who in turn obeys the administration, and her period of service lasts from twelve to fifteen years. Imagine her, then, wishful of rest, far away from lint and bistouries and hospital odours. Her £3 4s. a year will not have afforded her much chance of putting anything by. But if, happily, her vocation for unrewarded service lasts, she is decorated with a silver cross; and though she still takes no vows, and can leave when she wishes, she is regarded as having a life-claim upon the administration. They cannot now turn her into the streets, and there is no fear of her dying of hunger. In return for this assurance her salary is reduced to forty francs a year. But she is titled Cheftaine, with also its pretty ringing sound of the Middle Ages; she has seventeen days holiday every year, and she has her silver cross and fifty low masses! There are eight hundred of these disinterested creatures in the city of Lyons; and it will be admitted that the great silk centre of France knows how to manage its affairs with prodigious economy.
It would be impossible, in a short chapter dealing with organised philanthropy in France, to mention even a tenth of the private institutions and associations that abound. In Paris alone there are thirty orphanages for boys and a hundred and twenty for girls, the deficiency on the side of the boys being supplied by innumerable
