attempted suicides; persons arrested on suspicion (and frequently found innocent); young girls taken up for disorderly conduct or because found in questionable company,—all these are liable to be brought to the station-house, a place which officials represent as "wholly unfit for a decent woman." These arrested women are often irresponsible for the time being, careless of their person, and regardless of the commonest laws of decency. Their clothing is often disarranged and unfastened, and they are liable to be in a condition totally unfit for appearance in court. The matron should be provided with such articles as womanly thought will suggest, and she should accompany her charge to the court room and remain by her until release or sentence removes her from her care. Among these will be found some for whom the matron may intercede, and who, upon her representation, may be taken to some "home," and life for them thus receive an upward lift, instead of the almost fatal plunge downward of the police court. There will be children of varying ages, from the babe born in the station-house to the poor child in short dresses, the victim of home neglect or of some one's vile lust; and drunken women with infants in their arms, who need some woman to rescue them, for the time being, from their own unmotherly grasp, and to prevent them from nursing the alcoholized milk which would be offered them. Night will sometimes be made hideous by women raving with drunken delirium, or maddened by the fiery draught to foulest deeds of rage and shame; but "the right woman will not fail in such emergencies or be dismayed by such depths of degradation, but rather see in it the why of her calling. Any one of the classes named will be better off for the matron's presence, and the worst will be found more amenable to her touch and voice than to the average policeman, be he ever so well disposed. How far police duty and supervision may be combined with the missionary work needed, both in the station and in following up special cases, will depend, of course, largely upon the locality, the number of arrests, and the general demands of the service.

Whatever else may seem uncertain at the beginning of the work, there is one thing sure-" the right woman" will find her time occupied, and exercise for all her tact, patience, and consecration; and any one who takes the position merely for the salary or from sentimental notions, will pretty surely resign at the end of the first quarter, or those interested in the success of the movement will seek for some one else to fill the

place. Difficult as it may seem to secure one who combines these qualifications, yet it will doubtless prove, as in many another important position where much is demanded, that the best available person is selected who, under the emergency, develops unexpected fitness, and who in time comes to compel approval and indorsement even from those who hesitated in committing to her this trust.

In every city where the appointment of a police matron is secured, there should be a committee from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, upon whom the matron can rely for such help as she will assuredly need, and an "Open Door or "Temporary Refuge" will prove an absolute necessity if much rescue work, which was the primary thought in the reform, is to be undertaken.

In time, there will be womanly supervision in the transportation of women to the various institutions to which they are consigned; and the police matron will hasten the day, by her womanly forethought, for the women passing from her care, besides strengthening her influence over them. Indeed, the presence of the police matron will often prevent carelessness on many points, and deliberate wrong in others. Ten years ago the movement was sneered at; ten years hence no city will be without one or more such officers.

All along the lines of the National Department advanced plans are yearly sent forth, and every State and Territory made some attempt to carry them out. During the last year hundreds of services have been held in hitherto neglected places. These were of a varied nature, preaching, prayer and conference meetings, Bible classes, Sunday schools, literary and musical entertainments; in some of which young people and children assisted. Said the keeper of one of the most desolate places: "It's funny to see how the men try to clean up for the women's meetings.'

One of the convicts told an officer, "I can stand the chaplains preaching, but those women, with their tearful pleading, break me all up; home and mother seem realities again."

The Prison Flower Mission, cared for and directed by Jennie Carsuday, from her sick room in Louisville, Ky., has proved a blessed ministry to hundreds, and an opening wedge for the gospel message of hope and help.

Great numbers of bibles, testaments, helps for bible study, prayer, hymn, school, and library books have been supplied, and millions of pages of gospel and temperance leaflets and papers distributed, thus displacing dime novels and cards.

Book-cases, wall-rolls, illuminated mottoes, and pledge cards have been furnished, with Christmas boxes and Easter offerings by the thousands. Organs have been given, and others loaned for chapel services.

Petitions for needed reforms have been widely circulated, co-operation with other organizations gladly given, and scores of articles furnished the press, all of which have helped to arouse to action those not identified with the W. C. T. Union, and who perhaps had larger influence in certain directions.

Letter writing, to and for the inmates, has proved helpful. Visiting the friends of prisoners, giving sympathy, advice, and aid, have proved a practical illustration of the words, “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

Several States have inaugurated the "Prison Gate Mission," which is an important branch, and aims to have its missionaries meet the prisoners on their release, with help and hope, in the most practical ways. "Temporary Homes" and "OpenDoors are offering shelter and work, and thousands of lives redeemed attest the genuineness of these varied efforts put forth in quietness but with great faith.

Many of the State superintendents of this department have given years of untiring labor, often furnishing their own supplies at great personal sacrifice. Brave, true-hearted, and practical, they have disarmed criticism, walked unharmed in dangerous places; never dropping into sentiment or refusing attention to established rules, they have won recognition from all right-minded officials and citizens.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

Thus, glancing backward, and passing'in hasty review what has been attempted and accomplished since 1830, we catch a glimpse of what is now waiting to be done, and the call is so imperative, that we must express our thanksgiving for the past by bringing all the force of combined action to bear upon needed reforms in the present. We believe that woman has special endowments for these lines of work, and that her absence from them has been a source of weakness and failure.

We must familiarize ourselves with the questions of penalogy, the relation of the State to its vicious and dependent classes; contract labor and the lessee system with their attendant evils; congregate and separate imprisonment; prison discipline, with reformatory measures and institutions.

We should demand the absolute separation of the sexes, and

juvenile from older offenders; also matrons to care for women arrested or committed.

Visit unannounced police stations and courts, with county jails, where women are under care of men, or "left to themselves," and compare their looks and manners with those in similar places where the right kind of matron bears sway with a firm hand and dignified presence. Women should be associated with men as prison inspectors, and women physicians on boards to care for women and children. Greater efforts should be put forth in the lines of reclamation, opening the way to a return to honesty and self-support; but double diligence should be given to removing the varied causes of crime, thus proving ourselves wise citizens in the truest sense of the word.

XV.

CARE OF THE INDIAN.

BY

AMELIA STONE QUINTON.

THE work of women for the Indians within our national limits has been important and of many kinds. It would require much more than the space of a single volume at all fitly to describe the labor, self-sacrifice, and heroism of women in connection with the various missionary organizations in behalf of the red man. Some of the stories of such work read like heroic romance, are worthy to be recorded in an epic, and glow with delineations that reveal exalted unselfishness,* divine selfdevotement, and sometimes a success that seems a fitting crown for such labor, albeit the crown, as so often to high souls in any vocation, comes after the martyrdom. In the East, in the Southwest, and in the Northwest thrilling annals might be gathered from two centuries, oftenest of those unknown to fame and without even public recognition, who have laid down life in work for the Christianization of Indians, and of some women who as overworked secretaries or other officials have no less laid down life in labor to sustain such missionaries. But this is a realm for the biographer and for the historian of Christian missions, and must not be entered upon or even gleaned from in a sketch so limited as the present one must be.

In the educational work of various types done for the native Indians, noble women have been engaged, and this is notably true of the Hampton, Virginia, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Indian schools, where gifted women of high culture have devoted some of their best years to the elevation of the red race. It would seem invidious to name a few where many

* See the story of Mrs. McFarland's work, in " Alaska," by Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D.

See "Mary and I,” by Rev. Dr. Stephen R. Riggs.