se they lessen, marriage
waits, and all that the good God meant for us waits also."

On the surface it is all well. There is less incompetency among French
than English workers, and thus the class who furnish them need less
arraignment for their lack of thoroughness. They contend, also, with one
form of competition, which has its counterpart in America among the
farmers' wives, who take the work at less than regular rates. This form
is the convent work, which piles the counters, and is one of the most
formidable obstacles to better rates for the worker. Innumerable
convents make the preparation of underwear one of their industries, and,
in the classes of girls whom they train to the needle, find workers
requiring no wages, the training being regarded as equivalent.
Naturally, their prices can be far below the ordinary market one, and
thus the worker, benefited on the one hand, is defrauded on the other.
In short, the evil is a universal one,--an integral portion of the
present manufacturing system,--and its abolition can come only from
roused public sentiment, and combination among the workers themselves.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CITY OF THE SUN.

It is only with weeks of experience that the searcher into the under
world of Paris life comes to any sense of real conditions, or discovers
in what directions to look for the misery which seldom floats to the
surface, and which even wears the face of content. That there are no
slums, and that acute suffering is in the nature of things impossible,
is the first conviction, and it remains in degree even when both misery
and its lurking-places have become familiar sights. Paris itself, gay,
bright, beautiful, beloved of every dweller within its walls, so
dominates that shadows seem impossible, and as one watches the eager
throng in boulevard or avenue, or the laughing, chattering groups before
even the poorest cafe, other life than this sinks out of sight. The most
meagrely paid needlewoman, the most overworked toiler in trades,
indoors or out, seizes any stray moment for rest or small pleasures, and
from a half-franc bottle of wine, or some pretence of lemonade or sugar
water, extracts entertainment for half a dozen. The pressure in actual
fact remains the same. Always behind in the shadow lurks starvation, and
there is one street, now very nearly wiped out, known to its inhabitants
still as "_la rue ou l'on ne meurt jamais_"--the street where one never
dies, since every s