The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-08-31

sionally lunching with Mr.. Stead in the res
taurant on the Strand much frequented by
newspaper people supplies fashion columns,
but more serious work is done by Miss HUI
da Friedrichs, who was, believe, the first
woman attached as general journalist to a
London newspaper, and who, nevertheless.
must have passed 3d. if she has passed it at
all, very recently. Miss Friedrichs is dark,
slender, large-eyed. with irregular but very
attractive features, shaded by wandering
rings of curley hair. Though in some sense
pioneer of her sex in London newspaper
dom. she is not English by birth or educa-
ton, but German woman who spent a year
or two as governess in Russia and who
has found her knowledge of the Continental
languages of the greatest practical value to
her since she came to London and to the
dinRy Office in Northumberland street
English papers do not pride themselves on
tine buildings-where l found her. She
was the special correspondent of the Pail
Mall Gazette at Berlin at the time of Bis
marck's resignation, and when the
debates on Heligolend began she
was sent of TO- to that l small
frequent and very respectful references to
her articles in the arguments and leaders of
both parties. Miss Friedrichs has been the
London correspondent of the Cologne Ga
zette and has written much in her own Ian
guage for German papers and magazines.
in English uewspaperdom is encouraging.
Several women have entered the field as
free lances, though few are regularly at
tached staff members. Her own apprentice
ship was not an easy one, for she was not
brought up more than other girls to under
stand colonial difficulties, Egyptian debts,
Indian finances and such like uncanny sub
jects; but English Freshmen have held out
a brotherly hand to her, showing her the
way over the steep places and sending her
home to tend her tall hollyhock, her six
pansy plants, her twelve geraniums and
two fern roots in the garden of her bit of a
cottage at Wimbledon with the feeling that
life is worth living when confidence and
friendliness breed confidence and frendli-
ness in return. For the rest, her sanctum
and picture, and from 1T goes ont work
that will do much to open more widely the
door of her profession to women.
The amount of charitable work done wise
~ and most unwisely by women in coun.
try where one person in every thirty five of
The "Englishwoman's Year Book"
which is mainly directory to institutions
for the benefit of women, usually managed
by women, is a bulky volume. East Lon
don and South London are fairly honey
combed with workers zealously trying &C
cording to their lights. which sometimes
are only Pickering rush lights, to ameliorate
the condition of the people. The amount
of prying into their affairs which the Lon
don poor will stand, and the meekness with
which thew will be questioned and talked
| to, even by the merely curious. out for an
afternoons "slumminR," surprises an
American.
"Ten years ago, "'said lady in converse
tion, "they would have thrown stones.
Some of the clergymen who went among
them first found ropes stretched across the
street to trip them up and fell victims to
other such playful eccentricities.'
One wonders at the absence at the pre-
sent day of such reminders of the advisa-
bility of mindin0 ones own business, when
one sees how misery is turned into a tour
lists spectacle, but the milder manners of
Mile End road, Whitechapel, &C., probably
testify to the efficacy of the work which the
British matron is carrying out in her own
way. Mrs. Humphry Words Robert Els
mere" settlement il not doing much as yet,
it 10 not fairly under way. Something sub
stantial may como Of the novelist's plan or
may mot; the point - one on which opinoin
seems TO be divided.
The most interesting work Of which
have seen anything 10 that of Miss Cons.
who last year received a large number of
votes for the Office of alderman. who does
much OF the executive work of college for
working men and women and concert hall
TOR good, low priced entertainments at the
Royal Victoria hall, ON the Waterloo road
and the Women's university settlements, of
which there are two in the poorest quarters
OF London, patterned like the settlement of
the collage women in Rivington street,
New York, somewhat upon TOynbee hall,
the original settlement of university men.
The settlsment ct which ] spent yester-
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