TEE CHARITY FUND.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 813, 16 May 1871, Page 3

TEE CHARITY FUND.

[BY AN OLD PARISIAN.] This great Charity Fund has done a vast deal of good. I never beheld a more curious scene than the bestowal of good gifts at the warehouse of Mr Moore, in the Place des Petits Peres. When I last saw it, all was in admirable working order—much thanks to Mr Jump an'l Mr Crampshire—and at the work night and day. After all, it is a great romance of real life to feed for even one day 91,200 mouths ! It has been my luck to assist at a smaller distribution which was effected with equal skill—thanks to Colonel Stuart Wortley and Mr Moore, and to certain domestic efforts of the lady of the house; and it certainly revealed to me one of the moat striking and harrowing episodes of this time of horrors. In three mornings 150 families, representing on the average 450 human beings, have received ample food for two days ; but the terrible thing to see is the class of people whom famine and siege fever Mve compelled to seek food—a class that could not wait in the streets for one or two reasons; they were delicate ladies, whom such waiting would have Wled, or clerks, or professors, or men busy from morning to night, to whom Way meant the loss of a day's pay and perhaps a situation. In the apart ments to which I refer it was possible, with an introduction from some friend, to get quietly what could be given, Without any delay. I never realised toe horrors of the siege so much as when seeing these applicants. There is, as I have said, plenty of food, at a Price, but no money. The people to whom I refer may be placed in three C]aßßeß—those who cannot get remittances from home (perhaps America * Kussia), those who have spent the I"uole of their savings during the fierce we months, and those whose occupawa«% entirely gohe through the ruin Jftbw branch of business, or, as is W? °ftea thi>ca«e, from the emigra. m "for good and all " of their em-

, ployers. I taw three respectable c'erka, who have been till now used to the cafe life—which, if not all " coffee nnd dominoes," is so out of business bout's. I have seen their masters, rich men when France was an Empire, following their clerks to ask for aid. 1 have lememberel faces well known elsewhere, helped to fill baskets and asked no questiors. Professional men are as eager for cheese and bacon as the dansewe at the Grand Opera, or the melodious and choral peasant whom we last saw in the Salle Ventadour ; concierges come, and " grandes dames."—and, I assure you, it is, not a pU asant sight to see ladies in hysterics of gratitude over the great liberality of London. Death, too, has visited one in every three of the families whose representatives apply ; and no wonder seeing that mortality in Paris has increased 3« O per cent, since the 4th of September, IS7O. It is ever the same tale—" Yes, he got ill, and we had insufficient alimentation." Even as I write I have heard of a crowning case of barbarity and suffering. A French lady has just got through the lines, having escaped from a country house not very far fron Paris, which is in possession of the enei'iy. She has a little child, a girl of eight or nine, but had no servant. The Prussians took possession of the house, forcing Madame de to make their beds, and wait on them in the most menial fashion. They took all her money, jewels, and clothes, except those she actually wore ; and one ruffian in uniform stripped the gaiters off the poor little shivering child. Madame de —— arrived in Paris somehow, without clothes, without a shilling ; and she would have starved but for friends and the power of those friends to procure some of the London gift. I will answer for the exact truth of this sad story; and I have, indeed, within half an hour, assisted to pack the hamper of actually necessary relief. Cases like these—the dead we know, the dying we know, the well-to-do of last year now starving begars, the starved aspect of those we meet in the street —these are the true " horrors of siege," and the facts which make a mau who has been outside sieges and inside one declare that,'coute qiie coute he will stay outside the next.