girl in search of work, the young servant in search of a situation, who arrives in London without a lodging to go to, there are but two alternatives-the common lodging house or the casual ward. Lodging houses of the Rowton type would alter this unhappy state of things, and Mrs. Higgs and Lady Maclaren made suggestions as to what such houses should provide. Lady Maclaren urged that 'They should be for women only; they should not allow drink to be sold, they should possess means for washing both the person and clothes of the inmates.' Mrs. Higgs further advocated that poor women should be allowed to cook their own food. Relations can often find food for them though not money; and the women prefer to cook their own food, poor things, because from day to day it is an uncertain quantity and even a small extra charge is beyond their reach.

Yet these counsels and suggestions, wise though they were, could only remain in the air'; the main need was the money to carry them out.

Let me carry my story back again, then, to days before the National Conference held its meetings in the Guildhall-to the time, eight years ago, when I was a member of the London County Council. Seeing the hopelessness of any practical result following the Council's discussions, I determined to apply to my old friend, Lord Rowton, and to ask him to supply what was wanted. He at first hesitated. He feared that the difficulties which he had so nobly overcome in his houses for men would be too great in attempting to supply the same privileges to women, but on further consideration he wrote saying that if £40,000 could be forthcoming he would try the experiment. The raising of such a sum seemed impossible. But I had heard of the wealth and generosity of Mrs. Lewis, the widow of the well-known Mr. S. Lewis, and I asked a great friend of hers whether it would be any use to apply to her for help. He told me that any application for a small sum would share the fate of hundreds of others which Mrs. Lewis was in the habit of receiving, and would be consigned to the waste paper basket.

Taking my friend's hint, I wrote a letter stating all the facts I could put together and boldly asking for £40,000 as a charitable investment.

To this appeal it was not surprising that I received no answer. But my delight may be imagined when, at her death, that Dea ex machina bequeathed £50,000 and a share of her residuary estate for the erection and maintenance of a Home for Women on

the principles of a Rowton House. And so what seemed impossible
has become an actual fact. This glorious legacy of Mrs. Lewis'
enabled the trustees to build in the New Kent Road a fine airy
building capable of accommodating 240 women, and the requirements
of the National Association for Women's Lodging Houses have been
more than met. Separate cubicles with good beds and clean linen-
ample washing accommodation for each occupant with the privacy
of partitions-brushing rooms and laundries where they can wash
their clothes-dressing rooms and hot chambers where the clothes
can be dried in five minutes-a separate locker for each woman-
a spacious reading room-sewing room, and common sitting room,
all well warmed and lighted—a large dining room where food can
be had at the lowest possible cost, or where the occupants can cook
their own food, and a large sunny terrace garden which will be made
bright with plants and flowers. All these will shortly be at the
women's disposal. The charge for a night will in all probability be
sixpence, or for those who remain for the week three shillings.
There will be a few larger rooms which sisters or mother and
daughter can live in more permanently at the rate of five shillings
a week.

The buildings, which are to be called the Ada Lewis Home, are to be opened this month. Mrs. Higgs, who has visited the Home, is delighted with all she saw and hopes it may be a model to be followed through all England.

MAHARAJPORE AND PUNNIAR.

ON the 29th of May, the anniversary of King Charles' Restoration, the In-Pensioners of Chelsea Hospital paraded, as is their annual wont, in memory of their founder. His Majesty the King availed. himself of the occasion in the past year to inspect the six companies of invalids of his army, and more than a century had elapsed since the sovereign last did so. When George III. inspected his InPensioners there must have been men there who had fought in the American Rebellion, and the wars with France for Canada, and even men, one or two, who had been at Culloden Moor. When King George V. took the parade the other day, the oldest veteran in the place was a survivor of the Gwalior Campaign of 1843, and only one was left in the Hospital, though there are probably a few more scattered through the length and breadth of the land. Within the red brick quadrangle of the centre court, the old soldiers formed three sides of a square, round the statue of 'Old Rowley,' which in memory of the escape after Worcester, in the oak tree, was dressed in green. No place in London perhaps records the lapse of time so little as the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. The same old red buildings, built by Christopher Wren; the same old standards in the chapel, the same carving by Grinling Gibbons, the same old men in the same old Georgian hat and coat. Nay, not the same old men for ever! Yes, the same old men, with the same rugged old faces and gnarled features and white beards. Well, perhaps, not the same; for the Waterloo medals seem to have disappeared, and the bronze Gwalior stars are gone, and Crimean medals are few. So perhaps the men have changed; mais plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, for the English don't change, and young Bangs of the Dragoons who eloped with Lady Kitty becomes old Bangs of the Senior as like as two peas to grandfather Bangs who had lost a leg at Quatre Bras, and who had flirted outrageously with grandmother Kitty.

So instead of hearing from Bill Adams of the good advice he had given 'Nosey' hard by the sunken lane at Sart à Walhain, His Majesty heard from the survivor of Maharajpore, how the field had gone with him that day fifty-seven years ago, and as few perhaps know as old Caspar did, 'what 'twas all about,'

some account of it may be of interest. That is to say, how two pitched battles at Maharajpore and Punniar came to be fought near Gwalior on the same day twelve miles apart in the heart of British India, so recently as 1843, and what Sir Hugh Gough, Lord Ellenborough, the Governor-General, and the boy Sindia had to do with it. It came about in this wise. The country was settling down to peace and prosperity after the shock and strain of the wars in Afghanistan. The avenging army under General Pollock had returned from Kabul, with the escaped prisoners, and General Nott's army. The war-stained troops had defiled through the almost openly hostile Punjab, Lord Ellenborough had received them at Ferozepore on a field of the cloth of gold, and men were forgetting the tragedies and recriminations of the episode. The Governor-General was busy at plans for the improved government of the land, and save for the rattle of the sabre in the scabbard in the land of the Five Rivers, which Government could not help hearing, all was peace. Early in the year, it is true, there had been some desperate fighting in Sind between the old war hound Charlie Napier' and the Amirs of that land, but under his vigorous and original military government, the newly acquired territories were fast settling down. South of the Sutlej in the great peninsula of Hindostan all was apparent peace, and the British had held undisputed sway for nearly half a century.

On February 7, 1843, died Junkojee Rao Sindia, without heir. For forty years, ever since Lake and Wellesley had crushed the French trained armies that De Boigne and Perron had raised for Daulut Rao, the ruler of Gwalior, known always by the title of Sindia, there had been friendship between the Company's Government and that State. When Junkojee Rao died childless, he left a widow, Tara Bye, aged thirteen. To her, Government accorded the privilege of adopting a relative as heir, after the custom of the Hindus. This, however, failed to secure peace, for there were two claimants for the office of regent. These were the Mama Sahib, or maternal uncle of the late ruler, and Dada Khasjeewala, the State treasurer, generally known, to the delight of the British soldiery, as the Mama and the Dada. Intrigue followed intrigue, and the Governor-General selected the former as regent, while the widow and her faction favoured the Dada. In the redoubled intrigues for which such a situation was so suited, the powerful army delighted to share. This army consisted

of 30,000 regular soldiers, horse and foot, and 10,000 light horsemen, with a large park of artillery. It possessed many of the habits, and much of the organisation and tradition of the French and Italian officers of the days of De Boigne, and it was a powerful weapon for evil in bad hands. The rank and file consisted, not of Marathas, although they were the ruling race, but of Brahmins and Rajputs of Oude, that race of hereditary soldiers, who, since the disappearance of the old Hindu kingdoms, had served any master in search of a staunch soldiery.

In the wars of the Marquis Wellesley, the Marathas had appealed to the Sikhs, by reason of the common Hinduism of their faiths to stand by them against the British, while at the time of Maharajpore, the Sikhs were ever preaching to the Marathas the need for joining them in a common cause against the British. With 40,000 turbulent soldiery in the very heart of Hindustan, and British India and the Sikhs spoiling for a fight, there was good enough reason for anxiety in the Government of India, and for the assembly of an army of exercise near Agra, ready to become a field force if need be. The actual trend of events which brought our Government to a pass so foreign to their wishes were briefly as follows. All the rains and autumn the situation had been boiling up. The Dada's party, supported by the army and the Queen Mother, opposed the Mama in every way, the Dada refusing the honourable mission which would have removed him, of taking dead Sindia's ashes to the Ganges. The Ranee through the agency of the inevitable clever slave girl was intriguing also with the troops. This lady the Resident deported, on a pension; but the situation was out of hand, and the Mama knew not how to grasp the nettle danger with the hand courage, and it may be remarked that the Resident's presence must have weakened him, since the Maratha methods of easing the situation, with the cup, the dagger and the bowstring must have been to a great extent denied him.

The Ranee, suddenly attempted a coup d'état and reported to the Resident that she had dismissed the Regent, viz., the Mama. But as the Mama had proved so unfit to rule with the bowdlerised methods at his disposal, the Governor-General did not support him, although it was necessary for the Resident to mark his displeasure at the insult to our nominee, by leaving the Court of Gwalior. The Dada then attempted to take the helm, and rallied to himself all who were disaffected to the English. But the army, now mutinous and headstrong, became a third and independent factor.