her housemaid was intending to ride, she ventured to express a hope that she had a proper habit. "I should hope I have two," was the reply, "one for winter and one for summer."

Lastly, as to servants. For these, in every colony, the demand is practically inexhaustible at good wagesvery good wages if we consider the class of girls to whom they are offered.

The following extracts from letters will show what an inestimable benefit emigration may be to these girls. The writer of the first emigrated in 1880. She sometimes earned, the lady who sent her out informs us, 1s. 6d. a week here, but generally knocked about in an idle fashion, getting a meal where she could, and was the plague of everyone.

I will write to you oftener if you will answer my letters, as my mistress is very kind, and will write for me. I have a very good situation. I am getting 12s. a week as general servant. I manage to get along very well. We have the same to eat

I

as the master and mistress, there is no difference made. know how to work now, for the washing is rather heavy out here, for we wear so much light clothing on account of the heat, and it makes plenty of starching and ironing for servants.

"I know how to work now!" This knowledge is certainly not the least benefit conferred by emigration on lazy young women. This second extract is written a year after leaving by a rough girl who would not have earned 2s. 6d. a week, if she had got a place at all here:

I like the country very much indeed, it is very Butifull. I must tell you about my place, wich is pretty good, But the work is very hard. I must tell you there is more money to be got In hard places then in lite ones. You will be surprised to here that wages for general servants is 13, 14, 15 shillings per week, so of course you must show some work for that, for the most of the lady's out here

Few as are now have to work, so they very soon know wether you do It proper or not. I do not get but 10s. per week because I am what they call a new chum, that is what they call all that as been out here under 18 months. I do not suppose you would hardly know me, for I am so sunburnt and brun, very near like a native of Queensland.

This third letter was written by a little girl who ran bareheaded, at 10 p.m., from a drunken row in Pimlico, and went to Canada under Miss Rye:

I now write this small letter to let you know that I am in my new Place. It is a farm. I have been in it a week. I have a very kind mistress. The peaches grows very much here. I like it very much indeed. I go's out and picks baskets fulls. The Place is full of fruit and grapes. I wish all the English children were out here; they would have enough fruit to eat; they would not want any more for a long time. I can milk cows. I feeds the pigs some times. There is a place out here called London, and they call villages cities.

All the chances were against these three girls turning out well at home, but they are equally against their turning out badly in the Colonies. Should they never, indeed, have homes and servants of their own (and it is most probable that they will have one, if not both of these), they will be able to save enough to live independently and respectably in old age, instead of starving in a garret, or dying nameless in a workhouse.

No girls of this class are likely to read this paper, but I trust that some of those who do read it, will tell them of the life which awaits them in new countries. Queensland offers every month two hundred free passages for servants between 17 and 30 years of age. The Government takes the greatest care of them, from the time they arrive in Plymouth till they find a place in Brisbane, for which they have not long to wait. In Canada, though the assistance given is less, the demand is very great, and two thousand could find respectable homes in one province alone. Wages are not so high as in Queensland, but in kindness and consideration for their servants, or "female helps," as they call them, none can surpass the Canadians. Their climate, too, is very healthy, and as it is so much nearer home, a girl is far more likely to see her friends again than if she goes to the other side of the world. In a few years time we shall probably not think more of the journey

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between Canada and England than between Edinburgh and Dublin. In neither case would a girl see her friends frequently, but in neither case would she feel permanently cut off from them.

I do not know if I have drawn such a picture of emigrant life as will recommend it to my hearers, but if none feel inclined to try it for themselves, they are almost sure to know some one for whom they think it would be admirable. If so, let me beg them to advise their friend to write to me on the subject, and if she seems suitable, I can answer for it that all that the Women's Emigration Society can do to smooth matters for her will most willingly be done.

ART. III.-FAMILY LIFE FOR PAUPER
CHILDREN.

THE Kensington Board of Guardians has issued a very interesting first Annual Report of the Cottage Schools on Banstead Downs, recently established by them for the reception of the pauper children from Kensington. For a long time it has been recognised that the ordinary District Schools with all their advantages over the old system still lacked many of the essentials required for eradicating the moral and physical defects more or less hereditary among the children of the pauper class. It is now about twenty years since public attention was called by a few benevolent ladies to the evils to which these children were exposed by being brought up in large numbers either within the walls of the workhouse itself, or separately in the large District Schools. These large buildings have an uncomfortable look, something between a factory and a prison. The rules are made carefully and kindly, and the children do receive a fair amount of school-learning, but little or nothing of the daily individual training which alone can fit them for