A "girls' home" has been started by some of the
n&nbein44 Church in West London, not as a reformatory or penitentiary, but as a "place in which girls who are growing up in neglect, and are likely to fall into evil courses, may live under wholesome Christian discipline, learn to be needlewomen, housemaids, cooks, &c., and also learn reading, writing, arithmetic, and singing." A committee, on which we observe the Rev. F. D. Maurioe's name, and a ladies' committee, with some very good names, has been formed, and a house has been taken in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, and a matron engaged. There will be room for thirty or forty girls, and a beginning has already been made with two little girls, the youngest of whom, aged seven, in answer to the question, "Now, Polly, what do you call a blessing?" answered instantly, and with great unconscious pathos, " treacle ;" while the elder one, aged eleven, with almost equally unconscious irony calls the mistress alternatively "the mystery" and "the misery,"—" the Misery has just been showing me how to clean boots." The poor child has, we hope, escaped the misery, rather than found her. The Treasurer of the Girls' Home is George William Bell, Esq., at the National Provincial Bank of England, 28 Baker Street, W., and treasurers to those kind of institutions never have too much money.
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