A BENEVOLENT COUNTESS.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Issue 16, 19 January 1878, Page 3

A BENEVOLENT COUNTESS.

The London correspondent of the Cincinnati " Commercial " writes :—" A very interesting, and at the same time unobtrusive work has been going on in London through the duvotion of a truly ' noble' lady—tho Countess Ebersburg. Sonio years ago this Countess lost her two babies, ana she then consocrated hor fortune and life to the singlo work of saving the lives of children. As she began to examino' the subject, sho met with tho statemont that in England two hundred thousand children die annually under tho age of 5, and of these 3 pur cent, die of preventable cnusos. Sho wrate to tho Registrar Ocncral to ask if

ibis rate of infant moiuiit;. i- really true .in! received confirmation of it. Then she set Icrself to the task of going around and visiting the poor and coiiventng with mothers, she found these poor mothers so hopelessly ignorant of the most primary laws of health, and if they knew them so entirely unable (from drudgery and poverty) to practice lliem. that she (the Countess) gradually felt her way to some kind of practical method. In the first place she instituted weekly mothers' meetings, which might be attended by those who were able, at which she gave them instructions in economizing their poor means, and in the kinds of food most nourishing, and answered from the best authorities the mothers' questions as to treating their own and their children's ailments. The Countess is highly educated and quite able to impart information. As an illustration of how minutely she studies the situation of these mothers, I may mention that she found that, in their desire to mako their little means go as far as passible, they were pretty generally in the habit of buying a salt herring for breakfast, because it can be bought for a penny. But the herring makes the husband or son thirsty ; after it he goes aud spends two-pence for beer. So she persuaded th« mother that the herring is a delusive economy, and the instruction has been justified. The countess next drew upon her own means, and those of her friends, to provide malted-food extract and similar things for ailing children, and by spending about £4OO a year in this way, saving many lives. The ill-spelt, tear-blotted letters of gratitude showered upon her by grateful mothers are preserved by her as proudly as any warrior preserves the medals that reward hi.s successful slaughters. No cry of mother or child has ever been unheeded. Gradually she has extended her plans to include a children's retreat in the country for babies whose lives depend on a change of air, aud a day nursery, where women may leave their children in good care while they are at work. Her work is now arranged in districts amid tho poorest parts of London, and she distributes some nine thousand pounds of baby food per annum. Instruction OS to health is given in four different centers. A great many leaflets containing simple sanitary instructions are also distributed. The crusade of this gentle Countess against Herod, though it has attracted no attention iu royal circles here, seems to have been heard of elsewhere, and the Empress of Russia last year sent the Countess a donation for \v-.r work, and a warm letter of sympathy. The Grand Duchess of Baden has this year done the same. If a few more ladies in London were to go and do likewise, especially those wealthy and titled ladies who, the physicians say, are often invalids through sheer lack of interest in anything at all, the Registrar General's ugly statistics would soon show a change, and the annual massacre of the innocents assume less frightful proportions. It is rather a singularexampleof thedifierence between the lawn of cause and effect in the physical and the moral worlds that the death of two babes in a home of luxury should have led to the salvation of many in the homes of poverty.