M. DE LESSEPS AND HIS CHILDREN.
THE CHILDREN OF M. DE LESSEPS.
The picture which we give on the preceding page presents the famous builder of the Suez Canal, and seven of his children, as they are to be seen in the Paris Park, the Bois de Boulogne. The gray-haired father is seventy-six years of age. His companions in the "village cart" are Mathieu, ten years old; Ismaïl, nine, named after the man who ruled Egypt when the great canal was dug; Ferdinande, eight, named for her father, and his special pet; Bertrand and Consuelo, twin boys of six; Hélène, five; and Solange, between three and four. Besides these the sturdy old man has two sons, grown-up men, whose mother is dead, and a little blonde baby about a year old, for whom, small as he is, there seems no room in the cart. M. De Lesseps has his ideas about children's health and habits. All his little ones go with bare arms and legs summer and winter, and are toughened with active life in the open air. Ferdinande, who travels much with her father, is as brown as an Indian, and very self-helpful. She goes about without a maid, cares for herself, and has as much pluck and as little fear as her father. The mother of this happy-looking family is a native of the island of Mauritius, and a very bright and lovely lady. Her wedding with M. De Lesseps took place twelve years ago, in Egypt, the morning after the great festival that was held at the opening of the Suez Canal. In spite of her large family she finds time to keep her house open to many guests, who come gladly and go away delighted.
Of the children in our picture three have been in this country. They are Mathieu, Ismaïl, and Ferdinande, who bears the queer pet name of Tototé. They went with their father in the winter of 1879 and 1880 to the Isthmus of Panama, the strip of land which unites North America and South America. M. De Lesseps has started a canal across this isthmus—no small task for a man three-quarters of a century old! He finds the work much harder than across the Isthmus of Suez, because on the Isthmus of Panama there are very high and very rocky hills—a strip, so to speak, of the great backbone of mountains which runs all the way down the two continents of North and South America. The lowlands, moreover, are terribly unhealthy, and already the poor workmen, brought mostly from China and from the West Indies, are dying rapidly from the fever. But such vast works only too often cost many human lives. When the canal is finished, ships can sail through it, which now have to go around Cape Horn, at the south end of South America, or else have to land their passengers and loads to send them across the Isthmus by a railway. Many well-informed persons in this country think that the last great work of M. De Lesseps is a mistake, and will not be of much real use. But it is surely a very great and daring thing for an old man to try to do.
[A PRICKLY PET.]
How many boys know that they can have one of the oddest kind of pets, and yet at the same time have one which their mother and all the servants will look upon with the greatest possible favor, however much they may dislike pets generally?