THE Parisian family, unless it be one of the bloated aristocrats and pampered children of luxury, do not occupy separate houses, as families do in American cities. Rents are somewhat too high to permit that luxury, and besides they never were used to it, and it wouldn’t suit them at all. They have been accustomed to living up stairs for so many generations that I doubt if a genuine Parisian of the middle classes could be happy on or near the ground floor.

The first floor, and, for that matter, the second and third, in the heart of the city, are devoted to business purposes. Above the third floors the residences begin, and they continue to the very top. As a rule, each floor constitutes a dwelling by itself, with halls, parlor or drawing-room, dining and sleeping rooms and kitchen, all compactly and very conveniently arranged. True, some of these apartments are small, not large enough to swing a cat in; but, as Mr. Dick Swiveler wisely observed, “You don’t want to swing a cat, you know.” The French housekeeper finds a kitchen five feet wide and six feet long quite large enough for the preparation of the food for the family, and the sleeping rooms, being only used for sleeping, may be very comfortable, if they are only large enough to hold a bed and the other necessary furniture.

The entrance to these buildings is on the ground floor, and is a wide gateway with a diminutive suite of apartments on one side, which is habited by the concierge, or, as the English call it, the porter. This personage, usually a woman, receives all messages from the different flats above her, answers all calls and gives all the information concerning the various families inhabiting it. It is she who cleans the main staircase which goes to the top of the house, and has charge of the buildings.

At night, say at eleven, the great doors guarding this common entrance are shut, and whoever desires to enter thereafter finds a bell-pull, the other end of which is at the head of the concierge’s bed. She doesn’t bother herself to get up and see who it is, but she merely pulls a wire, the bolt of the great door is withdrawn, you enter, and shutting the door after you—it fastens with a spring lock—go to your floor, and enter your own house.

Tibbitts likes this idea very much. He says that when you come home late at night, and not precisely in the condition to be accurate about things, there isn’t any nonsense about finding a key first, and then going through the more delicate operations of finding a keyhole and getting the key in right side up. “All you have to do is to catch on that bell-pull, and the more unsteady you are, the better, for you lean back upon it, and your whole weight takes it.” And he further remarked that there wasn’t a concierge in Paris who wouldn’t know his ring before he had been in the house a week.

The principal business of the concierge and her entire family is to keep the stairs clean. I once held that the Philadelphia servant girl would die were the supply of water to run out so that she could not wash sidewalks and marble steps, but she has a worthy rival in the Parisian. The stairs leading to the top of the buildings are kept sloppy all the time with the perpetual cleaning. Indeed so constantly is this going on that no time is given to enjoy the luxury of clean stairs. Not only the stairs are cleansed, but the very sides of the building are washed and scrubbed once in so many years, by law. If Paris only took as much pains with its inside as it does with its outside! But it doesn’t.

Once inside the houses, the first thing that strikes an American is the total absence of carpets; that is, carpets as we have them. The floors are of wood in many patterns, and in the center there may or may not be a rug, which covers, perhaps, two-thirds of the room. A room carpeted the entire surface is very rare, and I must say that therein the French housekeeper does better than the American. These rugs are taken up very frequently, it being no trouble, and are kept clean and free of dust, something impossible when they are fastened to the floor, as is the custom across the water.

In the Summer they are taken out of the way entirely, and the bright waxed floor is deliciously cool, and in the Winter the rug, always in warm colors, forms a pleasing contrast to the wood on the edges. The French idea is better than ours.

The French housekeeper is perfection in her way. She allows nothing to go to waste. There is not a penny’s worth more purchased than can be used, and the ending of the day sees the ending of what was bought for the day. If there are ten to sit down to the table there is soup made for just ten—not enough for twenty and the remainder to the slop bucket—and there is just meat enough to make ten portions, and no more. There is butter for ten and vegetables for ten. By the way, very little butter is used. Wine is provided ad libitum, and even that, cheap as it is, is carefully poured from the half or two-thirds emptied bottles into others and carefully husbanded till the next meal brings it out.

There is nothing of meanness in this—only the good sense not to waste. The French housewife, very properly, sees no use in throwing away food any more than she does money. Consequently, despite the much higher cost of provisions, a French house gets on in better style than an American, and at a much less expenditure.

The skill of the French cook is proverbial, and his reputation is deserved. One of the craft once said that with a pair of cavalry boots, a handful of grass and plenty of salt and pepper, he could make soup for a regiment, and I believe him. They use more vegetables than we do, and use them infinitely better. Out of the despised carrot, which seldom makes its appearance on American tables, they make a delicious dish, and their treatment of potatoes, tomatoes, and the whole race of salad-making vegetables, is something akin to miraculous. They use oil in profusion, and no matter what the raw material is that comes under the hands of a French cook, there is a taste and relish about the product that is satisfying as well as gratifying. The Frenchman at his table aims at all the senses. To begin with it is garnished with flowers, and, second, the dishes gratify hunger, and, thirdly, they gratify the taste. Then, as an appropriate finish, they will have the most cheerful conversation, and for the time all care and trouble is banished and the feeding time is the good time of the household. A Frenchman may come to his house ever so much depressed, but he has a thoroughly enjoyable time at his dinner. He may rise from the table and blow his brains out, but at the table no one would ever know or dream that he ever had a trouble.

Among the middle classes, and indeed the better, the lady of the house does the marketing in person. It is too important a matter to be entrusted to a servant, for they are exceedingly particular as to the quality, and equally so as to the price of the supplies. French market-people, especially the women, are the shrewdest and the most unscrupulous in the world, and it requires much care and skill not to be imposed upon. I went one morning with my landlady to see a French market.

The first thing desired was a lobster. One was selected and then commenced the bargaining.

“How much?” demanded the Madame.

“Five francs,” was the answer, “and very cheap it is. Observe, Madame, its size, and its condition. Oh, I have nothing but the best. Shall I put it into your basket?”

“No, it is too much!”

“Too much! Madame, you would starve me. Well, then, you are an old customer (she had never seen Madame before), I will give it to you—I would no one else—for four and a half. It is ruin, but I can’t keep them over.”

“I will give you two francs.”

“Two francs! You jest, Madame. Two francs for this king of lobsters—this emperor! Ah no! but I will say four—and little Jean shall go without shoes.”

“Two francs.”

“Say three and a half—my landlord can do without his rent till times are better.”

Precisely as the two franc offer was being accepted, a young man drove up in a stylish coupe.

“How much for that lobster?”

“Ten francs, Monsieur le Colonel,” replied the dame without a blush.

“Wrap it up and put it in my carriage,” was the reply, and it was done.

“Why did you ask him ten francs when you only asked me five to begin with, and intended to take two?” demanded my landlady, purely that I might hear the answer.

“Eh? Oh, the young man has plenty of money—it is for his little woman, I suppose. We poor must live, and I must make my profit. But here is one just like it—rather better. Shall I say three francs?”

“Two.”

“Well, it must be so. But I lose money.”

The old dame made a good hundred per cent. as it was.

As it was in lobsters so it was in everything. The price offered in every instance was about two-fifths of the price asked and even then it was not certain but that too much was not paid. But when a French market woman and a French housekeeper come together there is not going to be very much swindling. Both know their business and whoever gets the best in the encounter may congratulate herself upon possessing a great deal of acumen.

The servants in French families are now tolerably attentive and obliging, but their bearing depends very much upon the political condition of the country. Every Frenchman is a politician, and they have all the shades of politics down to the humblest, and the lower orders, as elsewhere, take their politics from their superiors. The retainers in the families of the old nobility are Monarchists to a man, and hate the Republic with a hatred that the dispossessed nobility themselves do not feel. The waiters at the cafÉs and those who entered domestic service latterly are all virulent Republicans, disagreeably so. Especially was this true just after the downfall of the Third Napoleon, and after the Commune. A lady of my acquaintance, who got out of Paris just before the Commune, returned and rearranged her household after order was restored. Her daughter had engaged servants, and the good old lady rang for one.

“Are you one of the new servants?” she asked, as a strange man answered her summons.

“No, Madame. I am in your employment, but no servant. Since the Republic, there are no servants. Address me, please, as ‘citizen!’”

And she was compelled to do it, or go without service. The man considered himself the equal of his mistress in all particulars, and would be counted nothing less.

Fuel is very costly in France, and consequently very little used. In Paris the climate is mild, and very little is needed. But the same economy is observed in this as in everything. Twigs of trees and the smallest bushes, cut in uniform lengths, are used for firing, and for cooking the use of charcoal is almost universal.

As the shops furnish food as cheaply as it can be prepared at home, it is only in families that cooking is done. The washing among this class is done altogether at the public wash-houses in the Seine. These are immense boats anchored close to the bank and partitioned off into spaces just wide enough for a woman to work comfortably. For two sous, the woman has the use of tubs and hot and cold water ad libitum. She takes her bundle of soiled goods, and her own soap, and washes them, using a heavy wooden paddle to drive the soap through the fabric, instead of the pounder and washboard, and, wringing them out, carries them home wet. A few sous’ worth of charcoal suffices to iron them, and the same fire cooks her little dinner, and so two very important birds are killed with one stone. The shop girls, whose attics will not admit of a fire, have no other way of washing their clothes, and so the public wash-houses are always full.

The eating of the day commences with a very slight breakfast in your room at any hour you choose. The said breakfast consists of exactly one cup of coffee or chocolate—it is measured accurately, there is exactly one cup in the little pot—two rolls and an infinitesimal portion of fresh butter. You bid good-bye to salted butter when you leave the steamer. On this you exist till twelve, or thereabouts, when you have a breakfast as is a breakfast. There are eggs and one or two varieties of meat, and wine ad libitum, ending with sweets. This over, at six you have the meal of the day, the dinner, consisting of five or six courses, commencing with the everlasting soup, and ending with black coffee. Wine constitutes the drink of this meal, as at the breakfast.

It takes an American some little time to get used to this light breakfast, but when accustomed to it he is entirely satisfied with it. If he has nothing to do it is certainly better than the heavy breakfast of his own country, and unless he has the most violent bodily labor to perform, it is better than to go to business with an overloaded stomach. Anyhow, whether you like it or not, it is all you can get, and a wise man always manages to like what is inevitable. One very soon gets to liking this very strange innovation upon one’s established habits.

The French woman esteems tidiness and cleanliness above everything on earth, that is, outward tidiness. If rumor be true, they are not so particular as to internal economy, but the outside of the platter must be as white as the driven snow. An English or American woman will walk the sloppy streets and drag her skirts in the mud and filth till they are not only uncomfortable but are absolutely indecent in appearance. All this could be avoided by merely lifting the skirts, but the notion of delicacy, the fear of exposing an ankle, prevents this. That is the Anglo-Saxon notion of delicacy. The French woman has other views. Her ankles are not sacred, but her skirts are. She will not have soiled skirts, she will not have petticoats with the filth of the streets upon them, and so when she comes to a vile spot, she lifts her skirts and passes over without carrying any of the filth with her. It matters not if her ankles are exposed. That she expects. But she does this skirt-lifting with such a grace and such a manner that to an American even it is the most natural thing in the world. The French woman hoists her skirts in a way that makes it apparent to the most critical observer that it is not done to show neatly turned ankles, but to save her person from filth. It is a necessity with her, from her stand-point, and is consequently accepted as such. She has no objection to exposing a shapely ankle, but whether the ankle be shapely or not, no Parisian woman will ever, under any circumstances, be untidy. She has a passion for neatness, and a very pleasant passion it is. Would that she were as correct in her other passions.

Every woman in Paris, or for that matter everywhere in France, works. This is the secret of French prosperity. This explains the ease with which the French people recovered from

the extravagance of the Empire, the frightful cost of the war with Prussia, and the enormous indemnity exacted by the merciless Bismarck. It is the universality of labor, and the knowing how to live well upon next to nothing. A French wife not only does the house keeping for her family, but she takes care of the shop. She sells the goods which her husband makes. Say he is a trunkmaker—he is in the shop on the floor above, or the floor below, as the case may be, working for dear life, but in the salesroom sits Madame, his wife, or Mademoiselle, his daughter, who sells the goods, takes the money, keeps the books, buys the materials, and runs the business end of the concern.

But this is not all. Customers do not come in every minute, and Madame has time upon her hands. She does not waste it. There are her children, too young to work, but they must be clothed, and if there are no children there are a few sous to be earned by knitting, or fancy needlework. And so all this spare time is put in by Madame, sewing or knitting, either for her own family or for a market. Not a minute goes to waste. Wherever you see a French woman you see her doing some thing. The nurse-maid, who takes her charges out for an airing, has work in her hands, and she works. In the gardens in the Palais-Royal you shall see hundreds of nurse-maids whose charges are playing under the beautiful trees, knitting industriously, one eye on the work and the other on the children, and in every shop you enter you see the same thing.

Wages are very low, but with this absolute economy of time and the more absolute economy in the matter of living, the French workingman manages to get on better, on an average, than those in the same station in any other country in the world. French industry and French thrift make anything in the way of living possible. There is nothing like it.

Transportation is very cheap in Paris and exceedingly good. The omnibusses are large and the street cars likewise, and have the delight of holding as many people on the top as on the inside. And then they are never overcrowded. You are entitled to and get a seat. When the seats are all taken the sign “Complet,” is displayed, and no more passengers are admitted. A ride on the top of a French omnibus in good weather is a delight.

The Frenchman tries to imitate the English and Americans in the matters of sport, but it is a sorry failure. The young French sport gets himself up in remarkable sporting costumes, and goes out gunning, and always returns with game. Does he shoot it? Alas! It can be bought, and—he buys it. But he brings in his hare or his birds, or whatever can be bought that has been freshly killed, and proudly displays it to his friends and talks loudly of the pleasures of field sports.

Fishing in the Seine is another amusement, though I never met anybody who had ever caught a fish. There are more lines in the Seine any hour of the day than there are fish, but they all fish just the same. The docks are lined with men and boys at all hours, and all standing as gravely and patiently as though they made their living by it. The sight of a fish would astonish them.

Bloss, my old showman friend, arrived last night from Switzerland. There are a number of bears kept at Berne, the property of the city, one of which, some years ago, killed an English officer who fell into his den. That bear—but Bloss may tell his own story.

“Wat I wantid wuz that bear. I wantid that identical bear, the very one that squoze the Britisher. Ef I cood hev

got that bear it wood hev bin the biggest thing in the annals of the show biznis. So I went to Berne and saw the President of the Swiss Republic. I offered him fust two hundred dollars for it, pervided he would write a certifikit on parchment and put the seal of the Republic onto it that it wuz the identical animile. Ye see, ef he hed done this I should hev put it onto the bills this way:—

I should hev hed a copy—a fac-similer—uv the certifikit printed, in two colors, and I shood hev hed the certifikit itself hung out afore the big tent, and it would hev bin wuth a heap uv money to me.

“Did you succeed?”

“Succeed! Why the bloated aristocrat refoozed to hev anything to say to me, and directed a servant to show me out. A pretty Republic that is, where the President won’t hear a common biznis proposishen! And then I went to the Mayor uv the city, and when my proposishen wuz translated to him, he remarked that he wuzn’t in the bear biznis, and he hed me showed out. I shood like to be a voter in Berne at one elecshun. But I shel hev the bear that killed the offiser jes the same. That is, I shel advertise that one uv the bears I yoose that eat the children in the Elijah act is the identikle one. I don’t like to deceeve the public—I hed ruther deal strate with ’em, but I must git my expenses out uv that trip to Berne somehow, and I shel hev the President’s certifikit all the same. Yes, and blast me ef I don’t add the Mayor’s to it to make ashoorence doubly shoor. I ain’t agoin’ to Berne for nothin', nor am I goin’ to lose an ijee. Ijees are too skase to waste one.”

“Did you enjoy this trip to the land of Tell?”

The sound of the word “Tell,” was sufficient to tap the old gentleman once more, and he went off into a narrative that flowed smoothly as cider from a barrel.

“The land uv Tell! I shel never forgit Tell—Willyum, the Swiss wat shot a apple offen his boy’s head. It wuz way back in 1844, when I was runnin’ my great aggregashun in the West. We had a minstrel sideshow in the afternoon, and a regler theater for a sideshow in the evenin'. Our leadin’ man wuz Mortimer de Lacy, from the principal European and Noo York theaters—his real name was Tubbs; he wuz the son uv a ginooine Injun physician, which hed stands about the country suthin’ like a circus—who wuz very fond uv playin’ Tell. De Lacy wuz one uv the most yooseful men I ever hed. He rid the six hoss act, the “Rooshun Courier uv Moscow,” and did the stone-breakin’ act, where he bends over on his arms and hez stuns broken on his breast with sledges, and he did the cannon ball act, and in the afternoon wuz the interlocootor in the minstrel show, playin’ the triangle—anybody kin play the triangle, and he alluz sed he wood give anything ef he cood manage a banjo or even a accordeon so ez to git up in the perfesh—and in the evenin’ he did the classical in high tragedy. The afternoon minstrel show wuz for the country people, but the play in the evenin’ wuz to ketch the more refined towns folks. Well, one day De Lacy cum to me, and sez he:—

“‘Guvnor, I hev a idear.’

“‘Spit it out,’ sez I. ‘Idears is wuth money in our biznis.’

“‘I kin make Tell more realistic. You know the way we do the shootin’ uv the apple off the boy’s head is to shoot an arrer into the wings and the boy comes runnin’ out with a split apple in his hand.’

“‘Yes, that’s the way it alluz hez bin done. It’s a tradishn uv the stage.’

“‘I perpose to hev the boy stand on the stage in full view uv the awjence, and to shoot the apple off his head under their very eyes. It’s a big thing.’

“‘Big thing! I should say so. But you can’t shoot an apple with an arrer. You couldn’t hit the side of a barn.’

“‘Very good, but this is my idear. We only play Tell at night. We stretch a wire across the stage jes the height of the boy, and the wire runs through the apple on the boy’s head. Then I hev a loop fixed onto the arrer, and when I shoot it runs along the wire—see?—and knocks the apple into smithereens. It’s a big notion.’

“It occurred to me that it wood be a good piece of biznis and I agreed to it. My youngest boy, Sam, alluz played the boy, and De Lacy and I fixed the riggin’ and hed it all right. To make it more realistic De Lacy hed a very broad-headed arrer made so that the awjence should see it wuz reel, and everythin’ wuz ready. When that scene come on, the boy come out walkin’ very keerful—we hed the apple fixed tight upon his head so that ef he walked in a strate line it wooden’t be moved, and he wuz placed. After the speeches De Lacy sprung the bow, and let the arrer drive with all the force it hed.”

“It must have been a thrilling scene.”

“Thrillin'! Yoo bet! But we didn’t repeat it. Bekaze yoo see the wire slackened, and the arrer struck Sam on the top uv the head and scalped him as clean as a Camanche Injun cood hev done it, and he howled and jumped onter De Lacy and the wire tore down the two wings it wuz hitched onter, and De Lacy in gittin’ rid uv him tore down the rest uv the wings, and they clinched and rolled down onto the stage, and the awjence got up and howled, and the peeple all rushed on, and there wuz about ez lively a scene ez I ever witnessed in a long and varied experience. It wuz picteresk and lurid. I rung the curtain down and separated ’em. It wuz a good idear, but it didn’t jes work, owin’ to defective machinery.”

THE TELL CATASTROPHE.