thirteen or fourteen years of age, receiving exactly the same education
as the boys, and without a fraction of cost to the parents. The course
of study embraces all branches of elementary knowledge, with needlework,
drawing, history, singing and book-keeping. Examinations are held and
certificates of progress awarded. We found the girls taking a lesson in
needle-work--the only point in which their education differs from that
of the boys--and the boys at their drawing class; the school-rooms are
lofty, well-aired, and admirably arranged.

Adjoining the schools is the library, open to all members of the
community, and where many helps to adult study are afforded. On the
other side of the pleasant green square, so invitingly planted with
trees, stand the Cooperative Stores, which are, of course, an important
feature in the organization of the community. Here meat, groceries, and
other articles of daily domestic consumption are sold at low prices, and
of the best possible quality: the membership, of course, being the
privilege of the thrifty and the self-denying, who belong to the
Association by payment. I did not ask if intoxicating drinks were sold
on the premises, for such an inquiry would have been gratuitous. The
cheerful, tidy, healthful looks of the population proclaimed their
sobriety, and some excellent _sirop de groseille_ offered me in the
cottage of the foreman who acted as guide, showed that such delicious
drinks are made at home as to necessitate no purchases abroad.

There is also a Savings' Bank, which all are invited to patronize; six
and a half per cent being the incentive held out to those economisers on
a small scale. But neither the school, nor the Co-operative Store, nor
the Savings' Bank can make the working man's life what it should be
without the home, and it is with the home that alike M. Menier's
philanthropy and organization attain the acme. These dwellings, each