given as rewards of assiduity. In the order
of their places—as nearly as may be discovered,
of their worth as patient little scholars—the
children march in procession to School every
morning, under the eyes of their parents. This
also is a stimulus to exertion. Exertion, within
the power of all, whatever the natural abilities,
is the one thing rewarded. Punishments there
are absolutely none, except exclusions from
reward. Thus, only the children who have given
no cause for complaint are taken on Thursday
afternoons into the private flower and fruit
garden, where the fruits in season are gathered and
given to the children who go in. It is a
distressing thing to be shut out; but it is the
wholesome missing of an extra pleasure that has
not been earned. Another reward only attainable
by good conduct, and much valued by the
children, is permission to spend part of Sunday
in the apartment of Mademoiselle Marie, a clever
and highly educated young relative of M. Godin's,
who superintends generally the Pouponnat, the
Bambinat, and the schools. In her room, are
toys of all sorts, and there is a bright welcome
for those children by whom it has been earned.
A young professor from Paris manages the teaching
in the higher schools; a workman's wife
superintends the infant school; and these all,
with the nurses in the Pouponnat, give
themselves heart and soul to the enjoyment of the
kindly work of true education, which removes
oppressive terrors, multiplies encouragements and
wholesome influences about the happy child,
gives to each one a sound knowledge of the
essentials of instruction, including practice for
the girls in cookery and household work, and fits
them to be happy heads of future families, and
faithful workers in the foundry that has tempered
their characters and cast them in the best of
moulds.

The schooling of all the children of the
work-people who occupy M. Godin's most desirable
Family Mansion is not said to be given them.
Payment is understood to be included in the
rent. Care is taken to encourage a right sense
of self-dependence, and in all the details of this
desirable Family Mansion, the liberty of every
tenant is respected. Only nobody is quite free
to suffer his child to go untaught, and a penny
a day is charged for every child in the Familistery
that is not sent to school. Beyond this, there
are no rules and regulations, and these Homes
have never yet yielded a case for police
interference, or even for the interference of M.
Godin or his representative. M. Godin's workmen
are not at all bound to live in the Familistery.
Each takes a month's lease of his lodging,
and may leave it if he do not like it. He
need not buy at the shops provided for his use
on the ground floor, if he should think he can do
better, or if he should prefer to go into the town.
M. Godin merely offers his men the most wholesome
form of home he can conceive. They may
use it or not use it, or use only as much of it as
suits their own convenience. The place is not an
almshouse. Liberal as all its arrangements are—
bountiful in their regard for every want of life—
the great fact remains behind that the Familistery
is an investment which—including cost of
the education given to the young — pays six per
cent. Its motive was of the noblest, and its
success proves its plan to be of the wisest; for
not only is it necessary to the wide extension of
any good system like this that it should make
no demand on human inclinations for self-sacrifice
which, as a rule, are weak; but it is necessary
that every workman using such a Home
should know that he does actually pay for it
and live in it without a sacrifice of
independence. One important element in the
success of M. Godin's scheme is the system of
little shops on the ground floor. On first coming,
workmen's wives usually keep house in their
old way, and hold to their old manner of
marketing; but they soon find that they get
better and cheaper goods close to their doors,
while the profit that is taken on them covers a
good many of the general expenses of the place.
All dealing at the shops of the Familistery must
be for ready money, or by cheques on the next
payment of wages (payment being fortnightly),
and the amount of any such cheques is
deducted at the time of payment. Thus the
people in the Familistery are not bound to it,
as they are often bound to retail shops, by a
chain of debt. Between master and men there
is no tie but that of mutual regard and human
fellowship, which must be strong indeed, when
on the master's side there is so thoughtful a
sense of it as M. Godin has shown. His Workmen's
Homes are so well appreciated, that their
rooms fill as fast as they are ready, and two
hundred workmen and their families are even
now waiting to come in as soon as the progress
of the building will enable them to do so.

THE TRUE GOLDEN AGE.

CHILDHOOD'S the only golden age;
Then had I many a fairy vassal,
Then even the miser who lived on the hill
Was Giant Despair, of Doubting Castle.

Everything my fancy changed
To the wonderful dreams of nursery-lore,
And I walk'd in the fir-tree wood in fear
Of meeting the Giant Blunderbore.

I dreaded the cat with the brassy eyes
Glaring with phosphorescent lights;
For I knew on such steeds the witches ride;
Chasing the moon on the summer nights.

And well I knew that the fern-leaves hid
Sleeping fairies and elves by dozens,
And mushrooms sprang wherever there danced
Titania's chiefs or Oberon's cousins.

The sunset brought me faces grim,
Glaring out from the fiery doors;
And often I saw in the moonlit clouds
Angels who paced the starry floors.

Now, the rainbow itself seems black;
The only giant I meet, is Care;
The wolf is growling outside the door,
And the bailiff's step I hear on the stair.