ox,
under lock and key, bearing his number, in which he puts away his
ordinary clothes when he dons his mining suit; the company--I should
mention here--provides every man when he enters the service with a
mining outfit. And to this hall there is attached a lavatory for the use
of the men. The hall is well warmed in winter, and, being always on an
upper floor, is well aired and ventilated in summer. From this hall at
the Lagrange pit we walked into an adjoining room, where we found the
miners going down the shaft in a great metallic basket, while the coal
came up. While we stood there, there came up a magnificent lump of coal,
of a very brilliant and even lustrous surface, around which the
admiring miners crowded. This is a new vein, and the coal found in it,
M. Guary tells me, burns with an unusually clear and intense flame.

A miner with whom I talked a little had been to see the Exposition, and
it was curious to perceive that he had been much more interested in the
Anzin part of it than in anything else. He spoke indeed almost
disrespectfully of the Eiffel Tower, and he was entirely convinced that
the workmen at Anzin were much better off than the workmen at Paris, as
to which I am not prepared to dispute his opinion. He had not seen the
President, which did not appear to disturb him much; but he thought the
beer at the Exposition 'very dear and very bad.' The engines, however,
he frankly admired, though 'everybody can see that it is not possible to
make better engines than are made at Anzin.'

One curious thing he told me of the young miners who are drafted away
into the military service. 'When they come back,' he said, 'some of them
at first try other trades, but all that are of any use sooner or later
come back to the mine. It is of no use,' he said reflectively, 'for any
man to try to be a miner if he is not trained as a boy.' This is exactly
Jack Tar's notion as to sailors.

From the Lagrange pit we drove, still through pleasant woods and fresh
green farming-lands, to Thiers, where the company has a large number of
working-men's houses, together with a considerable church, a lay and a
religious school, and other institutions.

There we paid a visit to a delightful little old lady, with a face, full
of wrinkled sweetness and humour, which Denner might have painted. She
insisted upon showing us all over her home, and a little miracle it was
of thrift and neatness and order; from the spotlessly clean little
bed