Note 17 — I.

I do not know that any person has ever practically carried out Legouvé's estimate of labor as a moral help, but Marie de Lamourous, the foundress of the House of Mercy at Bourdeaux. This was a refuge for ruined women, whom she trained to self-support. Some one offered her a sum sufficient to insure her family a comfortable living; but she wisely refused it. "No false pretences," she said: "if we are not compelled to labor, we shall not labor. An idle mind makes its own temptations. I can do nothing without work."