to offer themselves to the conscription to draw lots. The levy is about one hundred thousand yearly, who are obliged to serve five years. Those who are not drawn enter the reserve, to be recalled in case of war or necessity. If the two Chambers demand this year one hundred thousand men, the proper quota is demanded from each canton according to its population. France is differently divided from our own country: we are in States, counties, and townships; France in departments, arrondissements, cantons, and

communes.

Madame Lenoir is not very bland. She was talking to me lately about my wanting things cheap.

"And do you find things cheap in your country of Africa?" she wants to know.

I tell her that my country is America, and that I can get a cup of coffee with milk, and bread and butter, for ten cents; and a glass of ice-water, I proudly add; but icewater does not profoundly move her; even my American friend, long resident here, inclines to consider it unwholesome. As to my landlady's speaking of Africa, I afterwards learn the importance to the French of their colony, Algeria.

I take my evening meal at the restaurant Duval, near the Madeleine church. We are served by a quantity of nice-looking waiter-women in black dresses and white caps. At the same table with me is dining an elderly woman, whom I suppose to be a storekeeper, or in business in the neighborhood. I wish to know what she calls the women who wait upon us: does she call them servants,-serviteurs?

"I call her madame," she says. I afterwards learn that women-servants are generally called bonnes, or good women; the word domestique is also much used.

I have felt uneasy with my surroundings at Lenoir's; but Mrs. L. tells me of respectable people who are in the building with me, honnêtes gens, who are making money. He who lodges below me is a coachman, and his wife is a cook for some lady; and above me a tailor sews; decent people who are enriching themselves; and the great court-yard door upon the street is closed at night, and I need not be afraid. The little servant-girl, too, offers me consolation when I address her: these are good people around me, not fast people; they "do not make the train;" there were two young ladies who made the train, but they are gone. Strange to say, I am not deeply consoled. I had been promised a bucket into which to empty water, and when I speak of it the little servant is sent to show me an opening in the wall of the first flight of stairs, where you draw forward an iron plate and pour water down.

I ask Lenoir whether, when I address a religious woman, a nun, I should say madame or miss. He intimates that this is a nice point, but adds, "We say, 'my sister.'" Is it Protestant obstinacy that induces me still to say Madame in addressing one?

Before leaving Lenoir's I endeavor to describe my surroundings. While the restaurant faces on the street, the building in which I lodge opens only on the court-yard. To describe the buildings around the yard will show how closely people live in Paris. Living thus piled up, the houses are more imposing, but what about bringing up families without a play-yard? The court-yard is paved with square stones, and measures about twenty-five by thirty-six yards. First upon the street, with its back to this court-yard, is a long building, divided below into four shops, including the restaurant of Lenoir. These are kept by four families, most of whom occupy the back room behind the shop,-narrow

quarters, indeed. The family of the concierge, or doorkeeper, makes the fifth. Their door opens upon the carriage entrance, by which also we come in. The concierge has three children, one of them away at nurse; the vegetable merchant has two, and the other three families, I hear, have none. Above these shops the building has four floors, and there is a family on each; that on the fourth floor has one child; the rest have none. This building is the one facing the street. Now enter the carriage-way, passing under and through the house just described, and find yourselves in the court-yard and in face of another great house, the front of which forms the back wall of the yard. This house is of brick, somewhat ornamented with sculptures in stone. Once the brick was red and black; now it is dingy. The ornaments are busts in figure and busts in bas-relief and stone facings, which give it an air of nobility, or of having belonged to an old family. This building has carriage-houses on the ground floor, instead of shops,-four of them, with great dark doors: they are called remises. Above the carriage-houses the house has three floors, occupied by three families and a widow. One of these families has two young ladies, and these are all the children in the house. I learn these particulars from another. I rarely or never see these persons; once I called on one of them on business. The widow in this house seems to be a rich lady, with horses, carriages, and servants, of whom I shall speak. The smaller building, in which I am lodged, may be said to stand between these two, on a third side of the courtyard. It has two stables on the ground floor, and three floors above. On the first is the coachman whose wife is a cook; they have no children. On the next floor is my lodging; and here also is another coachman, he and his wife having one child, which is still in the country, for it

is yet the custom to put young children into the country with a nurse who suckles them, because the air is better. The little one of the concierge's wife will probably return between the age of two and three years. She says that she is entirely too crowded for a cradle; the child is about seventy French leagues from Paris, and the cost of keeping it there is from twenty-two to thirty francs a month; in the neighborhood of Paris it would be forty to fifty. As for the rich, she says that there are some who suckle their own children, but many employ a nurse in the house.

To return to our court-yard; nearly all the windows of the great house with the stone trimmings are furnished with outside blinds, like our parlor-blinds which draw up, such as were formerly much used in Philadelphia; but why are these hung upon the outside of the windows? There are plants in some windows, not so handsome as the rhododendrons at the Exposition. The fourth side of our court-yard is formed by the back of a high house upon another street. This high house has a little bit of backyard, separated from our court-yard by a high wall. There are six or seven floors in that house. In one window is a bird-cage; and canaries, too, are in our court, and we have music. I stand at my window and rest my note-book upon the strong grating, which protects one from falling out when the windows are opened like folding-doors, opening in the middle, as so many, if not all, of the Paris windows do.

Once the coachman shows me the horses and the carriages. There are three horses and three carriages, which belong to the lone lady, the widow who has five men-servants. It is very neat in the stables; the horses have plenty of clean straw. When the coachman goes out to drive he is in mourning, and I notice one of his horses

with crape at the ears. Every three days the manure merchant comes to buy the manure, which is piled up in a separate place from the stable. I say to the coachman that it is very neat, and he says that it ought to be, it is so small. I see the merchant come in with his load in a large cart or wagon. While he is loading this, he seems to separate the strawy part and roll it up with his fork and place it around the edges, as a barrier to keep the finer from escaping. Now the load is so high that it is good throwing. He takes a ladder and mounts, and arranges his load carefully. He does not mean to lose any. Does it help to make that great asparagus of Argenteuil, which I see for sale? After he is gone one of the men-servants goes over to a fountain or hydrant in the yard and draws great buckets of water, and with a broom of twigs cleans up the small amount that the merchant has left. The water runs down the stone gutter in the pavement, and disappears in a little hole under an iron shelter. In one corner of the courtyard sits a woman in a cap carding wool for mattresses. It is spring, and a suitable time for cleaning house. They can open the mattresses, card the wool, and put them together again. The wife of the concierge says that the wool is mixed with hair. This, probably, is a woman who goes around to do these jobs. I look down, too, at the little, little kitchen of the concierge. They have a small room and this bit of kitchen. How beautifully clear is the glass of the lantern set up high over his door to light the court-yard. One night when I came in near midnight, I rang the bell, and the outside door seemed to open without hands, or as if the concierge in his room had a rope to pull it. It seemed that his wife had gone to bed in that built-in place, or great bunk in the side of the room, and the curtains were partly drawn. I do not envy the person who sleeps be