Only consider what a thousand pounds may mean to a girl.  It may be invested to produce L35 a year—­that is to say, 13s. 6d. a week.  Such an income, paltry as it seems, may be invaluable; it may supplement her scanty earnings:  it may enable her to take a holiday:  it may give her time to look about her:  it may keep her out of the sweater’s hands:  it may help her to develop her powers and to step into the front rank.  What gratitude would not the necessitous gentlewoman bestow upon any who would endow her with 13s. 6d. a week?  Why, there are Homes where she could live in comfort on 12s., and have a solid 1s. 6d. to spare.  She would even be able to give alms to others not so rich.

Take, then, a thousand pounds—­L35 a year—­as a minimum.  Take the case of a professional man who cannot save much, but who is resolved on endowing his daughters with an annuity of at least L35 a year.  There are ways and means of doing this which are advertised freely and placed in everybody’s hands.  Yet they seem to fail in impressing the public.  One does not hear among one’s professional friends of the endowment of girls.  Yet one does hear, constantly, that someone is dead and has left his daughters without a penny.

First of all, the rules and regulations of the Post Office, which are published every quarter, provide what seems the most simple of these ways.

I take one table only, that of the cost of an annuity deferred for twenty-five years.  If the child is five years of age, and under six, an annuity of L1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased for a yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of L12 3s. 8d., the money to be returned in case of the child’s death.  An annuity of L35, therefore, would cost a yearly premium of L22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum of L426 8s. 4d.

One or two of the insurance companies have also prepared tables for the endowment of children.  I find, for instance, in the tables issued by the North British and Mercantile that an annual payment of L3 11s. begun at infancy will insure the sum of L100 at twenty-one years of age, with the return of the premium should the child die, or that L35 10s. paid annually will insure the sum of L1,000.  There is also in these tables a method of payment by which, should the father die and the premiums be therefore discontinued, the money will be paid just the same.  No doubt, if the practice were to spread, every insurance company would take up this kind of business.

It is not every young married man who could afford to pay so large a sum of money as L426 in one lump; on the contrary, very few indeed could do so.  But suppose, which is quite possible, that he were to purchase, with the first L12 he could save, a deferred annuity of L1 for his child, and so with the next L12, and so with the next, until he had placed her beyond the reach of actual destitution; and suppose, again, that his conscience was so much awakened to the duty of thus providing for her that amusement