wearing a medal as a reward for his courageous industry, his long and
laborious career? The token and the little pension attached to it, would
be to him a double recompense, justly deserved. But, no! for humble labor
that sustains the State, there is only forgetfulness, injustice,
indifference, and disdain!

By this neglect of the public, often aggravated by individual selfishness
and ingratitude, our workmen are placed in a deplorable situation.

Some of them, notwithstanding their incessant toil, lead a life of
privations, and die before their time cursing the social system that
rides over them. Others find a temporary oblivion of their ills in
destructive intoxication. Others again--in great number--having no
interest, no advantage, no moral or physical inducement to do more or
better, confine themselves strictly to just that amount of labor which
will suffice to earn their wages. Nothing attaches them to their work,
because nothing elevates, honors, glorifies it in their eyes. They have
no defence against the reductions of indolence; and if, by some chance,
they find means of living awhile in repose, they give way by degrees to
habits of laziness and debauchery, and sometimes the worst passions soil
forever natures originally willing, healthy and honest--and all for want
of that protecting and equitable superintendence which should have
sustained, encouraged, and recompensed their first worthy and laborious
tendencies.

We now follow Mother Bunch, who after seeking for work from the person
that usually employed her, went to the Rue de Babylone, to the lodge
lately occupied by Adrienne de Cardoville.