A IRAGEDY OF PRESENT-DAY FRANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2983, 17 May 1911, Page 93

A IRAGEDY OF PRESENT-DAY FRANCE.

The old story of “Hop-o’-my-Thumb” has been repeated under modern conditions in Paris. ~ , , ,1, Five little boys, the eldest of thun seven and the youngest of them- two years old, walked hand-in-Hand about the great hall of the General Post Cilice asiang for their father. . “Father,” the eldest said, is a postman. He brought us here tins morning, left us, saying that he would be bacK soon, and now the lights are lit father has not returned', and we are hungry. The five children were taken to an office, and a meal was given to them. they were then put under the car© of a kind official while the police were searching tor the father. They found him at last. His name is Tichit, and his story carries its moral "with ’.t. , ~ Tichit was brought up m a brotherhood, became a novice, hut did not become a monk. He left the brotherhood married, and had five children. To support them and his wife he became postman in the little town of Suey-en-Brie, where the cheeses come from, and for some time all went well with him and his little family. ~ . . , „ But one day the deputy of the district, a Socialist, discovered that Tichit was a He had not stolen, he had not neglected his work, his letters were delivered punctually, and on this bead there was no word to be said against him. But Tichit was a criminal for all that. He had .committed an unforgivable crime agamst SoCialist France. In the evening he bad augmented his slender income by giving private lessons to children in the neighbourhood. One must have lived in France to realise the terrible enormity of this offence. it is dangerous for a French official nowadays to be seen taking off his hat to a priest in the street, and for his children to be baptised is almost equivalent to handing in bis resignation. . But for a State-employed man to disregard the syndical rights of schoolmasters, and to give private lessons, simply anathema. ~ , , The Mayor sent for Tichit, and accused him of his crime. The postman answered that he had a wife and five children. He was told that he must either give up his postman’s work or promise not to teach in future. . , He gave up the teaching, and a few weeks later he was sent in disgrace to a smaller town —a little place called. Beynes. Tichit had been earning a yearly income of £B2 from his work for the Post Office at Suey, which, with the extra money he made by his lessons, gave him and his family enough to live on. His wife had earned £l6 a year by carrying telegrams, and the two on. their small income were quite happy. But at Beynes their life changed. to begin with-, the Christmas boxes there were £22 less every year than they had been at Suey. There was no extra pay for summer work, for Suey is considered a holiday resort, and Beynes is not. Besides, at Beynes Tichit was telegraph hoy as well as letter-carrier himself, and so there was no extra pay. . ~ So for a little while Tichit, his wife, and the five children struggled along on rather less than £4O a year. In addition to this poverty the man felt that he was looked on by his superiors in office as a danoerous and unprincipled person. Madame Tichit fell ill and died, and the widower’s situation became more impossible than ever, for in the country the woman’s work is of immense importance to a household where the income is small. Tichit’s children, too, were boys, all five of them. At seven years old in the country there are little girls who become the small mothers of their brothers. Titchit’s boys had no elder sister, and Titchit was out all day. He was at Ins wits’ end. He and his boys had lived on next to nothing for a week. There was no money in the bouse, and the postman could see no- way of getting any if he continued to be honest. So he put honesty aside, slipped into the train for Paris with his five small boys, man--aged to evade the ticket collectors, and, arriving in Paris, wandered out into the streets, the children' trotting after him. For two days the six of them lived on the ornaments Tichit sold one by one; but he could find no employment, and no place in which to live in Paris owing to the little children and his poverty.

Then Tichit with his five children went to see the responsible Minister for the Postal Department. Poor Tichit had no half-pence to spend on newspapers. He did not know that there was a Ministerial crisis in France, and that Monsieur le Ministre was likely to be busy with his own affairs. He went to the Ministry, was sent from room to room and door to door, and finally left in despair, and hungrier than ever. And it was then that Tichit, sitting on a stone bench by the river, remembered the tale of "Hop-o'-my-Thumb." He varied it a little. He dragged his weary feet andl his five boys down to the General Post Office, and lost them in the great hall instead of in a forest. And some days later the police found Tichit. He is not to be punished by the courts for his desertion of his children. It was in the river they found him.