the wretched outcasts, who exist on the
Curragh, and around our barracks in Ireland.

It is not only to the female eye that a review
of soldiers, with colours flying, drums beating,
and bayonets glistening, appears grand and
inspiring. The dress of the soldiers, the gilding on
the uniforms, the regular step, and the martial
bearing of the men, are as if specially contrived
for carrying the feelings and good wishes of
spectators away captive. Again, when we look
at a camping-ground with its white tents ranged
in regular order—the flags flying and bugles
sounding; the galloping to and fro of mounted
orderlies, the passing of general and staff officers
with their waving plumes, the turning in and
out of guards, combined with the pervading
neatness and regularity, have we not all the
elements of a spirit-stirring scene? We see
then all the pomp and circumstance of glorious
war, with nothing of its attendant misery. But
there is, as I have shown, around every barrack
and camp an outlying circle of misery and sin, a
haunting spectre which holds up its withered
hands in mockery of all the tinsel. It has never
been otherwise; for wherever large bodies of
men congregate, these elements of wretched
creatures will be found, whose life is a long sin
and unceasing misery. It is the old story—a
poor girl is attracted by a soldier when the
troops come to her town. When he marches
away, she leaves all—friends, fortune, and good
name—to follow him; little recking of the pains
that lie before her. Soon the trifle of money is
spent, and then the clothes go piece by piece.
When money and clothes are gone, what shall
she do? She cannot dash through the ring of
scorn already surrounding her, to go home and
drink the bitterest dregs of her cup in the rebuke
of her own kindred. The man she has followed
lovingly and unwisely, had not means to support
her; yet she cannot starve. Gradually the outcast
sinks lower and lower, till she probably ends her
days by the side of a barrack wall, or on the lee-
side of a bush at the Curragh. Of the soldiers
who should share the blame of this, men are ready
enough to remember how they are in a manner
cut off from all domestic joys or pleasures, and
have as a class very little forethought. Their
daily bread is always found them; whether in
sickness or in health they need never know what
a sharp thorn hunger is. And so, being thoughtless,
the soldier does not prevent women from
following him from town to town, and from
barracks to camp. But if guilty so far, he is
not wilfully hard-hearted. I have known many a
soldier go to the captain of his troop, and getting
a couple of months pay in advance, spend it on
sending a poor girl back to her friends. I know
also that for one or two months after a regiment
has come to a fresh station there are weekly
subscriptions made up among the men of each
troop for the same purpose. Therefore I am
sure that if a way could be shown for lessening
the misery among those unhappy victims, every
soldier in the army would give what he could
afford. If each man would give a week's pay to
commence with, and a day's pay yearly
afterwards, those who had homes to go to, and
relations willing to receive them, could be sent
home whenever they were willing to return,
while the others would at least be provided with
a roof to put their heads under.

In India these camp-followers are placed
under the care of one of their own sex—a
female muccadum, or overseer, who is paid so
much a month out of the canteen fund. This
is advantageous in more respects than one.
The women themselves are comfortably housed;
they are obliged to keep their huts in good
order, and themselves clean and well clothed;
if they misbehave they are punished; in case of
disease, they are sent to a native hospital till
they recover. This system modified to suit home
moralities might be advantageously introduced
at our barracks and camps, and would go a
great way to stay the spread of disease which
fills our army hospitals, and ruins the health of
our soldiers. As the hour before the dawn is the
darkest, so I trust that, upon the night of these
unhappy squatters, the first glimmering of dawn
is soon to break. That such distress should exist,
and that men should consider themselves most
righteous in letting it exist, and walking on the
other side with their eyes carefully averted, is
but a new form of the old evil, against which His
followers were warned as their worst wrong
against Heaven by Him who was himself alone
unspotted among men.

  "THOSE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES

—SHOULD not throw stones," says the adage.
But who ever did live in glass-houses before the
days of Sir Joseph Paxton or the invention of
photography? And why were they expected
to be constantly pelting their neighbours? Has
the sun necessarily a combative effect upon
dwellers in those traps to catch sunbeams?

I, who live in a glass-house all day, am inclined
to answer the last question in the affirmative,
when aggravated by ugly or capricious
sitters. May I therefore, a humble photographer,
venture one or two hints to the owners
of countenances who desire them to be gracefully
and accurately copied, and to those who
try to copy them?

In turning over the leaves of an album, we
frequently pass our acquaintances without even
a nod. How is this? The photograph may be
irreproachable as a work of art, and it is impossible
to be other than a transcript of what, was
presented to the camera. How comes it, then,
that it is not a likeness? Simply because the
original was, at the critical moment, unlike
himself. When about to be photographed,
one is apt to feel that, like Marshal Ney,
the eyes of Europe are upon him—that,
according to the position which he assumes,
judgment will be passed on his good or bad
figure, awkwardness or grace. He wishes
to present himself on paper to an admiring,
not to a critical, public. A nervous consciousness,
moreover, that perhaps a guinea or
two is involved in the operation, tends