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and that she is well pleased. She is eleven years old. "Are these children yours?" I inquire. "Oh, no; they are the nieces of Madame G." On another occasion she returns to the subject of the first communion, and shows me a little colored picture of children with a bird-nest, telling me that it is customary for children, at their first communion, to make presents to their little friends. The girl has a number of pictures. Before I leave Paris, when the children (there are two girls and a boy) come on an errand to my lodgings, I understand them to say that they are Madame G.'s children.

I see upon the streets, at this present season, young girls wearing white muslin dresses, white caps, and white veils falling back, and they look quite interesting, adding another variety to these varied streets. I understand that they are making their first communion.

To-day a man tells me not to be crushed, and the greatest danger that I find here is that of being run over. The streets are wide, and come into others often at acute angles, so that you may start to cross a place, or opening, seeing no danger, but before you are over something will come thundering up, so that you feel you must run. One American lady tells me that she walks, but I can hardly attain to so much composure. The little cry of warning that the coachman sometimes gives is no great thing. Besides the hackney-coaches, there are a great many private carriages. Once, while in Paris, I speak to Madame Leblanc, with whom I board, of the pretty private carriages that I see on the Place de l'Europe. She answers that she does not like to see them, --she is afraid of being crushed by those insolent servants who crawl before their masters and can slander them too.

I have before spoken of a door which was covered with wall-paper, and which looked as if cut out of the partition. My American friend tells me that all doors are taxed, and that these frames are put up and covered with paper to avoid the tax. Windows too are taxed, and, as my hostess says, furniture and food. She adds that this last falls with especial weight upon the poor, who only buy in small quantities. At one time her husband speaks of the tax upon handbills, which of course I desire to hear about, and which he afterwards explains. (Their coins, weights, and measures are at first very troublesome, although their decimal or metric system is scientific.) He says that the stamp upon a handbill of twenty-five centimetres is six centimes, or about a cent. On a handbill twice the size, or about one foot six inches by one foot three, the stamp is about two cents. Over three cents is charged on a handbill over three-fourths of a yard in length; and, if I do not misunderstand him, sixteen sous on a handbill over a metre in length, or about a yard and four inches. On one occasion I buy several things at a store, and not having enough money with me, order them sent home with a bill. When they arrive I find that I have to pay for a stamp of two sous upon the bill or receipt, because the amount exceeds ten francs. This tax has been put on since the war. I also see in a baker's window a written notice of rooms to let, furnished; down in one corner is a blue stamp, "France, ten centimes,"

two sous.

A Parisian lady afterwards tells me that carriages, pianos, and expensive furniture are not taxed, and that coffee, sugar, matches, and places in third-class cars are. She says that Thiers was the man of the bourgeoise, and feared that the rich would not support him if they were

taxed. She adds that on real estate the tax has not been increased since the war.

Sometimes I speak of Red Republicans, so often mentioned at home. Madame Leblanc says that Red Republicans are those who love to shed blood, which her husband does not like. Nevertheless, she says that he is a very advanced Republican. Victor himself does not like the former epithet.

I have before described a suite of rooms; and now I can speak of the cellar, as Madame Leblanc has allowed me to accompany her in her journey below ground. We descend our three flights of stairs, go out our door into the court-yard, enter a side-door, and go down three short flights of broad stone steps, twenty in all. Now we are in the cave. Here are different passages and a good many numbered doors. Mrs. L. unlocks number 17, and shows a little cellar of irregular form. Here are three winecasks of different sizes, two of them containing new wine, which has to settle before being opened. Here, too, are wine-bottles lying upon their sides in rows, with plastering-laths between their necks. The cellar does not seem to be used for any other purpose than this. It is damp and cool, as if one might take rheumatism. Desiring to see all that I can, I take the light and look into other passages. In one part, madame tells me,

there are casks of zinc to receive the contents of the water-closets,-new houses being thus built. Once a week these casks are taken away and replaced by empty ones. She says that in the old houses there are in the court-yards deep pits, into which the closets empty, and she thinks it is about once in three or four years that men come round

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with pump, pipes, and wagon, and take out the contents. Then the vault must be left open until the inspector comes to see whether repairs are wanted. This refuse is taken to the environs and made into poudrette, and those who make it and those who sell it, she says, become rich.

In our dining-room is a porcelain stove; yet not in the room, for not much more is seen than the front covered with white porcelain with brass bands. Mrs. L. says that they burn coke in it, and adds, "That is a gulf! It consumes! it consumes! And then we must watch it every quarterhour for fear it goes out. It is very costly in winter, as regards light and heat.”

Speaking of soldiers, Victor gives me the following numbers: There are four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in France (about one hundred thousand of them in Paris and its environs); also ten thousand sergents de ville, who receive five francs a day; ten thousand municipal or republican guards, who receive four francs a day,-old soldiers on a pension for having served many years in the army. Then, in France there are twenty-five thousand of the gendarmerie, police officers in the country and in small towns. These receive a pension after twenty-five years' service.* I see so many young soldiers in the flower of their age,—for they begin to serve at twenty-one,—that I ask Victor what they do. "They lounge," he answers; "ils flanent, and practise their exercise. When their time is out, they are not willing to busy themselves with anything, they become so

By the proposed budget for 1879, the effective strength of the whole French army, including the gendarmerie and Garde Républicaine, is 496,442 men and 124,279 horses-Statesman's Year Book, McMillan & Co.

lazy." While in barracks the soldier does not prepare his food; this is done by the cantinier. Those who do not know how to read and write are taught; but they rise early, and must have time for other studies, did France desire to teach them, or did they desire to learn. Mrs. Leblanc once said that military life brutalizes a man: "You see a man who has learned a trade, and who is a good workman, but when he becomes a soldier he gets a taste for idleness, and then he is good for nothing. Idleness, we say, is the mother of all the vices. The women who lead a bad life, the cause of it in three-quarters of the cases is idleness; the desire for luxury and idleness is the cause of their leading that base life."

Soon after my arrival at Paris I spoke to a gentleman of its being a heavy burden upon the workingmen to support so many soldiers. The gentleman replied that their heaviest burden is the five years' military service. Once, upon the street, I ask a question of a woman carrying something, and then for a few moments I walk on with her. We meet a man in uniform, and I tell her that in my country we have not many soldiers; in my great country, so much larger than France, there are not so many soldiers as are now in Paris. She answers that there are small towns in France that have not the advantages of Paris. "Do you call that an advantage," I ask, "that is costly ?" Apparently she is of the same mind as a young countrywoman of mine here, who said, "I like a military government."*

For myself, I have sympathized with the young soldiers who come up from a life of rural toil to this idleness in barracks. If France were truly a paternal government, what would she do for them? Could she not instruct them until no Prussian soldier could surpass them? Could not

*The army of the United States numbers 25,000 men.

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