ning to falter, who are active and energetic, and have no special duties at home, often and very reasonably think that they would like work that will carry them out into the world every day, and bring them besides a few extra pounds for dress and pocket money, which, earned by oneself, is always a great temptation. There are many so situated, and they can afford to work for half the salary that a woman who has to provide her board and lodging must ask, if she is to keep body and soul together. A small bedroom at six or seven shillings a week, where they may hide their poverty, where no one may know whether they dine or not, or notice how shabby their dresses are, is for many all that constitutes the lovely word "home.' There are in London very many homes of different grades for gentlewomen; at all those of the better class the charge is at least 15s. a week, a sum which, moderate as it seems, soon drains the slender savings of a governess if a situation is not quickly found; whilst it is quite beyond the reach of lady clerks and daily governesses who are paid at the rate of £30 a year. I heard but a short time ago of a lady at Notting Hill who required a daily governess for two little girls, to teach them music, drawing, and French thoroughly, hours ten to five-£30 a year and lunch being the remuneration. The situation was obtained by a lady living at home who only wanted pocket money. It would be difficult to show, either in fact or in figures, how any lady dependent on her work for subsistence could pay her lodging, breakfast, supper, and laundress, and dress suitably, on such a sum?

Miss Miller, a wealthy and benevolent lady, has within the last year or two opened a ladies' home in Wigmore-street on a most excellent

plan. One or two large rooms are divided, by wooden partitions reaching almost to the ceiling, into small compartments, after the manner adopted in some of our large colleges for the boys' dormitories. Each compartment contains bed, washstand, chest of drawers, &c., and for one of these a lady pays five shillings a week, which includes the use of sheets and towels. A charwoman does all scrubbing, but each lady makes her own bed and keeps her compartment neat and orderly, hot and cold water and every convenience for so doing being close at hand. Each lady, too, cleans her own boots, the arrangements for so doing being also close by. There are two or three separate bed rooms which can be rented by ladies who can afford to pay a little more weekly rent. There is a large general sitting-room where all meals are taken, and where the ladies sit when at home. All food is supplied from an eating-house adjoining, which eating house under the superintendence of a committee of ladies, who take it in turns to be present at the dinner hour and see that the acting manager carries out his contract and that order prevails. At this restaurant many girls from the neighbouring shops dine; everything is plain and simple, but clean and well served, and the prices are most reasonable-half a pint of soup for a penny, a plate of roast beef, with two vegetables, fourpence; a piece of pudding, a penny; a large cup of tea, coffee, or cocoa, a penny; two pieces of bread and butter, a penny; and so on. The ladies in Miss Miller's home are served at the same prices, and thus have the great advantage over a fixed weekly tariff, that they only pay for what they actually have; and, if out hunting after a situation, need not pay twice for their dinner;

is

or if invited to dine with a friend there is so much saved to their small store.

There would be no difficulty in filling several more such homes if the benevolent people to start them were forthcoming, and they seem to be a very innocent form of charity.

Miss Miller has, I believe, spent something like a thousand pounds in the establishment of this home. She has eight or nine ladies living there who have daily employment, and the other ladies in the house would be only too glad if they could also get work, and make their present refuge their permanent home. Such homes require special management to make them genial and happy, and to quell the discontent and grumbling which so often arise where a number are

clubbed together. Miss Miller seems especially happy in this respect.

She does not, however, care to take elderly ladies, rightly arguing that the rules and arrangements for younger ladies must of necessity in some respects be stringent, and it is better to limit one's efforts to a class all of whom can come under the same rule. There is in Sackville-street a more pronouncedly charitable Home for old governesses and ladies of reduced means; but this does not, I believe, take elderly ladies still capable of work.

The Young Women's Christian Association has several homes in different parts of London. At these only three shillings a week is paid for a bed, several young women, of course, sharing a room; and meals are paid for as they are taken, at very moderate prices; but as a rule these homes are not frequented so much by gentlewomen as by the class next below them.

The immense difficulty about a lady's living alone, in most parts of London, can scarcely be realised

by the carefully sheltered mothers and sisters of our land; and would perhaps be scarcely credited by numbers of the other sex.

I should be slow to believe in such a difficulty as a practical one if sundry cases had not come under my own immediate notice. The existence of the demi-monde, whose members swarm in certain neighbourhoods, makes all the respectable inhabitants of such quarters absolutely refuse to have anything to say to a single lady as a lodger.

Some months ago, a lady in whom I was much interested was successful in obtaining daily work in a high-class private office near Portman-square. She was, as usual, poorly paid, and added to her small salary by doing literary and other work at home in the evening. This made it necessary for her to live alone, where she could command quiet evenings, and being quite old enough to take care of herself, and having a little furniture of her own, she set forth in quest of a quiet, airy, unfurnished room, within a walk of her daily work. Many people would not let her inside their doors even to look at a room. "Oh, we could not take a single lady," was the reply everywhere. A very civil shopkeeper in Baker-street was on the point of showing her a room he had to let upstairs, when he suddenly paused and asked very politely, "Are you married, please? please?" and, on receiving a negative regretted that they only took married people; and once more, ashamed and indignant, she turned away.

At last, in answer to an advertisement she had seen, she knocked at a door, which quickly flew wide open to admit her. It was the first time a door had been opened more than a few inches when she made her inquiry, and she felt cheered. A plump and kindly bustling dame

received her in the dining-room, and gave her all particulars, and she hoped that at last her weary search was ended. But, alas! when she told her success to a friend living near, she learnt, to her horror, that the landlady was anything but what she should be, and had been turned out of a neighbouring street not long before by the authorities for keeping an improper house!

Another lady met with almost the same treatment in the neighbourhood of Gower-street. She was a clergyman's daughter from the country, attending the Slade lifeclass at London University; and, being delicate in health, it was necessary that she should be moderately near her work. With her brother's wife she tramped the neighbourhood for two or three hours, trying every house where a bill advertised "furnished lodgings." But the universal reply was a civil refusal to a single lady, the climax of the disheartening search coming from an impudent maid, who, exclaiming, "We don't take no females here," slammed the door in their faces. She was afterwards successful in obtaining some small rooms, where she was moderately comfortable, and too busy with her work ever to suspect the fact, which she learned long after she had left, that her landlady was, to speak very mildly, what men would call "shady." Cases might even be cited of rooms having been taken by a married couple in a street of pleasant seeming, and their finding some of the more knowing of their friends look askance at their address. shows but too clearly the difficulty which a single lady has to face in her search for shelter.

This

The difficulty which is often experienced by married couples in finding rooms suitable to small means is naturally a much more

serious one for the spinster; and, as a matter of fact, in many parts of London rooms at a moderate rental can only be obtained in a house where the landlady drinks, or is in some other way unpopular, and shunned by those who can pay a higher price.

If the Malthusian theory could be modified, and it were possible to arrange that no girls should be born, but only boys, for the next few years, matters might gradually improve. As it is, there seems little prospect of it. I have been informed, but have no means of verifying the fact, that in Hampstead alone the women are seven

thousand in excess of the men. There is no doubt, however, that very many more gentlewomen have to earn their own living in these latter days than ever were so compelled in past years. Hence arises the necessity of not only opening fresh fields of work, but of lightening the present difficulties of living to the workers.

Mrs. Robert Crawshay started some three years ago a form of well doing of which she appears to be growing rather weary. This was a scheme for placing gentlewomen as upper servants in large households, as gentlewomen were SO numerous and servants so scarce, and in some departments her project has been successful and has helped many. As head nurse in a well-to-do household, a lady has as comfortable a position as a governessshe is, like a cook in her kitchen, an autocrat in her own department, especially if there is a baby; for what mother would not give anything to a nurse who understood "baby," rather than part with her? But so few of the present unoccupied ladies have qualified themselves to take charge of a baby, and so many look scared at the idea, that nursing is not

likely to absorb the army of the destitute at present. These workseekers would readily undertake children four, five, and six years old, out of their dangerous teething time, but not yet arrived at "accomplishments.' It is the

same with cooking. Cooking is better paid than almost any other kind of work that an unaccomplished lady can undertake; and, with the facilities now offering at South Kensington, a lady with any foundational knowledge of, and a taste for, culinary work may soon perfect herself, when as a teacher she can command from £60 to a £100 a year or even more; or as a lady-help, may get a comfortable home and good salary. And in these days a good cook will not soil her hands with any undainty work, be she servant or lady born. A gentleman lately applied at Mrs. Crawshay's office for two ladies, one as nursery governess to his children, one as cook-housekeeper. He offered a salary of £20 for the first, and £50 for the second; and did not mind whether she was a lady or a servant if she could cook. A difficulty often arises in taking a lady cook into a household, about the servants' hall dinner, it being, of course, the place of the cookhousekeeper to preside, which duty no prosperous lady-help will agree to do, and which few employers will waive. The same difficulty occurs when a lady nurse objects to carrying the baby or wheeling a perambulator, though why either should be considered "menial" it is hard to say; but these prejudices of society are quite terrible in their strength, and many people require to be humbled in a very sharp school of adversity before they will yield to necessity, and give up what perhaps may seem the last shred of their lost gentility.

The Misses Faithfull carry out a

much wider work, their busy office being besieged throughout the day by all classes; their personal and untiring superintendence being given to every department, and nothing but such a practical daily experience with employers and employed can truly teach the difficulties of helping others.

The Ladies' Guild of Work is a society that does much to help ladies in reduced circumstances, not only by finding situations for them, but by obtaining for them many kinds of temporary work whilst out of regular employ, even such work as teaching a favourite servant to read and write being gratefully undertaken. Some of

In

the associates of the guilds give kindly aid in other ways, by taking a delicate or over-tired worker an occasional drive; others will even have one to stay for a few weeks at their country house, the fresh air and good living enabling the poor faded gentlewoman to return with renewed vigour to work. such ways much may be done, at no very heavy trouble or cost, to lighten a life of toil. How very many there are whose work keeps them in London nearly all the year round, who would be grateful, especially during the summer months, when so many families are out of town, for the privilege of sitting in the deserted squares or in the private inclosures of parks or gardens? Last summer I often noticed a lady who lived in lodgings in a small street near Manchestersquare; she was evidently delicate, and not able to walk far, and used to go and lean against the square railings, and gaze so wistfully at the empty seats on the fresh green grass under the cool waving boughs, that I wished I had the key to offer to her. It may be said that Hyde Park is close by, and that a twopenny omnibus would have taken her to the gates; but to spend

money on luxuries was probably beyond her dreams, and on a bright day it is very difficult to find an empty seat in the park. A worker of this kind took a book one lovely Sunday morning in early summer into Regent's Park, intending to read quietly there; but every seat was fully occupied, and it was too early in the year to sit upon the grass; I saw her patiently leaning against a tree, thinking some seat would be vacated soon, but the fortunate possessors were too happy basking in the sunshine to move till they were obliged, and she returned home without once sitting down. Numerous chairs were placed about in most tempting positions under shady trees, but, had she sat on one for a minute, a being would have sprung from some mysterious hiding place to demand a penny-not a large sum, it is true, but a very appreciable fraction of a day's wage at twenty pounds a year.

I mention these trifling incidents in reply to the many who cry out of the wealthless classes, "They have the parks."

Numbers of people have ordinary day tickets for the Botanical Gardens that lie unused by anyone. I have known tickets for the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces cast away with the remark, "We don't know who to give them to." Yet how much a day on either of those breezy hills means to a constant dweller in bricks and mortar !

I must not close this homely and imperfect sketch of some of the difficulties and some of the aids that surround the path of a lady dependent on her own efforts for

her means of livelihood, without mentioning such an institution as the House of Charity in Greekstreet, Soho, which offers to all classes indiscriminately of of the deserving unfortunate a temporary reprieve from that last resource of the destitute the workhouse. This great institution has been quietly doing its good and noble work for thirty-two years. There shelter is given not only to friendless ladies, but to whole familieshusband, wife, and children-for a fortnight free of all charge, this time, with the help and recommendation of the sisters, often being sufficient for people to re-arrange their affairs, or obtain a situation. If a fortnight is exceeded, no fixed charge is made, but some small donation to the charity is expected, it remaining with the committee to deal further with the case.

The wise virgins took oil in their lamps, and while fathers and brothers are seeking to alleviate the suffering that already exists, sisters and daughters would do well to consider what practical use they could make of themselves in case fortune should turn her wheel. Few can claim to be entirely out of the reach of the dark chances and calamities of life; and the sisters and daughters of the wealthiest may yet have to take their turn at facing the world with an empty purse. Perhaps the distressed gentlewoman, when she has qualified herself for some useful specialty, is quite as happy in her work as her languid cousin in life that has grown lustreless from monotony of gratification.