bustering steamers _Three Friends_ and _Dauntless_ have been
released.

Their owners have had to promise to give them up again whenever they are
wanted. They have also had to give the court some money, which they will
lose if the ships are not brought back when the court calls for them.

If the cases of piracy and filibustering against them are found to be
true, the ships will become the property of the Government, and the owners
will lose them altogether.

The United States cruiser _Montgomery_ has been ordered to Key West, to
prevent filibustering parties going over to Cuba, and the _Raleigh_, which
has been doing this duty, has gone to be repaired.

* * * * *

People who are interested in the comfort of the poor of New York are very
glad to know that some dreadful rear tenement houses in Mott Street are to
be taken away by order of the Board of Health.

We all read about tenement houses, and we all feel sorry that many of the
houses for the poor to live in are not as comfortably built as they might
be.

Very few of us know the discomforts that the poor have to endure, who are
obliged to live in the old, badly planned tenement-houses.

Poor people must live near their work, because they cannot afford to pay
car-fares back and forth every day. So the tenement-houses are generally
built in neighborhoods where the work is being done, and people have to
take them clean or dirty, well or badly built, because they must make
their home in that neighborhood.

In some of the older and poorer tenements, many families live on the same
floor; they are crowded together in the most dreadful manner, and instead
of having plenty of light, air, and water to help make them endurable,
they have little or none of any of these necessary things.

In these houses the want of water is one of the greatest evils. Instead of
giving each tenement a nice sink, and a water-boiler at the back of the
stove, so that people can have hot and cold water all the time, there is
no water put into any of the rooms.

Outside on the landing there is water, and a rough sink, which the tenants
of each floor use in common. They have to go into the hall to fetch every
drop of water they use, and this is the only place they have to empty the
dirty water away.

In some houses the sinks are not on every floor, and in these, the poor
women have to drag their heavy buckets of water up and down the stairs.

The tenements ar