but often we have to wait idle for weeks.  It grows worse and worse, and they say it is not likely to be any better.  We can think of nothing, but whether we shall be able to pay our rent.  Ah! the workpeople are very unhappy now.”  This poor, lovely little girl, at an age when the merchant’s daughters of Boston and New York are just gaining their first experiences of “society,” knew to a farthing the price of every article of food and clothing that is wanted by such a household.  Her thought by day and her dream by night was, whether she should long be able to procure a scanty supply of these, and Nature had gifted her with precisely those qualities, which, unembarrassed by care, would have made her and all she loved really happy; and she was fortunate now, compared with many of her sex in Lyons,—­of whom a gentleman who knows the class well said:  “When their work fails, they have no resource except in the sale of their persons.  There are but these two ways open to them, weaving or prostitution, to gain their bread.”  And there are those who dare to say that such a state of things is well enough, and what Providence intended for man,—­who call those who have hearts to suffer at the sight, energy and zeal to seek its remedy, visionaries and fanatics!  To themselves be woe, who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, the convulsions and sobs of injured Humanity!

My little friend told me she had nursed both her children,—­though almost all of her class are obliged to put their children out to nurse; “but,” said she, “they are brought back so little, so miserable, that I resolved, if possible, to keep mine with me.”  Next day in the steamboat I read a pamphlet by a physician of Lyons in which he recommends the establishment of Creches, not merely like those of Paris, to keep the children by day, but to provide wet-nurses for them.  Thus, by the infants receiving nourishment from more healthy persons, and who under the supervision of directors would treat them well, he hopes to counteract the tendency to degenerate in this race of sedentary workers, and to save the mothers from too heavy a burden of care and labor, without breaking the bond between them and their children, whom, under such circumstances, they could visit often, and see them taken care of as they, brought up to know nothing except how to weave, cannot take care of them.  Here, again, how is one reminded of Fourier’s observations and plans, still more enforced by the recent developments at Manchester as to the habit of feeding children on opium, which has grown out of the position of things there.