head the better. You never will get things as they are in England, but you may get different things as good, or even better. You will get, if you are polite to your landlady, a thousand little attentions. If you like flowers, the vase on your table will be constantly filled with gay flowers, and the day before votre départ, you will be, as I have just been, treated with confitures à propos. The said confiture being excellent, I give the receipt. A pound of sugar to one pound of fruit of four different kinds, a quarter of a pound of each, cherries stoned, gooseberries, strawberries, and raspberries.
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Tours.
Another expedition I made was to the famous Colonie Agricole de Mettray, for the reformation and instruction in useful arts of young convicts. It was a most interesting visit. The proper days for visiting the institution are Thursdays and Sundays, which are holidays. Not knowing that, I went on Friday, so that I saw the working of the system. I went by rail to Mettray, and walked from the station to the Colonie, and had, as usual, pleasant fellow-travellers who gave me much information on many subjects. I was told to go to the house of the concierge and ask admittance. I found a French family from Paris there already—father, mother and daughter—signed my name after M. Dufau’s, and there being no one else, we of necessity formed one party. After waiting a few moments, a gentleman came to us and said, that though that was not the day for inspecting the establishment, he would show us over it. It was dinnertime when we arrived, and he took us first into one of the homes, as they are called, to see the boys dine. There he made us observe how money and space were economised by the same apartment, which was lofty and well ventilated, serving at once as a class-room, refectory, and dormitory. The room was divided up its centre by two rows of wooden pillars; between these and the walls, the hammocks in which the boys sleep, are slung at night. Now they were tightly rolled up against the walls, and on shelves above them lay every boy’s trousseau neatly folded up,—his combs and brushes. Everything is done with military precision. The boys marched in to their dinners and took their places at the word of command; at a second order they sat down and fell to. So, in the morning, they all rise at once, dress at once, roll up their hammocks at once. If any one is behind time he is punished by having to wash the vessels of the home. Each home is called a family, and a boy remains in the family in which he is placed until he leaves Mettray. There is generally among them a feeling of fraternity which the conductors seek to develope, and some boys will not play except with their family.
We went over the vacherie, to the pigsties, the garden, and the different workshops or ateliers, and saw chairs, steam-engines, ploughs, turnip-chopping machines, &c., all made by the boys, under the direction of experienced workmen. Nine hundred and forty-three persons reside at Mettray, and it is virtually a colony, producing everything within itself. It has farms; a mill where their produce is ground; a butcher’s abbattoir where the cattle are killed; a brewery, on whose grains the cows to be killed are fattened, when they cease to give milk. The cows are always kept in stalls, and never go out into the fields; but they look sleek and healthy, and they are never allowed to live long. There are tailors and shoemakers on the establishment, and the boys are taught agriculture or a trade at choice. There are also the masts and yards of two vessels, which those destined for the sea, who are generally of Breton parentage,