I must now come to the subject more nearly affecting us as Canadians, namely, the plan first suggested and put into practice by Miss Rye,* and now carried on by so many others in a similar manner.†

This plan of infant pauper emigration has met with high approval, and I cannot do better than quote the words of the historian who has the most intimate practical acquaintance with the British Colonies, I mean Mr. Froude. In his Short Studies on Great Subjects, after commenting on the difficulties attendant upon Government taking upon itself to assist adult emigration on a large scale, he goes on: 'There is not the same difficulty in providing for the young. When Mr. Forster's Education Bill is fairly in work, in one shape or another we shall have more than a million boys and girls in these islands, of whom at least a fourth will be adrift when their teaching is over, with no definite outlook. Let the State for once resume its old character and constitute itself the constable of some, at least, of these helpless ones. When the grammatical part of their teaching is over, let them have a year or two of industrial instruction, and, under understanding with the colonial authorities, let them be drafted off where their services are most in demand. The settlers would be delighted to receive and clothe and feed them on the conditions of the old apprenticeship. . . . Welcome in some shape they are certain to be; a continued stream of young, welltaught, unspoilt English natures would be the most precious gift which the colonies could receive from us.'

Three years before this work was pubJished, Miss Rye had taken a party of 68 children out to Canada,§ and in December of the same year, 1869, opened 'Our Western Home' at Niagara, Ont., as a central or distributing home for the children.

* Mr. Van Meter, of New York, had, yet earlier, put his Wanderer's Home into working order, and successfully placed many outcast girls of that city in the Far West.

+ Among others may be named, Miss Macpherson and Miss Bilborough, with their homes at Belleville and elsewhere; the Rev. S. Herring, Rev. Geo. Rogers, Miss Fletcher, Rev. B. Stevenson working at Hamilton, Dr. Middleton at London (Ont.), and Mrs. Burt in the Province of Nova Scotia.

Vol. 2, p. 510, published 1872.

§ S. S. Hibernian sailed 28th October, 1869.

Up to November, 1874, fifteen parties of children passed through the Home, embracing 727 workhouse girls and 160 workhouse boys from all parts of England and Wales, and 259 stray girls and 40 stray arab' boys, making up a total of 1186. We have given the figures up to the above date, as Miss Rye's report to Mr. SclaterBooth, printed in 1876, gives an exhaustive and tabulated synopsis of these 1186 children.

The method employed by Miss Rye in managing the importation of children has been diametrically opposed to the system, the working of which we have seen so much cause to condemn in the workhouse-schools at home. Individuality and freedom from cramping, cast-iron regulations seem to add redoubled vigour to the Anglo-Saxon character in grappling with a great moral problem or social difficulty. English troops were starved and frozen to death in the trenches round Sebastopol, and English volunteer pluck and private philanthropic energy did what centralization, with its tangled skein of rules and regulations crippling its thousand hands and blinding its thousand eyes, was hardly aware of the necessity of doing. And so it was in this case.* The workers were selected by the best and only bearable competitive examination, viz., trial in the positions they were wanted to fill. The work of distribution was grouped as much as possible round centres. In towns and cities such as Newcastle, Guelph, St. Catharines, Grimsby, Oakville, Mount Forest, Chatham, and St. Thomas, friends were found to take an unpaid interest in the children's welfare. Their local knowledge was turned to good purpose in procuring and forwarding to the central home the applications of those who desired children, together with such information as they could supply as to the character of the applicants. Miss Rye supplemented this information by confidential enquiries, made direct to the Minister, Mayor, or Reeve, as to the person desiring a child, and not till these were satisfactorily answered was the child placed out. these local centres, reports would be made

To

This absence of 'red-tape' appears to have greatly prejudiced the Inspector, Mr. Doyle: food, unless given on a fixed dietary, would appear to be innutritious to the regular official stomach.

by the master, from them permission would in the first instance be sought to replace or return a child, and the volunteer assistants acted as watchers over the material and moral welfare of the children, and communicated with headquarters if the necessity arose for any interference.

Two modes of putting out the children are practised by Miss Rye, the first is that by which the child is bound for service, in which case it is apprenticed till the age of eighteen. Up to fifteen the master feeds, clothes, and educates it; for the next two years it is paid $3 a month wages, with which to clothe itself, so as to induce thoughtful habits and the faculty of husbanding its own resources. During the last year of the service the wages are a dollar a month more, and after that both parties are at liberty to make their own bargain for the future.

The other method is that by which the child is adopted, to be treated in a.l respects as one of the master's and mistress's own children. In either case a formal indenture is entered into, and the person taking a child binds himself to perform his part of the bargain (including the due seeing to the child's education and church-going), the obligation being entered into with Miss Rye and her two trustees, Mr. R. N. Ball and Mr. Paffard, both of Niagara.

Out of the 1186 already mentioned, some 340 have been adopted, and the rest (with the exception of some few who have gone to their friends) have been bound to service. In many cases, however, where, for instance, the family and girl take their meals together, this binding' is really nothing else than an adoption-the 'taking in' of a child into the family as a new member, sharing all things with them and participating alike in their joys and their

sorrows.

The work had not been going on long when difficulties cropped up. Some of these were more or less inherent in the scheme, others were wilfully cast in its way by obstructionists and people with yet meaner motives. In the first class we may rank the trouble inseparable from the occasional return to the Home at Niagara of incorrigible and insubordinate girls, who, though not in large numbers, proved sad trials on account of the necessity of isolating them; the return of girls, who, though not abso

lutely bad, 'did not suit,' girls who would do anything for a change and who considered it good fun to come back to Niagara and be placed out again for the fourth or fifth time. Some 300 of the girls have had places found for them twice or oftener, one 'irreconcilable' having ten homes found her, and no less than three others nearly emulating her performance with nine places each. Of course this trouble did not develop into unpleasant proportions until the work had been going on for some years, but it is now clearly perceived by those who are interested in it, that it was a mistake not to have had, from the first, some kind of reformatory receptacle for these girls,in another locality from the Home, with a distinct staff, seeing that the two works are so different and each is so all-engrossing that it is nearly impossible for one head to give proper attention to both.

Again, there was the great difficulty, inseparable from the state of things in which the immigration first commenced, involved in the long distances which had to be repeatedly travelled by Miss Rye across the Atlantic. Fifty boards of guardians had to be interviewed all over England, and persuaded that the children's welfare and the diminution of the rates were alike involved in their voting her the children and the money necessary to cover expenses. When the guardians were persuaded that Canada was neither a land of ogres nor a field of perpetual snow, the Home Government had to be persuaded to yield its consent as well, and to add to this, an endless correspondence had to be carried on with the children and their employers all over Canada. In 1873 Miss Rye also started a training Home at Peckham for her little waifs and strays, innocent even of the tender mercies of the workhouse. One hundred and ninety-eight of the children passed through this Home, and, with 101 other stray children, form a class very distinct from those taken from the workhouse schools. They were found to display a warmth of affection, a keenness of disposition, and a fertility of re source which bore a lively contrast to the comparatively duller type produced on the stereotyped workhouse pattern. And their morals are better, for out of the sixteen girls who alone out of 1186 have had ille gitimate children since their arrival in the Dominion, every one was a workhouse girl,

From this digression I must return to the other class of difficulties which have beset this work. I allude to those caused by prejudiced criticism and conflicting interests. Mention has been made of the opposition of the pauper officials; but the advent to power of Disraeli's Conservative Government in England, apt to discover excuses for checking emigration and desirous of pleasing its plutocratic supporters by taking steps to prevent anything that would tend to increase wages, was a far more powerful influence against the work.

It

In June, 1874, Mr. Doyle, a local Government Inspector, was ordered by the home authorities to report upon the system of juvenile pauper emigration to Canada, and after a perfunctory inspection he made his report in the December of that year. The report was virtually an attack upon Miss Rye's and Miss Macpherson's labours, as no attempt was made to enquire into the six other Canadian workers in the same field. In effect the report practically condemned the work and was really injurious by the manner in which it mixed up the details of the various systems pursued by those ladies, so that whatever blame he conceived was attachable to any point, might, as far as possible, injure them both. elicited a series of indignant protests from those who knew most of the scheme in its practical working, and who declined to believe that a flying visit to less than 400 children selected at haphaztrd, could afford sufficient material upon which to form a sound judgment as to the well-being of the three thousand children placed out in Canada. The superficial manner in which the inspection was made, appeared evident from his fear least the arab' children should corrupt those who came from workhouses, we have already seen that the balance of morals and intellect lies in the other direction. His impartiality was doubted, when, after stating that full monetary details had been offered him, and an auditing of accounts requested, which he was compelled to decline undertaking, he yet proceeds to state and assume figures and facts in his reports, on which to base a presumption that the emigration scheme. was a profitable one to those who took it in hand.

Mr. Doyle, before the matter came before the Imperial Parliament, found it conve

nient to retire from the Inspectorship, but though this was to some extent a withdrawal from the contest, the mischief he had done was yet considerable. The Government had the necessary pretext for delay and further enquiry, which is the usual weapon of a reactive Ministry. Ever since, the two ladies who were so cruelly attacked have been compelled, in addition to their usual tasks, to meet this common enemy. In 1875 both Miss Rye and Miss Macpherson appeared before the select committee on Immigration and Colonization at Ottawa, and evidence of great value in rebuttal of Mr. Doyle's allegations was given by prominent members of the Dominion Parliament and others.* As a result of this enquiry, and at Miss Rye's request, an audit of her accounts, from 1869 to 1875 inclusive, was undertaken by the Department of Agriculture, with the result of showing a total receipt of $76,693.39 (of which less than $3,500 was obtained from the Canadian Governments), and a vouched expenditure of $46,444,33 in England, and $30,298.98 in Canada. Immediately upon this the Dominion Government made a grant of $1000 to assist in keeping open the home at Niagara, while intimating that in future the Provincial Governments would be the proper bodies to give assistance.

The Ontario Government did in fact, in June, 1876, agree to make a payment of $6 a head on each child brought out, to assist in covering expenses; and besides these tokens of an unshaken confidence in the success of the scheme, the Dominion Government ordered a house-to-house visitation of the children, which was carried out by experienced immigration agents, whose complete report was in every way as favourable as Mr. Doyle's imperfect one had been unfavourable.t

In spite of these facts, however, the Home Government refuses to budge an inch. During this summer, the Board of St. George's, Hanover Square, London, having passed a resolution that a number of children should be sent out under Miss Rye's care; the necessary consent by the Local Government Board was refused by

*First report of Select Committee on Immigration and Colonization, Ottawa, 1875.

+ Report of Select Standing Committee on Im. & Col., p. 16. 1877. Ottawa.

Mr. Sclater-Booth, and a deputation from the Board was dismissed, with a plain intimation that the children's labour was wanted at home. And to support this position, it is now announced that Mr. Doyle has prepared a second edition of his report, which has been printed at the public expense and distributed with the other blue books, the Department not having had the justice to print at the same time the elaborate report and reply of Miss Rye, which the ex-Inspector's last effusion is intended to rebut.

To sum up shortly the results of the work. Instead of 23 or 30 per cent. of the children being missing, 24 per cent. is in excess of the number who have been lost sight of, and of these, several cases are no doubt attributable to imperfect postal arrangements. Nearly half the girls are in their first homes and doing well; half of the balance, though placed out more than once, are yet doing satisfactorily. Fourteen deaths have occurred, six of which were accidental; sixteen girls, as already stated, have had illegitimate children, and 104 have been returned to the Home for obstinacy and violent temper. Contrasting these figures with the results already quoted from Mrs. Nassau-Senior's report, or with the 966 children who absconded in one year from English Reformatories and Industrial Schools, and they indeed show a

fair record. Contrasting the condition of the children in England, one brought to the Home with skull broken and arm dislocated by the kicks of a drunken father,' or the two sisters found nearly starving, alone, in a room, on a bundle of shavings,—' contrasting this with even the worst place obtained for them here in Canada, and what a change for the better is at once

seen!

What hope for the future may not be expected from the training given by the good housewife at the farm, so different from the dull routine of classwork in the workhouse-school at home? Whilst, by those of our country who feel the need of domestic help, and desire to increase that class of immigrants which comes to us without the violent wrench of associations snapped asunder in mid-life, and all the attendant risk of unsettled habits in the future, this work has been recognized as a great boon, and, to such as these, the prospect of its possible curtailment, to say nothing of its entire cessation, would prove most disappointing.

Let us hope that wiser counsels will ultimately govern the Government at home, and induce them to withdraw that interdict which has, for a time at least, checked the immigration of the workhouse children. A CANADIAN.

TWOO

WO of the most healthful signs of progress at present, in the way of higher and more healthful living among us, are the growing taste for flower culture and nature beauty about our homes, and the growing love of camping out. Certainly nothing could be a more healthful as well as innocent change and relaxation from the hurry and overstrain of city life than the 'camping out' parties which have been abounding, since the warm weather began to be felt, amid all our charming lake and river scenery. In Muskoka-beloved of Torontonians; along the pretty chain of lakes in the vicinity of Rice Lake; amid

Of

the beautiful ever varying archipelago of the St. Lawrence, where his Thousand Islands' lie locked in his Triton embrace, the white tent of the camper stands out picturesquely and suggestively against the dark foliage, or the more stately yacht lies at anchor in some miniature harbour. all the summer delights of this primitive and patriarchal life one might discourse almost ad infinitum ;-the breathing the fresh pure air, sweet with pine or cedar, itself a keen sensuous pleasure-the early morning row or 'troll' to catch the particular fish predestined for your breakfast, before the magic glamour of the dawn with

its ineffable tender tints, and delicious mystery has yet faded into the light of common day-the bracing morning bath which seems really to re-create one, fresh and new-the fun over the cooking and the breakfast and the clearing away'-the delicious dolce far niente of the day dippings into the books of poetry and fiction, which temptations at home one would sternly put aside in the forenoon--putting away newspapers with the most cursory glance-letting correspondence, for the nonce, take care of itself-taking dinner at all sorts of irregular hours, and enjoying the after-dinner siesta with an unburdened mind and clear conscience-coming out again fresh for tea, after another row and and another swim,-and then the long delicious enjoyment of the evening's changing hues, the exquisite dissolving tints of sunset, its apple-greens and rose-reds, and amber and amethyst gradually fading into the tender greys of the twilight, while the silver moon prolongs the delicious day into a still more delicious, more spiritual night. Among the Thousand Islands, indeed, the moonlight effects are indescribably beautiful and varied; the moon, silver white or rosy in the misty veil she sometimes wears at her first appearing, throws a quivering path of rich golden light over the dark purple waves, or makes a stretch of river a sea of molten silver, against which you catch the picturesque outlines of islands traced in dark silhouettes; or, lovelier still, see the wavering shadows of the dark pines and more rounded foliage thrown on the silver sea from which they intercept some of the moonlight. Few things can be more beautiful than the stretches of dark river streaked with rippling stretches of silver, these again barred with more intense lines of silver light, while every curve and indentation of the shore is picked out in gleaming silver, and every inlet shows with an idealised picturesqueness against the bright background. Such nights seem too rare for sleep, and make one wish that some way could be devised for postponing sleep to the moonless nights, and taking a double portion then. Between the charms of sunset, sunrise, and moonlight, it is indeed hard to decide on the portion of time one is willing to sacrifice to sleep, until the tyrant Morpheus puts his strong hands on

one's eyelids, and further resistance is vain.

Camping-out is indeed an attempt at returning to the innocent, simple recreations which are so much more healthful and satisfactory than artificial ones; and to the more simple and healthful modes of life which were wont to produce a more healthful physique. The calm and restfulness; the thousand-fold enjoyments of sunshine, and green leaves, and still waters, and fragrance of hemlock and pine; the soothing influence of rowing at will amid waterworn moss-grown rocks, festooned with lush luxuriance of creeper and vine; the nameless repose which abandonment to the enjoyment of Nature induces; all combined might well smooth out the wrinkles and creases of a winter of work and worry. More and more may this mode of summer holiday-making prosper and grow! Only let campers beware how they put out their fires, lest by their carelessness they help to destroy the beauty of the spots they have enjoyed themselves. And we must earnestly hope that government will so far resist the pressure that is being put upon them to make these islands private property as to preserve at least the bulk of them for the free enjoyment and recreation of the people of Canada.

The Township Council of Utopia have submitted to the intelligent electors of that rural municipality a by-law to carry into ef fect an Act passed a few years since by the enlightened Legislative Assembly of Weissnichtwo. As I happened to be strolling past the town-hall, where the various speakers pro and con. were dinging their arguments into the ratepayers' ears, I stopped at the door and hearkened a while, with the following results :—

The orator who had the 'ear' of the chairman was in favour of the measure, and had a breadth of delivery and deepness of chest-notes that spoke of a generous diet. This bill,' he said, 'my friends, aims at putting an end to a most vicious state of things which has now obtained among us, I am sorry to say, for many years. Probably few among you, except the elder men, will have any clear idea brought before your minds when I mention the name of "alcohol," or "fermented liquor."' (Movement of attention on the part of the young men,