found in a number of cases the girls only received 1s., or even 9d., their mistresses deducting the rest of their salary for the payment of the clothes which they have been compelled to buy for them on arrival, the little servant being too often in possession of a hat with feathers, a fur boa, and a brass locket, which, with the garments she stands up in, form her entire outfit. A pathetic little story was told me about a bright-faced girl I happened to come across.
"I got to know of her," said my informant, a lady who does much quiet good, and whose name is unknown to newspaper readers, "last year. A friend of mine whose Sunday-school she attended in Deptford asked me to look her up. I happened quite by chance to call in at the coffee-tavern where she was to act as servant, a few moments after she had arrived, and I was told I might go up to the 'bedroom.' Well, I won't go into particulars about that 'bedroom.' It was nearly dark, and I found the poor little soul sitting on the only available piece of furniture in the room—her own little tin hat-box. I shall not easily forget that dazed, bewildered look with which she met me. It was all so strange; everyone had been too busy to attend to her, and, though she had come from a wretched home, where the playful father had been in the habit of making her a target for his boot-shying, still there had been familiar faces round her. She seemed to realise in the sort of way young people do not, as a rule, the intense loneliness of her lot; and, when I put my arm round her, she clung to me with such sobs that I could hardly help crying too."
Fortunately, sensitive child-servants are tolerably rare, and I am bound to say I failed to find any answering to this description. They were generally what one might describe as decidedly "independent!" One girl—she was barely fifteen—told me she had been in six places.
"Are you so fond of change?" I asked.
"'Tain't that so much," returned the young lady; "but I can't put up with 'cheek,' and some o' my missises do go on awful. 'I says: 'Ave yer jaw, and 'ave done with it.'"
This certainly was rather an awful specimen; but she could not have been very bad, as her present mistress—who, I presume, has not up to the present "cheeked" her—assured me that the girl handed over her 2s. 6d. a week regularly to her mother. This seems to be the usual practice with the girls. Their mothers buy their clothes, and give them a shilling on Bank Holidays and a few pence every week to spend on themselves. A large proportion of these little drudges marry dockers and labourers generally, and, as their training has not been exactly of the kind to render them neat, thrifty housewives, it is perhaps not surprising that their cuisine and domestic arrangements altogether leave much to be desired.
On the rope.There is perhaps no form of entertainment more popular amongst a large class of playgoers than that afforded by the clever acrobat, of whose private life the public has only the vaguest knowledge. The general impression, derived from sensational stories in newspapers and romances, is that the profession of the gymnast is a disreputable one, involving a constant danger of life and limb; and that young acrobats can only be made proficient in the art by the exercise of severity and cruelty on the part of trainers.
The actual facts are that the owners, or, as they are called, "fathers," of "troupes" are, in a number of cases, respectable householders, who, when not travelling over Europe and America, occupy little villas in the neighbourhood of Brixton and Clapham; that the danger is immensely exaggerated, particularly in the case of boys, who are always caught when they fall; and that the training and discipline
