scaped their clutches, and it has been so
well managed that in 1871 the income was found large enough to warrant
the managers in establishing three scholarships instead of two.

The good example of the Abbe has been followed in our own times by a
Christian lady, Madame Lacroix of Sinceny. In memory of her son, a
Councillor-General of the Aisne, who was universally esteemed throughout
the department, and who died at the early age of thirty-five, this lady
founded, a few years ago in perpetuity, eight prizes, to be annually
competed for by the pupils of all the communal schools of the canton of
Chauny, and by the pupils of the schools established here by the Company
of St.-Gobain, as well as four full scholarships at the School of Arts
and Industries in Chalons-sur-Marne.

The prizes are to be competed for in applied geometry, in linear and
ornamental drawing, as well as in all the obligatory studies of the
schools concerned. The competitors for the four Chalons scholarships
must be the sons of workmen, domestic servants, labourers, or persons
employed in agriculture or in manufactures within the canton of Chauny,
whose incomes or earnings do not amount to 2,000 francs a year.

In 1874 the Municipal Council of Chauny founded six purses of 450 francs
a year, each to be competed for by candidates wishing to fit themselves
to compete for the Lacroix scholarships, the successful candidates being
left at liberty to enter any one of the free schools in Chauny. As
Madame Lacroix has made the curates of the churches of Notre-Dame and
St.-Martin _ex-officio_ members of the council of her fund, it is to be
presumed that the Government at Paris will find some way of striking
these clergymen out of the list, as it has already struck all ministers
of religion out of the local committees of supervision in educational
matters throughout France, for a French Republic is nothing if not
logical.

My likening of Chauny to a French Rotterdam or Amsterdam may be excused
when I say that in the middle of the last century the Mayor of Chauny
assured the Intendant of Soissons that the municipality had to keep up
no fewer than twenty-seven bridges. What with the Oise and its
affluents, and the many watercourses created about the place, either
to drain the marsh lands or to facilitate navigation, Chauny really is
an aquatic little capital like Annecy in Savoy. Naturally its citizens
set a certain value on their fishing rights, and it may edify t