ch seems a
fair proportion, the fifth girl receives five times her own premium.
Suppose that her father has paid L5 a year for her for twenty-one
years, she would receive the amount, at compound interest, of L25 a
year for twenty-one years--namely, about a thousand pounds.

Only consider what a thousand pounds may mean to a girl. It may be
invested to produce L35 a year--that is to say, 13s. 6d. a week. Such
an income, paltry as it seems, may be invaluable; it may supplement
her scanty earnings: it may enable her to take a holiday: it may give
her time to look about her: it may keep her out of the sweater's
hands: it may help her to develop her powers and to step into the
front rank. What gratitude would not the necessitous gentlewoman
bestow upon any who would endow her with 13s. 6d. a week? Why, there
are Homes where she could live in comfort on 12s., and have a solid
1s. 6d. to spare. She would even be able to give alms to others not so
rich.

Take, then, a thousand pounds--L35 a year--as a minimum. Take the case
of a professional man who cannot save much, but who is resolved on
endowing his daughters with an annuity of at least L35 a year. There
are ways and means of doing this which are advertised freely and
placed in everybody's hands. Yet they seem to fail in impressing the
public. One does not hear among one's professional friends of the
endowment of girls. Yet one does hear, constantly, that someone is
dead and has left his daughters without a penny.

First of all, the rules and regulations of the Post Office, which are
published every quarter, provide what seems the most simple of these
ways.

I take one table only, that of the cost of an annuity deferred for
twenty-five years. If the child is five years of age, and under six,
an annuity of L1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased
for a yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of L12 3s. 8d., the
money to be returned in case of the child's death. An annuity of L35,
therefore, would cost a yearly premium of L22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum
of L426 8s. 4d.

One or two of the insurance companies have also prepared tables for
the endowment of children. I find, for instance, in the tables issued
by the North British and Mercantile that an annual payment of L3 11s.
begun at infancy will insure the sum of L100 at twenty-one years of
age, with the return of the premium should the child die, or that L35
10s. paid annually will insure the sum of L1,0