Entering the Madeleine, one sees an interior richly adorned, floors of marble, and lofty columns supporting a three-domed roof, through which light enters.  On either side are six confessionals of oak and gilt, where prince and peasant alike confess their sins.  Beyond is the altar of spotless marble.  How beautiful the group of white figures, which represents Madeleine forgiven, and borne above on angels’ wings!  This artistic group cost thirty thousand dollars.

On Sunday morning Leo and his friends came to the Madeleine which is the metropolitan church of Paris.  Here every Sunday exquisite music is rendered, and here come the elite to worship and to add liberal gifts.  It is a broad policy that no Catholic Church on the globe, not even splendid St. Peter’s of Rome, is considered too good for rich and poor of all nationalities to occupy together for the worship of the Master.

All the Parisian churches are crowded on Sunday mornings, but Sunday afternoons are used as holidays, and all kinds of vehicles and trains are burdened with well dressed people in pursuit of pleasure.

Traveling by omnibus and tramway in Paris is made as convenient to the public as possible; nobody is permitted to ride without a seat, and there are frequent waiting stations under cover.  This is as it should be.  Nearly a hundred lines of omnibuses and tramways in Paris intersect each other in every direction.  Inside the fares are six cents, outside three cents.  A single fare allows of a transfer from one line to another.  Railways surround Paris, thus enabling the public to reach easily the many pretty suburbs and villages.

Both Mrs. Harris and Gertrude on their return to the Grand Hotel were glad to find letters from the men they loved.  George wrote Gertrude that he was amazed at the enormous capacity of the manufacturing plants which he and Colonel Harris were visiting; that both labor and capital were much cheaper than in America.  His closing words were, “Learn all you can, darling, I shall soon come to claim you.”

Gertrude had read of the laundries on the Seine, so she left the hotel early with her mother and Alfonso to see them, while Leo, Lucille, and May went to study contemporaneous French masterpieces in the Luxembourg palace and gallery.  The public wash houses on the Seine are large floating structures with glass roofs, steaming boilers, and rows of tubs foaming with suds.  Hard at work, stand hundreds of strong and bare armed women, who scrub and wring their linen, while they sing and reply to the banter of passing bargee or canotier.

If the sun is shining and the water is clear, the blue cotton dresses of the women contrast prettily with white linen and bare arms busily employed.  Though they earn but a pittance, about five cents an hour, yet they are very independent; mutual assistance is their controlling creed, and few, if any, honor more loyally the republican principle of liberty, equality and fraternity.  The women seemed to do all the hard work, while the men in snowy shirts and blue cotton trousers, with scarlet girdles about their waists, pushed deftly to and fro the hot flat or box irons over white starched linen.