day-room, with a small library. The refectory opens into a wide glazed verandah giving shelter to the children in wet weather, and, except while actually eating or sleeping, the children live out of doors. The one instruction given to the teachers in charge is to keep the children happy and amused in the open air. The only task insisted upon is a weekly letter to the parents, which is utilized to make them give a connected account of what they are seeing and doing.

As a matter of fact, the more intelligent of the children take a pleasure in writing excellent compositions upon the various incidents of their stay; they collect wild flowers and insects to form a small local museum. One boy who had special musical ability, was allowed time to practise his violin, and it was being arranged for him to have violin lessons in Contrexéville, but this was an exception. The boys make their own beds, while a staff of servants is kept to do the household work.

As the scheme provides that 1000 children, from ten to fourteen years of age, shall each have three weeks' residence in the country, the summer holidays of two months' duration do not afford sufficient time. In the month of May the holiday children are selected by a committee of medical men, with the advice of the school teachers, and the first batch of two hundred is composed of those children who from weak health or dull brains are making the least progress in their studies, and are not likely to distinguish themselves in the summer examination and prize-giving at the end of July.

A month of their school-time is therefore sacrificed to the building up of their health at Mandres, and after that they still have the full school holiday on their return to their parents. Alternate batches of two hundred boys and two hundred girls are despatched throughout the summer, not a day being lost, the children returning from

Mandres crossing the train by the way, bringing a fresh party down from Paris.

The last to go are the élite of the school in character and ability, those who have distinguished themselves at the summer "concours," some of whom will not return to school any more; the others will be back in time for the re-opening of the schools on October 1.

No difficulty is made by the parents, who are only too delighted with the treat given to the children, and are not put to any other expense than that of sending them properly clothed.

When the names are settled each child is registered under a number, and he goes off to the Mairie of the Arrondissement in Paris, where four hundred strong little wooden valises, each numbered and with its own key, are stored for this purpose. Each child receives

a valise with his own number and a list of the outfit required. A dark blue cloth cap is presented to each boy and forms a distinguishing mark. The boxes are returned to the Mairie the next day ready packed, and are then strongly fastened together in tens, and sent to meet the children at the Gare de l'Est. The journey of some 225 miles takes the whole day. The railway company conveys the children at the military rate of quarter fare, but will not send them by express train. They assemble at the station at nine in the morning, and reach Contrexéville at half past five in the afternoon. Here the tradesmen, who are purveyors of the School Colony, undertake to supply carts whenever required for the use of the children. Ten of these long, light Lorraine carts, each large enough to contain twenty children and a teacher, are waiting at the station to convey them along the pretty country roads, through the avenues of poplars, to their holiday-house.

Each child is weighed and measured on arrival and on departure; the aver

age gain for boys is two kilogrammes (four and a half pounds), and for girls one to one and a half (about three pounds). Some boys have gained as much as eight pounds in the three weeks. When the girls are given some form of the gymnastic exercises now confined to the boys, their increase in weight and width of chest may perhaps be as striking as is already the case with the boys.

The greatest change in their appearance is wrought during the first eight days of their holiday; the skin becomes much clearer, and the whole aspect of the children is brighter. Life which has been an anxious fight to many a little street Arab, has suddenly become a tranquil state, sheltered from worry, in which cruelty and hunger are ununknown. The mere quiet and silence of the country have a soothing influence, greatly aided by the unwontedly generous diet and kindly surroundings. After the first week the children begin to put on flesh and to relish the change of food, although some, accustomed to the stimulant of black coffee, with perhaps a dash of rum in it, despise at first the hot morning milk which they say is only fit for feeding pigs; but when once they have taken to it, they enjoy it and thrive upon it.

The diet is abundant and excellent; after the hot milk soup in the morning there is a substantial mid-day meal of stewed meat and vegetables, when each child has before him his tiny bottle of red wine; a bowl of milk at 4 P. M., and a supper of soup, roast meat, vegetables, and fruit, with plenty of fine white bread at every meal.

Baths are in course of construction at the School Colony where there is an abundant supply of excellent water; in the building are ample lavatories, and for the present the children are driven into Contrexéville for baths, returning in tearing spirits flourishing a towel as a flag.

In the short space of three weeks it is found that the change in the child's manners is almost as marked as in his bodily health. Cleanly habits of thought and action, perhaps hitherto unknown, the discipline of good manners at meals, and the unselfishness induced by the common life of a wellordered community, tell upon the character quickly at such an impressionable age. Something practical is effected in combating what in some cases are inherited tendencies to evil. The scowl of the hunted animal is giving way to the natural gaiety of childhood, and this applies to the girls quite as much as to the boys.

The girls do not get so much exercise as the boys, but they are trained in household matters, cleanliness, order and good management. A little girl of ten years old, the sixth child of a family in the Rue St. Maur, who marvelled at all she saw, seriously undertook on her return home to teach her brothers and sisters, her father and mother, what was meant by order and cleanliness; how to sweep, tidy, dust, to fold clothes, and how to wash with plenty of water; in short she went back a model little housewife.

Monsieur J. Cornely, a well-known French writer, published an account in the Figaro of September 3, 1900, of a visit he had paid to the School Colony at Mandres. His talk with the inhabitants elicited some charming answers; a boy aged ten, who came of a family of six children, said that they lived like princes, and that you had only to hold up your hand at meals to get a fresh bit of bread; another was chiefly impressed with the extraordinary fact that he had a bed all to himself, which he was not asked to share with any other soul.

The chief charm of the holiday for the town children consists in the long walks in the beautiful woods, abounding in fern and heather. The teachers

take out one hundred boys at a time and show them the stems, roots, leaves, and flowers, the birds and the beetles they have hitherto only seen in pictures and diagrams. The hay and the corn harvest and all agricultural operations are watched with intense interest. Mandres eminently lends itself to Nature-study; the village may be described as one vast farm-yard. The houses are set well back from the street, and the space between is occupied by the woodstack and the dungheap.

The wood is brought in long, narrow carts, drawn by patient oxen, who come lumbering up the steep streets; and there is a pleasant sound of constant sawing and chopping, that the logs may be stored up for the winter under the big arch, which is the central feature of the house.

The dunghills are alive with cocks crowing, and hens scratching, and the women calling to their poultry to come and be fed.

In Contrexéville it is true, these comfortable customs are ruthlessly disturbed, in deference to the strange prejudices of visitors; before the bathing-season begins a police order obliges each householder to remove his dunghill from before his door; but no such troublesome innovation disturbs the peace of Mandres. Horses, bullocks and poultry live in the street, and seem equally happy and domesticated, and before sunset it is a charming sight to see the great flocks of geese returning to the village in charge of a goose-herd with red cloth streamers to his long wand, or a goose-girl who might have come straight out of a fairy-tale.

The children must have wonderful stories to tell on their return, and they receive many kindnesses. The Russian Princess from Contrexéville, a homely, motherly figure, alighted one day from a motor-car, with a packet of sweets for every child, and a supply of hoops

A

and very childish picture-books. gymnastic display was got up in her honor, and it was pleasant to see the accuracy and zeal with which the boys performed their exercises among the trees of the orchard, which after thirteen years' growth give quite a respectable amount of shade.

Their instructor was a man of remarkable physique, who, being attacked with consumption as a lad, and his life despaired of, was himself a wonderful instance of the beneficial effects of the scientific training that he imparts.

The sympathetic interest taken by the teachers in the success of the summer outing is very noteworthy. Besides his keep, each receives the trifling honorarium of thirty francs, scarcely sufficient to pay for shoe-leather; yet they are expected never to lose sight of the children day or night, nor are the children ever allowed to go outside their own gates unaccompanied. All are lay teachers; no religious instruction is given, but the children whose parents desire it are taken to the parish church, which is just outside the School Colony gate.

Many interesting points are suggested by a comparison between the Country Holiday Movement as carried out in London and in Paris.

In London, a matter of national importance is left characteristically to private benevolence only; while in Paris, the start being given by private generosity, the work is carried on by the municipal authority. The expense of the French system is very much greater; the total cost of sending 1000 children into the country for three weeks is about 60,000 frs. (£2400), or 60 frs. (£2 88.) for each child, this inIcludes the maintenance of the house and grounds, the railway fares, and the care and supervision of the children during their holiday. In England 10s. is paid for the keep of each child in

a cottage-home for a fortnight, which scarcely pays the cottager unless two or three are taken together; the parents contribute to the railway fares, and nothing is paid for supervision from the moment when the child has started from the railway station in London.

The French children are better and more scientifically fed, and enjoy a holiday of three weeks instead of two, and above all they are assured of getting it. Any falling off of voluntary subscriptions in London, or such a calamity as the smallpox outbreak, which caused many guardians last summer to warn off London children from the villages in their unions, may suddenly deprive the children who most need it of any country holiday at all.

The French realize more readily than we do what an admirable national investment is the spending of money for the health and the education of the children, who are the only true wealth of a State.

But with all its limitations and its haphazard working our country holiday at the best has charms and advantages of its own. London children, who are affectionately welcomed by the country secretary, generally a lady, and put into suitable homes, are introduced into quite a new world, make fresh, often lasting, friendships, and experience for themselves both the advantages and the drawbacks of country life. They take their share in the village interests, challenge the country boys to cricket, and generally beat them, and if a few apples are stolen and some rabbits and squirrels have a bad time of it, the independent life that our boys lead affords a valuable training of character.

They are trusted, and are usually

Good Words.

worthy of trust. They swarm into the hayfields and ride in the waggons and are treated everywhere with good-natured tolerance, and are allowed to try their hands at all sorts of occupation.

Manners observed are quoted at home. "Mother," said a little girl, “our young lady calls Lady V. 'Mother' in speaking to us, same as if she was any one else." "Course she does," replied the mother, rather missing the point; "it's only washerwomen nowadays as says 'Ma.''

Boys and girls leave laden with gifts of flowers, fruit, and vegetables, which, with the characteristic generosity of the poor, the cottage-mothers

often send back to the unknown mothers in London. Many a boy after he has gone to work in succeeding years has returned to the same kind hearth when a rare holiday has given him a day out of town; in some cases the parents of a delicate child have boarded him out for several months or even years in the village where his country holiday was spent, and under these conditions children of younger age can be sent to an experienced cottagemother than are dealt with in France. Such spontaneous and valuable friendships are impossible under the French system. The boys are always treated as children; no surreptitious knife or ball drops out of a trouserpocket; work and play are alike regulated; the School Colony is entirely self-contained, and enters into no relations with the village community.

Much of the contrast has deep root in the different habits of the two nations; but an English observer has something to learn from the generous endowment and scientific organization of the children's country holiday in France.

Edmund Verney.

The vicissitudes of second-hand books are a fascinating study. It has often been written upon, but new instances of the ups and downs of old volumes are continually turning up.

There are many stories of old and rare volumes, and Mr. Salkeld of Clapham Road tells some which will bear repeating.

When looking over an old book-stall at Newcastle he espied a dumpy small quarto volume. He asked the price. "Half-a-crown," was the answer. He paid the money, and tucking it under his arm he went across to one of the best second-hand booksellers in the town. Showing him the book he asked him what he thought of it. He looked at it and said he did not think much. Mr. Salkeld turned to a pamphlet contained in it: Daybreak among the Indians. "What do you think of that?" Then he turned to another, The Trial of the Witches, printed in Boston. "And of that?" And then over to a third early American pamphlet.

"Where did you pick that up?" asked the bookseller, seeing he had got a prize.

"Of our old friend in the market.” "I don't believe it, for I have looked at his books every day," said the old Jew, for such he was.

"Well, let us go over to him," said Mr. Salkeld. They went over. "Do you know that?" he asked, showing him the volume.

"Yes, I have taken it in and out for two years, and no one ever asked me the price before."

The first-named pamphlet was sold for £4 4s., the second for £10, and the remainder of the volume for about £6.

Such a find is the ambition of those who daily frequent the old book-stalls,

but such a case does not happen every day.

Some years ago this bookseller was commissioned by an Austrian library to purchase a book bearing upon the family history of the Emperor of Austria, which was to be sold by auction. They put a limit of £50 which they subsequently raised to £100, and just before the sale they bade him buy it at any price. The day of the sale came, the lot was put up, Mr. Salkeld made a bid of one shilling, and for a shilling it was knocked down to him! "How was this?" I asked. There had been a dispute about the lot before, two bidders both claimed to have bought it; and it was while almost all the tongues were wagging over this little episode that this valuable book was sold by public auction for twelve pence.

"You did not get much commission out of that," I said tentatively. He smiled and intimated that the purchasers made it well worth his while.

The world is his who waits. This is true for the bookseller as for others. Two or three copies of the account of the Jubilee of George III. fell into Mr. Salkeld's hands. They were put into a catalogue at 2s. 6d. each, but they did not go. Time slipped along, the

Jubilee of Queen Victoria was at hand. He put them in again, this time at a guinea apiece, and at that price they went.

Books and pamphlets of the seventeenth century were the rage at one time, and Mr. Salkeld bought up these books largely. The rage suddenly subsided and he found his shelves loaded with these books, but curiously enough the fashion for them revived, especially among Americans, and he sold off many pounds' worth to meet the demand.