The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-11-05 00:00:00

in Nano° n Q:ott cspontitnt.

•
Mt :Pent It ti.;!:t to state that we do not al at, time,
fueatlf ourselvts with our cg,rresi • lent- opiuhmsl
•

With the fall of Metz, poor France may be said to
have received the my de Irate, and most people. In-
cluding her best friends, must earnestly hope that she
will have the moral courage to bow to her fate and
submit all giacefully as she may to storn necessity.
At present the dominant feeling ieellati to be le,pe that
this terrible event may be the immediate precursor of
an armistice, and that this, in its tom may lead to
peace. The news of actual warfare has now lost much
of its tragic interest, for it is felt that France must
aPerdily give in. We have no longer the excitement
of doubt and speLidation as to the main result ; the
victory of Germany and the defeat of France may

almost be said to be an accomplished fact. Tile Este
of unhappy Paris, of course, is matter for wonder and
alarm, but be that fate vat it may, it is not likely to
alter the vast dirournient of this dread trsiteily. May
this soon arrive, and may yon be enabled to add to the
sad intelligence as to the progress of the war the happy
news of the conclusion of an armistice.

Without attempting to anticipate the result of the
Government prosecution of those perAens who are
charged with a breech of the neutrality laws FT
inducing persons to j iin an ambulance corp bile
the real object is said to have been to get '
fight for the French, attention may be called '

curious fact that while this alleged conduct is i 11,•
there is no law to prevent the dispatch of arms
and ammunition to a belligerent. True, these
tnipplies may be lawfully seized on the high seas by
another belligerent, but that is all. It is to be hoped
that when the war has ceased, the nations of Europe
may come to a more reasonable understanding on this
matter.

People who have visited Paris in happier times than
the present, must have noticed how much taste and ele-
gance are displayed in thatmiscellaneons knioknakery
which goes under the generic mimeo( Articles de Pane.
These articles have a reputation thron ;bout the civi-
lised world, and the once gay and lively city has till
recently much depended on the trade in them. It
would now seem that the Germane, adding to the mis-
fortunes that they have already brought upon France
- -or, If ya u will, that France has brought upon herself
threaten to take some of this trade away from Paris.
German workmen expelled from Paris have been
largely employed of late in manufacturing such articles,
and they are said to be quite as elegant as those of the
French capital and much cheaper. This will be rather
an awkward competition for the Parisian dealers and
workmen, hut still reputation will go for much, and
the name of Paris will, when the war is over, have as
much weight as ever,

We are all of us more or less excited by the news
from France, but even amidst the horrors of war, the
ladies will doubtless feel a special interest in an item of
news which arrives "by balloon" from Paris. It
I. about the fashions—yes, the fashions, for ladies
In the beleaguered city, harassed though they
may be by thoughts of possible bombardment or
starvation, or both, have not ceased to study the
fashions, or lead them, we may perhaps say. I read
that the "Parisian ladies have restored to liberty their
own locks, so long hidden under the despotic, artificial
chignon. Brown plaits, carefully smoothed down, light
ringlet., at once graceful and natural, have alone
adorned for some days the delicate and pretty heads of
our young ladies, who are del!ghted to have their most
beautiful adornment restored to them." It I. quite
refreshing to hear this. The chignon has been perhaps
one of the most hideous monstrosities of fashion, and
still is so, but it is to be hoped our fair sisters, now that
the example has been set in Paris, will soon show their
good sense by abolishing that monstrous appendage
which almost makes one doubt sometimes which is the
head and which the chignon
Very agreeable news arrives relative to Mr. Bright.
Much bettor; gone home, and is able to attend to his
affairs; means to winter at Llandudno; and it is
hoped he will then be able to resume parliamentary
and ministerial labours. Bravo! 'May he live a
thousand years, and his shadow never grow less," as the
Spaniards say. Think what we may of his politics,
even his political opponents will admit his sincerity,
and people of all parties respect him. His protracted
absence from parliamentary and official duties must
have been seriously felt by his colleagues.
Miss Bye, who has justleft Liverplol for Canada,
with 108 girls and one boy—what a strange diepropor•
tion !—is doing a very good work, which cannot hut
benefit our Canadian cousins, our own country, and
the destitute or orphan girls whom she takes out to
be trained as domestic servants. The benevolent lady
deserves all honour for her generous and self.denying
efforts, which have already been crowned with success
and have proved to he quite a blessing to Canadian
families in want of servants. But there is another
view of the matter. In our own country domestic
servants are wanted to a greater extent than they can
be obtained, and there is a lamentable want of any
system of training. Now, leaving Miss Bye to carry
on her good work—or rather giving her such help as
she may need—could not some energetic and benevolent
ladies at home set to work and form a refuge and
training hospital for girli, say between nine and thirteen
years of age, to fit them for domestic service? I think
this is a want of the time. Girls are unhappy in their
'fit place" mainly because they go quite untrained
for the work on which they enter, very few of them
indeed receiving any good training in the "homes
which are no homes" which they have just left, and
some of them not having had any horns at all but "the
house."

A very interesting ceremony—not interesting in
Itself, but in what it foreshadows— has just been I et,
formed in famous London town, the laying of the first
atone of a free library, reading-room and museum for
the City, and for all who choose to visit the great
metropolis. The celebrated Dick Whittington, he
whose name is always associated with an equally and
celebrated cat, founded& library, at the commencement
of the fifteenth century, this library standing very near
the spot where the new institution is to be erected and
having been burnt down in the great fire of 160.3. It
may be said that, with popular newspapers and cheap
literature of all sorts, we do not now want libraries
and reading-rooms as our ancestors did, and there is
some truth in this perhaps. Certainly the Act of
Parliament which was passed for fa:ilitating he
erection of free libraries, and museums throughout the
country has not been acted upon to the extent
we might have expected, but perhaps the new
Education Act will cause the movement to spread. It
Is a curious fact by the way—and I leave the reader to
decide the cause—that there is not one really good
news-room in London. We have several, but all more
or less "p, kJ " and stuffy places, with scarcely any
room to move. These curious mouldy-looking estab-
lishments seem mainly to depend on the newspapers
that are sent to them gratis. I went into one of them
the other day. Placards at the door announced that
the principal English, French, German, and American
papers were taken in. I paid my penny and entered.
There were two—if cross-examined, I might admit
that there might have been three London daily papers
few weekly papers, some of them the last number
but one, about three or four French and German
Papers, and only one American. Two startlingly new
deal trestles did duty for tables, and the " news and
waiting-room" WWI patronised at the time by five in-
dividuals, including your humble servant, two of whom
were decidedly seedy French refugees, who came in,
poor fellows ! apparently for nothing but shelter and
pour passer is temps.

No doubt there are people who muse themselves by
making out, or trying to make out, these cipher ad.
vertisements which freummtly appear in the papers.
Some of them are tolerably easy to unravel. There
was one, for instance, the other day in The Times, begin-
ning sweetly thus : "Fctnkpi anh K yknn, kc." You
had but to put thin two letters back, and you read:
"Darling Alf, I wal be at the Great Western Hotel
at six on Wednesday. Nellie." Nellie must be a little
more particular next time. Since that the same parer
has contained another cipher advertisement which is
far more puzzling. It begun+, " Rave ramap eh efkvc
-levh." The principle of thin cipher in that one letter
is interchanged with another. For v write r; fore, a;
for r, v; for y, c ; no that the word itry will be written
rave. You may puzzle • long time over a cipher
written in this style, but find out one letter and you
find out two; if a stands for e, e stands for a. Thus
the persevering student, who may for the time have
nothing better to do, can .make out the above &dyer•
tinement thus: " Very vexed at angry part of your
letter. Why not take interest in your appearance ?
Have more trust. Shall always remain as usual yours
only."

NOT BAD FOR 'Mr. OLD LADT.—The followibg
story is told of how a susceptible youth from the East
was saved from the toils of a scheming enchantress.
He was travelling over one of the railroads in America,
when there entered the car an elderly lady, then the
matron of the Indiana State Prison, at Jeffersonville,
accompanied by her daughter, • beautiful as well as
accomplished, but very mischievous young lady of
eighteen. The young man immediately "took a shine
to her and after muco managing obtained a seat by
her aide, and endeavoured to lead ner into conversation.
This she, in her vivacity and roguishness, was not at
all loath to accept, and the youngster was fairly intoxi-
cated with her brilliant repartee and the music of her
low, sweet voice, "that excellent thing in woman."
After this had gone on as long as the old lady thought
proper, she took a seat beside the young Adonis, and
said, "Young man, you are a total stranger to me;
but it is my duty to warn you of impending evil. That
young lady is just out of the State prison." The young
man skedaddled

THE "SMALL BOY" IN FRANCE.
--
A more Interesting feature of till, momentary trials is the
wide sphere of activity the war has opened to the "small
boy" , Write. the Correspondent of the Daily Nev.).
If England errors In taxing too severely the energies
of her Juvenile population, France ran into the other ex.
Dome I have often heard of the ;id min de Paris, and read
the savings of Gavroche In the newspaper. But in the
many year. which I have spent in this country, I hardly
ever, until lately, came across the " small boy" Sly know.
ledge of French boyhood was limited to the youths who are
marched twice a week, under the guard of othere, from
their orisothLycees to the swimming schools. to the lads who
crop up in the month of May in the character of
"Cent communicants, " and the fancifully:attired
little fellows in the Champs-Elyse., and Yonne vil-
lage louts who passed their time In suturing them-
selves when they were not at the o.onmunal school. The
laziness SW want of Intelligence, or of boyish curiosity.
often struck me in the latter category. If you asked them
a question shout anything 11l the commune, the answer In.
variably WAJ, /' 001 saii rien There wee work and
Information to ne grit out of a little girl, but neither bribes
nor cross-examination 'could get • service or an intelligent
answer ou: of a boy. I remember, on alfferent occasion,
having attempted to utilise In ran. and the c.runtry the
Juvenile sons if indigo,t women, so as to pat them In a
way to aid their mother. but I was obliged to give It
up. The small boy was either too stupid or too en.
Willing to go Into harness, even though the hope of being
a few francs richer at the end of the week was hell
out to him. The mothers seemed to thlisk their sons
Ind no htlehaels to do apythlog "until they had received
their first communion "—a ceremony generally gone through
th V. thirteenth year. •• Do you think," lone day inked •
Pr 'tensional charwoman who was dying of consumption,
' that Isidore could curry a few can. of water from the
wring I .holibi pay him so much a can." The poor wo.
I man oilseed . and laidore brought the water from the
which a.+ I. to the cottage in which I was stay.
leg In the contdry. hut on the third, fourth, and filth day.
there WAS 'l, 111t1ore; and on the sixth the mother came to
ask t'•. sum due "ins. When I complained of
oorularlty , she said, He's strong I know, but
b•• Lary However Whs' CAU you expect OS •
4es not Molted oh. O.s. communion ?" All this
50 •••• hair disappeared binco the war which has taken
off v r•I in b, ,t4kle and nee,, ticket porter., street
sweeper, .A omnibus .onductors, whose placers are tilled
by small v The snail boy roost particularly asserts him•
self as a nowrosper dealer. The street. of Toun are
crowded with ishmaelites, who thrust the pumas
Into the bands Of u• Its, and make frequent Irruptions Into
the car., with tin, literary wares A horde of small
boys occupies the approaches to the office of the
for at least au hour and • half previous to the publics.
Mon of that paper It is held together by • strong
...raft dr corps, which manifest. itself In welhermsbined
axgreesions on adults in the same trade The other night
all was buying • Motrifrur, • little fellow, dressed like •
Mobile, and about the height of General Tom Thumb's wife,
Came running up to mo with the Fraa,,Ve, which he maid
contained the latest news. " What age are you, my boy
I asked. "Five years old." " And what le your name
"I he Captain, and I earn If 500. a week !" The Captain
was quite right, for the Fraticail alone knew that Jeanine
had offered to capitulate.