*

cure him the means of gratifying his base appetite. I have known a woman do it while her husband has been hard at work. You may put it down as certain that all drunken men or women among the lower class know the pawnshop as well as they do the gin-shop. * I am sorry to say the majority who visit the pawnshop are the imprudent among the working class. Imprudence is often the companion of impudence. There is little or no shame in these customers. They meet and mingle, freely pass their jokes with each other, and banter my Uncle with all the confidence of old friends. It is natural: where there is no shame there is no fear. They are my Uncle's living; they are weekly visitors; it is these that pay; quick returns are his delight. A thousand imprudent customers are worth many hundred pounds annually. But perhaps some of you doubt if the imprudent form the majority, and deserve the name. I used to think pawnbrokers fattened, while other tradesmen grew lean. I know better now. A good harvest-an increasing revenue, with plenty of employment―gladden their hearts as much as they do Her Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When trade is good they thrive. It is, beyond question, the best paid mechanics and the most regularly employed are the very best customers. 'There are few well-doing tradesmen, indeed almost none, who require the pawnbroker; the wages they get are sufficient to save them from it,' was the statement of a manufacturing justice in Scotland to a deputation of pawnbrokers who waited on him. It is the very reverse,' cried one, and I can prove it. They are not alike provident; and how can you make the improvident better? I perhaps count among my customers some of the most sober and industrious men in your honour's own employment. I'll be bound to say nine-tenths (mark that) of the customers are respectable mechanics' wives.' I confess at once this was a knock-down blow to my notions of Scotch prudence. It is quite as bad in England. Get the working classes up a week, and keep them up, and many of us may close our shops. It is by their imprudence we live,' is the candid admission made to myself by some of the most respectable of my Uncles. If these statements are true, it shows that a hundred and forty millions of the hundred and fifty-six annually taken, are from the imprudent, the vicious, and the gay.

The worst feature in the case is, it becomes a habit, as settled and fixed as fainting is to some ladies, or the pipe to some gentlemen-a thing that must be done, despite of regular employment-the capability of getting above it -or the considerable item it adds to the expenses, in the shape of interest. I think of these with regret. The best paid mechanics are not too well paid. The skill they display-their endurance of toil-the position they occupy in what constitutes the wealth of a nation— make what they get deserving of a better fate than swelling my Uncle's stock, or contributing to his wealth, and diminishing to a great extent their own comforts. But if the vicious and imprudent deserve censure, there are the needy who merit sympathy. Whatever abuses exist, and however much the facility afforded for getting a little ready cash may be taken advantage of, there is a necessity for the existence of pawnshops arising from the ever-changing circumstances of the working class.

*

I asked, when standing in a wareroom, if they could tell the needy from the imprudent. 'Oh, yes,' was the reply; 'the order in which the articles are brought tell us at once. We get first a shawl, then a dress, and so on to every article a woman can spare. Then comes the husband's clothing— always last in pledge, and first to be redeemed.' It will not be out of place to tell you how the needy customers are produced. Want of employment will do it in many cases. There are other causes, however, more distressing still. Note that genteel-looking woman leaving the side-door, gripping firmly the

silver received in return for the pledge left. Let her history tell you; it will be one among many. Till lately, no care has settled on her brow, no sorrow eaten into her heart. Home, sweet home,' she could sing with rapture. The partner of her life has been true to his vows, and she has been true to hers. They have been blessed with enough for every want-if not abundance-all reaped from his toil. All was well, cheerful, and happy. Now affliction has stopped the supply, and laid the strong man low-all is changed.

'Their sorrows are no phantoms of the night,

No idle tale;

No cloud that floats across a sky of light,
On a summer gale.

They are the true realities of earth.'

Affliction brings an increase of expenditure, as we all know; and, generally with the poor, diminished resources. Pain requires a cordial to soothe; weakness, nourishment to support. The supply from friends is not like the widow's oil; they oftentimes fail in the hour of need. How can necessity be supplied? Hope and fortitude seldom fail in a loving-hearted woman. These are the alternatives-sell or pledge. The last is chosen in hope, though followed out with reluctance. Who will blame? I am prepared to applaud; especially as it is certain her apparel went without a sigh-his with a heavy heart. The lives of the most distressed families prove the proverb, "When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window,' a gross libel. It is the time when love reaches its climax in woman, makes it manifest, proves its power, and shows her to be a helpmate indeed. I would that I could depict in appropriate language, and had the rich to hear me, the privations of some of the poor ere they gave way to the stern necessity of pledging imposed on them. It would prove that natures as noble exist in the lowly cottage-in pinching want, covered with rags, struggling for life-as are to be found in the high places of the earth, and help to break down the pride of caste and the dignity of position, and bring out what are primary truths of revelation. God has made of one blood the high and low, the rich and poor, and makes character, not position, the ground of respect and love. I am convinced, however, that one day there will be no want of a herald to proclaim-Virtue in poverty is more dignified than gilded crime-more acceptable to a beneficent Creator, and ought to be more attractive to men.-From The Three Gilt Balls; or, My Uncle, his Stock-in-Trade and Customers.' A Lecture. By T. TURNER. London: E. Marlborough and Co.

PASTOR FLIEDNER, OF KAISERWERTH.

Miss Nightingale, who spent some months at Kaiserwerth in 1857, has published the following remarks :—

'Pastor Fliedner died (in harness) on the 4th of October, at the Deaconesses' Institution at Kaiserwerth-on-the-Rhine, near Dusseldorf, which he had founded. He lived to preside at the thirty-first celebration of the anniversary of this his foundation, which he began in September, 1833, with one "sister," one female_criminal, and no money, in a small summer-house in his pastor's garden. But though he willingly kept himself in the background on this thirty-first anniversary, he was so exhausted after it, having long been suffering from chest disease, that the medical man ordered him entire rest and change of air. He went to the Convalescent Institution which he himself had founded for his sick deaconesses, but came back for the confirmation of two of his sons on Sept. 25, and all then saw he was dying. But he had time to collect all his children about him, to give them

precious

precious words of exhortation, and to speak to them, too, quite simply and openly about his own death, of which he said, "It needs only to be as a little child going to its father." He was in the last agony on Tuesday, Oct. 4. But hymns were sung and prayers offered aloud, at his own desire, all that Tuesday morning, as he sat in his chair. And the deaconesses were all admitted into his room, by tens and twelves, to see him and to join in these hymns and prayers, till two o'clock, when he died. His last words were "Victory!" and "Overcome!" Pastor Fliedner created a hospital, a penitentiary and asylums for females released from prison, an orphan asylum, a normal school, an infant school, and lastly, a lunatic asylum-the whole to serve as training schools for his deaconesses, whom he also trained as parish deaconesses. The mother house was at Kaiserwerth. But his sisters are not only all over Germany, but all over the world, from the East to North America, from Italy to London, at the German Hospital, Dalston. He has deaconesses at Jerusalem, Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, and Bucharest, and since 1860, he has (as stated in the number of "Evangelical Christendom" of October, 1862) at Beyrout and Sidon, given a Christian harbour to the orphan children and sufferers from the Lebanon massacre, under his deaconesses' wing. In the spring of this year (1864) there were four hundred and fifteen deaconesses belonging to Kaiserwerth, of whom two hundred and fifty-six were full sisters; three hundred and three are at work at one hundred and three stations in Germany and abroad. Besides these, twenty were at work in the war hospitals of Schleswig-Holstein, ten more had been asked for by the War Minister, but only some of the ten could be spared to go. In the Schleswig-Holstein war-hospitals were more Danes and Roman Catholic Austrians than Prussians. (So much the better. The Roman Catholics now know how evangelical sisters of charity can work.) Thirty-three sisters are at work as parish deaconesses in twenty-five parishes, but yearly have applications for sisters to be refused. The harvest truly is ready, but the labourers are still too few. Seventy-five sisters devoted to education only (of whom thirty-one are full sisters) are included among the above four hundred and fifteen. But this number gives no idea of the work of training mistresses for infant schools, elementary schools, industrial schools, young ladies' boarding schools, and governesses for private families, which goes on at Kaiserwerth; one thousand and seven have been thus trained, who work freely for the good cause, but do not enter as deaconesses; and, blessed as is the work of the latter, perhaps the former work has an equally world-wide influence for good. When arrived at their destination, the schoolmistresses try, by Sunday-schools, by visits to the poorer children at home, by friendly acquaintance with the mothers, to spread the real work of education. At the young ladies' boarding-schools, besides excellent instruction, the girls can, if the parents wish it, receive an initiation into housekeeping, cooking, and dressmaking. They are exercised in gymnastics and in the open air. And they have all the beautiful German music-teaching. A few stations (e.g., London) were also originally started with Pastor Fliedner's deaconesses, who still administer them, though no longer attached to Kaiserwerth. And when we consider that all this was done at an annual expense (last year) of about £7,500 (plus a sum of about £1,500, spent in building in 1863), we may truly say, never was so much good effected with such small means. And all this has been accomplished in little more than a quarter of a century-in twenty-seven short years, or, including the Penitentiary, which was Pastor Fliedner's first work, thirtyone. They ask our prayers from Kaiserwerth for the continuance of his work. He leaves a widow who was as efficient a "mother" to the deaconesses as he was a "father," and seven children without provision. His daughter is married to Pastor Disselhoff, who ably seconded him in the institution. They ask our prayers, not for these fatherless children and widow, but for

his work. Let us, then, after returning thanks to Almighty God for the life and works of this good man, pray that it may please Him to raise up men who will continue the work, which belongs more to Him than to us,in the same spirit of poverty and of taking up the cross, of purity and of a sound mind, which His servant Fliedner did."

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