The Cautionary Card of that admirable institution, the Charity Organization
Society, has just reached us. Its object is to warn subscribers of the Society against certain persons and institutions appealing for support about whom special information is available in the Society's records. One paragraph from the little memo- randum issued with the card is as remarkable for its wit as for its wisdom. The passage about the young Armenian girl reminds one, indeed, of the famous passage in Voltaire's Candide about Mile. Cunegonde :- " Some stories told in begging appeals never grow old and never' seem to need alteration. They must be successful, for they continue to be told, year in and year out, without any change except, perhaps, of name and address. The sailor who demands an immediate remittance to enable him to get to Hartlepool is still trying to reach his destination. The housemaid of many years ago (it is a man) is still in dire want. The young Armenian girl, ruined by Turkish brutality in 1922, first began to be ruined in the Bulgarian atrocities of 1875. The family forced by dire distress to sell scissors in the streets, and the man who sends telegraphic money order forms to the clergy for completion and payment, are still in the same need of assistance. The poet and scholar of Hove, who weighs only four and a-half stone, still uses under many aliases the same address in Ranelagh Villas, and still boasts the same motto : Auduces Fortuna Juvat.' "
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