g 8,690
votes, against 7,263 given to his Republican opponent. In both of these
cases it came within my knowledge that the authorities of the Department
made the most open and unscrupulous efforts to prevent the return of the
outgoing members. Both M. Thellier de Poncheville and M. Renard,
however, sate on M. Pion's Committee on the mines, and the mining
population of the region appear to have a singularly clear notion of the
difference between sense and nonsense in dealing with mining matters.

Our miner, who hit the difference so neatly between 'miners' and the
'friends of miners,' after a little chat on the doorway, asked us, very
politely, to walk in and look at his home. It was very neatly and
adequately furnished, with clocks in each of the ground-floor rooms,
sundry framed mezzotints hanging on the walls, and a goodly show of
neatly-kept crockery. The wife, looking older than her husband, but very
probably his junior, cheerily pointed out to me the local improvement
she had made by transferring the cooking-range from the front room,
looking on the highway, to the back room looking into the garden. 'It is
pleasanter, don't you think?' she said, 'to sit out of the kitchen; and
then, with the kitchen at the back, one can always leave the door open.
That is my idea!' We assured her we thought it an excellent idea and
most creditable to her--a compliment which she received with modest
satisfaction, saying, 'You know the wife must think of these things!' to
which the husband good-naturedly assented, while the daughter, a
well-grown good-looking girl of fourteen, looked up from her household
duties, much interested in our visit. The husband, on his part, had
contrived a convenient wine-cellar under the stairway. 'It will not hold
much wine,'he said with a smile; 'but it is too large for all the wine I
drink.' 'Ah!' said the wife archly, 'he likes cider much better!'

This miner was employed in the new Lagrange pit, and though I was much
struck by the neatness of his person and apparel, I was more struck by
the general absence of anything like the griminess which we commonly
associate with mines and mining among his fellows, whom I found still at
work around the pits. M. Guary told me that this is a characteristic
trait of the Anzin miners. In the buildings attached to each pit there
is a large hall, called the miner's hall, where the men meet when they
go down to and come up from their underworld. There each man has a b