having at least two children under fourteen years of age, or one crippled and sick child; widows or deserted women who have one child and are enceinte with another; and generally any persons who are placed in want by unforeseen circumstances. No poor person can claim help if he cannot prove that his children go to school, or while he refuses to have them vaccinated. Applicants are admitted to the list, or rejected, by the committee of the bureau. The admitted are entered in a book as No. 3 or 4, as the case may be, and their number is entered in a second book, for the divisional administrator ; and in a third, for the general bureau of the Quai Pelletier. Changes of residence of the poor are reported by the charitable commissioners or district visitors. The bureau does its utmost to distribute work among its poor. The committee put themselves into communication with manufacturers and others who employ labour, and so endeavour to give work to the unemployed. Unemployed women are sent to the pauper spinning establishment, which I shall describe in due course. The relief given is distributed in kind as much as possible. This relief consists of clothes, food, fuel, and bedding. The clothing is distributed by the secretary, or by the sisters of a Maison de Secours, on the authority of an administrator. Tickets entitling the bearer to food and fuel are distributed among the poor by the administrators, and the charitable

commissioners and visiting ladies. With these tickets the poor can go to the butchers or bakers. who are in connection with the bureau. The committee of the bureau determines the amount of help in money to be given to each applicant. Money help must be given by the hands of the secretary into the hands of the person for whose relief it is destined, except when the money is to buy clothes for the first communion of a pauper's child, when the money may be handed to a curé, or the superior of a Maison de Secours.

Among the miscellaneous gifts distributed by the bureau on the report of an administrator are bandages, wooden legs, mechanical corsets, &c.; and these things are given to any poor persons, whether they be on the books of the bureau or not. In the same way the bureau distributes passports, with tickets of relief by the way; permits the poor to hawk goods in the streets; gives exemption from the duties on registration or inheritance, or from taxes; and watches the restitution of the clothes of relatives who have died in the hospitals. The bureau is also authorised to lend sheets, counterpanes, shirts, &c., in urgent cases. In some cases the bureau helps the widow to apprentice her boy, or to pay her rent.

CHAPTER III.

OFFICES OF BENEVOLENCE.

UNDER the guidance of one of the officials, I made a minute examination of the most active bureau of benevolence in Paris-that by the Panthéon. On the first floor is the secretary's office; and on the fourth is a warehouse, packed with clothes for distribution in the arrondissement; and the ground floor is the active part of the establishment. I turned first into the doctor's department, where applications are made for home medical relief, and where the doctor receives pauper patients whether they are on the list of the bureau or not. This department of the bureau is so admirably managed that it deserves particular notice. Its action leaves no room for the neglect of a case by a doctor. The regulations are strict, and leave no chance of escape. The friends of a sick person apply for the assistance of a doctor; the clerk in attendance takes down the address of the applicant,

and at once sends a letter to the medical man of the division in which the patient lies, directing him to attend. These letters are kept printed, blanks being left for the patient's name and address. In the printed letter the doctor is reminded that he will find in the patient's house a form, on which he will be good enough to make his notes at every visit, on the state of the case, for the information of the Relief Commission. He will also find a letter, the blanks of which he must fill up, describing the probabilities of the case at first sight. This letter is sealed by the doctor, and left in the patient's room, to be collected by one of the visitors or administrators from the bureau. The form which is placed in the patient's room is of great importance to the patient. He must present it when he sends to the Maison de Secours for gratuitous medicine. It is so arranged that it affords the bureau a rapid view of the stages of the sick person's complaint, and of the number and dates of the doctor's visits.

The duties of the visitor check those of the medical man. The visitor in whose division the patient lies, is furnished with a form that he must fill up for the guidance of the Relief Commission, that sits once a week at the bureau. This form is very complicated. The information it requests is comprehensive; it is headed with the names of the administrator of the division and of the doctor in

attendance. The class of relief to which the patient is admitted is described. The name, age, profession, address, and floor of the patient are set forth. The household of the patient is enumerated. The number of children under and over fourteen years of age, the family's means of living, the trade of one and all, must be clearly registered. The Relief Commission desire to know from this paper, whether the patient has been in the hospital, the amount of his rent, how much rent is due, how many rooms he occupies, whether he has a fire or not, or the means of procuring one; whether he has people about him who can nurse him; whether his sickness interferes with the calling of any of his family; whether he has a bed, and, if he has one, what kind of bed; whether there are sheets to it, and shirts for him, and how many; how long he has been under treatment, and the result of this treatment. The visitor or administrator fills up this paper, and makes any observations he may judge necessary on the general case, describing also the relief he recommends to be given by the bureau. It is on this document the Relief Commission acts.

By these means a sick applicant for medical relief is at once taken in hand, not only by the doctor, but by the district administrator, and his charitable visitors, male and female. I have already explained that there are twelve administrators in