A SHARP CONTRAST.

Evening Star, Issue 9830, 19 October 1895, Page 4 (Supplement)

A SHARP CONTRAST.

An American, the son of an. American millionaire and politician and a young man, of thirty, gave a farewell dinner to his Paris' friends in a fashionable restaurant of the Bois do Boulogne. One of the primary objeotß of thiß entertainment, the Paris correspondent of the 'Daily News' says, was to show that meney was no object to' the host. There were twenty-two guests. Each one was supplied by the host with a private coup and pair to drive to the Bois and back. The dining room was decorated with flowers out of season, and luminous fountains playing upon large rooks of ice kept the air cool. The dinner, or rather gorge, showed splendid disregard of cost. There was none of the meanness of Europeans, who are not ashamed, even when wealthy, to make a dish do duty for a whole party. Each guest had before him a whole leg of mutton, a whole salmon, a truffled fowl, a basket of peaches, and a double magnum of champagne, besides bottles of fine wines. At dessert a bag was passed round from which each guest was .asked to draw a keepsake, consisting of emerald links, pearl studs, cigarette cases in gold inlaid with jewels, etc. In contrast to the above the same journal gave the following from its Vienna correspondent :—Another trial has shown the miserable conditions under which women have to earn their bread and keep their relations. A woman of twenty-one, delicate, married, and mother of a child that died some months ago after a long illness, sold a few cravats which her employer had entrusted her with, and the damage suffered by the employer is Is. Questioned by the judge, the young woman explained the circumstances. Her husband, who is consumptive, has been abed some time, and she has to keep him and herself by sewing cravats. The regular payment is for sewing one dozen, but a3 she has no machine of her own she must pay Jd for every dozen. All she earns, therefore, is 2d for the dozen. By sewing from early morning until late at night she can earn 15d a day, but she cannot give an hour to her husband or her household. On the day when she sold her employer's property her landlady turned her and her sick husband out of doors because she could not pay the rent, and it was to induce another landlady to let them in that she sold the pieces of stuff. The judge asked her why she had not asked for an advance. She dared not, because once before she had lost her work in this way. An employer, whose name the young woman would; not give, had said: "If you cannot wait until Saturday you are not respectable. I will not give you any more work." The judge was so shocked at this state of things that he adjourned the case to ascertain the regular amount of wages paid for this kind of work.