vow, with shrieks to yourself and le bon Dieu to believe her, that the servant-woman paid exactly what she said she had.

The explanation is simple. Generally the market-woman has sympathy for the woman of her class; with that fierce rage of the French lower orders, she hates you for being her superior, and is glad your servant can cheat you. But, particularly, your cook has been her customer for years-will be, in all probability, for years to come. If you choose to come to the market and buy for yourself, she and all the other market-women will form a league against you, and cheat you worse than the cook does. This is one of the things that make marketing in Paris unduly expensive.

Another thing which makes it so is that-store-room being almost an impossibility-it is difficult to buy anything by the quantity, as flour or sugar by the barrel, butter by the firkin, &c. These necessaries must be bought by driblets, at an unduly exorbitant price, to which is added the illegitimate percentage of the cook. A curious type of French servitor in Paris homes is the frotteur, or floor-rubber. Carpets are frequently altogether dispensed with in French homes; though the rich people indulge in them, it is as in any other luxury. That a carpet should be a necessity is to the French a ridiculous bit of insular nonsense. Even the rich dispense with them in dining-rooms, and the well-rubbed, shining oaken floors make a very pretty appearance.

Charcoal is altogether used for cooking purposes in France, and wood is used to heat the apartments to the almost entire exclusion of coal, which the Parisians hold in abhorrence. They contend that coal ruins furniture, spoils one's complexion, and chokes up the lungs with its gritty particles. I have in vain represented to French people that the English were a healthy race, though they burned coal as a rule in their cities; and that the great wood-fires of the French, in their old-fashioned fireplaces with andirons, though very poetic and very cheerful to look at, give out a wofully poor heat for the money.

To those who have never been to Paris it may no doubt seem a curious thing that rich people should live together in what we call even at its best a tenement house-that is to say, on separate floors. Nevertheless the system is an excellent one, and far preferable to the life in hotels and boarding-houses which is so common in America in the large cities. A parlour, a dining-room, four or five bed-rooms, a kitchen, and servants' room may easily be obtained in Paris at almost any rent desired, subject, of course, to such considerations as the elegance of the appartement, the location of the house, and the location of the suite of rooms in the house. The floors are complete in all their appointments, and thus the strictest privacy is insured. Indeed, so free are the Parisians from

the prying eyes of their co-lodgers that it is possible to live twenty years in a house and never meet a single occupant of it, except perhaps on the staircase (common ground), where a slight bow passes, even between utter strangers.

In Paris only a few, a very few families occupy houses to themselves. Those who do live for the most part in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the quarter aristocratic par excellence of the gay city. Still in the modern and more bustling parts of the town some grand private houses may be seen, even outstripping in grandeur and in gilding and in glittering newness the solemn and severe old homes of France's "fine flower" of nobility. These lie along the avenues of the Champs Elysées, the Boulevard de l'Impératrice, and other Hausmann streets, at whose fairy-like splendours and Aladdinlike architecture old Paris looks aghast.

The evening interior of a true French family is irresistibly quaint. The French are fonder of innocent games than any people I know. The whole family and their visitors will play dominoes, or loto, or any of their innumerable games of chance for hours on a stretch, with a pari of a few sous, sometimes bonbons-in default of these beans. When company is absent, and other members of the family are busy, then shall you chance to see one solitary member playing a game of "patience" by himself. Old French men and French women are often an extremely droll study— simple, honest, and behind the age. This type is pictured constantly on the stage, on canvas at expositions, in books by the best authors; and though the subject is treated humorously there is always a tender vein of sentiment for them displayed. If there be several sons in a French family, parental hearts will be sorely tried if one at least do not become a priest; and he who has taken holy orders is indeed a mother's pet. No contact with the hateful world of money-getting for him; no marriage, with its new loves, to partly engross him now; this dear son may be almost constantly at his mother's side, to drive with her at the Bois de Boulogne-if this be not beyond their means-to walk out with her, to shop with her, to read with her, and to sit on her footstool and count the beads of his rosary while she works at home.

rest.

We can well understand the effeminate part which Monsieur l'Abbé has always played in history. I knew a young Abbé well, whose chief proficiency in life was with his needle-the result of living almost constantly with women. It was a strange thing to me to see him sit down with the ladies, and gravely draw out his needlework and his thimble and scissors, and go to work with the His chief passion was for worsted work; and some of the prettiest things in his mother's drawing-room were embroidered by him. He resented the idea of this being unmanly work. "Other men paint on canvas with a brush," he said; "I paint on canvas with a needle. I see not too much the difference." With his long black-cloth dress, buttoned up to the throat, and his neat low shoes and black stockings, his beardless face, and his worsted-work, he always seemed to me like a pure and good woman-above the worldly vanities and wickednesses of coquetry and dress-intent on nothing but religion and the needle.

Everybody has heard of the French pot-au-feu. The making of this dish must be a national secret. Give an English or Irish cook a finer piece of beef, more vegetables, plenty of everything, and a cookery-book open at the place, and she will turn you out a potful of watery, greasy soup and a huge "hunk" of stringy, toughboiled beef. But the glories of the pot-au-feu, as made by French hands, have been sung before my day. Nothing more deliciously appetising than that soup can be tasted by mortal lips; and no more succulent slice than the crisp, pinkish, boiled beef can be garnished with tomato-sauce. I dined with the Abbé's mother every Sunday for several years; she dined with me every Thursday during the same period. Every Sunday of their lives they had the same unvarying, delicious, though plain dinner; their parents and grandparents had so dined before them; and who can doubt that their children will follow the custom? The dinner I commend to housekeepers. It began with the soup-the delicious soup of the pot-aufeu; then came the very boiled beef which had made that soup, but which cut as firm and as tender under the mother's knife as a young turkey. Tomato-sauce with this, and boiled maccaroni in Italian style. Then, O Nantes! one of your round, white, fat, perfumed poulets gras! the roundest, tenderest, sweetest morsels that ever trod on drumsticks. Salad with the poulet; dressedah, I kiss my fingers!-there are no adequate adjectives. A tiny white cream-cheese, a cup of excellent coffee, a thimbleful of curaçoa for the gentlemen, if they like it,-and a delicious French dinner chez soi en famille is over.

The Children's Hour.

LITTLE ROSALIND'S FAIRY TALE.

I SUPPOSE I am a little girl, for I am only nine years old; but I am very tall compared with Emily Rutherford, and she was ten on the first of last April. I was born in June, and they call me Rose, but my real name is Rosalind. I am glad I was not born the same day as Emily, for Uncle Richard, who is a sailor, and knows a great many things, says that very silly people are born upon that day, and are called April fools. But I don't think Emily is one of them, for she reads books, and plays upon the piano, and can tell pretty stories about fairies-little people, you know, who are so small that they can get inside my thimble, or go to sleep in an acorn-cup. They dance together in the moonlight instead of going to sleep like other folk; and in the day-time if you lie down and put your ear close to the soft grass you may sometimes hear them whispering. I know a great deal more about the fairies than Emily, because— but you must not tell anyone my secret-I was once a fairy myself. Now don't laugh and say it is all fancy, but listen to my story.

It was a hot day in August. Mamma was asleep upon the sofa, and little Leonard and baby Alice were with Mary in the nursery. Mary is our nurse's name; no, not her real name either, I can't remember what that is, but it is very long, and sounds a little, just a very little, like Mesopotamia, and that is the longest word I know. Well, mamma said she could not have a nurse with such a name as that, so she called her Mary, and that made it capital fun, for her surname is Cary, and we, that is little Leonard and I, sing a song about her sometimes. I daresay you remember it. It begins with"Mary Cary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow ?"

and so on. But I must go back to my story. I said mamma was asleep, and when I got tired of building a card-house two storeys high with big chimneys, and a garden paling, and a little dog at the gate, which was made of china, and stood up on his hind legs just outside his little white kennel, which was made of china also. When I got tired, I say, I crept gently out of the room for fear of wakening dear mamma, and put on my straw hat, trimmed with scarlet poppies, and my tiny blue cloak, and ran out into the garden.

It was very warm indeed. Some of the flowers had closed their eyes, as if they could not bear to look at the sun, and dear old Rover (that's papa's big dog) lay panting in the shade with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Well, I walked along under the trees until I came to the green gate which divides the garden from the meadows and the copse. Tom the gardener had left it unlocked, so I opened it and went through. But there were no trees here, and the sun seemed hot enough to burn me; so I crept round by the hedge as well as I could without tumbling into the ditch, and then, when I came to the stream, which runs swiftly over the rocks, I went very carefully over the wooden plank, and so got into the copse. Oh, how beautiful it was there! The air was so cool, the ground was so soft with the moss, and the young trees looked so green, that I clapped my hands with joy. This is better than being indoors, I said aloud, and I should like to live here always. I don't know why I said this, for I did not know there was any one near me; and yet there was, as you shall hear. First of all, I must tell you that I found a mossy bank not far from an oak-tree, and there I sat down a minute, and then I untied my hat, and lay all along upon the sweet, soft bed. Presently, as was lying on one side of my face, and looking at the smooth moss, what do you think I saw? Why, a pretty little fairy about the size smallest doll. She was dressed in green, and had a gold cane in her hand, not quite so long as papa's pencil-case; her face was

of

my

very pretty I thought, and she had golden hair hanging over her tiny shoulders, and two weeny wings not much larger than a gnat's. She laughed merrily, and so I was not frightened when I saw her; and she spoke English almost as well as I do, and called me little Rosalind. Little, indeed; wasn't it silly of the elf? Why, I believe I could have carried her between my finger and thumb all the way across the meadow; and then every one knows that I am a great, big, tall girl for my age.

Well, the funny tiny fairy sat down upon a pebble close to my nose, and crossed her legs. "Little Rosalind," said she, “I am come to talk to you, and to answer your questions, for I know you have many questions to ask; but tell me, first of all, whether you are not a silly child?

"What is your name?" I answered, getting very red.

"Tripps," replied the fairy.

"Then, Tripps, if that is your name, I think you are very rude and very disagreeable to call me silly, and I beg you will go away, and not trouble me any more."

The fairy, although a young lady fairy, actually whistled and snapped her fingers.

"Most little girls," she said, "are silly, and some very silly, but if you get cross with me, I shall think you the silliest of all."

Tripps was silent a minute, and then said, "Rosalind, show me your pocket-handkerchief."

I had a little cambric handkerchief with a lace border in my pocket, and took it out directly, for I thought it was soft and fine, and that the fairy would think so also. It was of course much too large for her to hold, so she asked me to spread it out upon the grass. No sooner had I done this than she sprang upon it and danced for joy.

"That will do exactly, Rosalind."

"Do for what, Miss Tripps?" I answered.
"For the Queen's new ball-room," she said.

"Her Majesty

requested me this morning to buy her a carpet, and I could not find one large enough. But this is just the size, and, as there is a border, it can be laid down at once.'

This made me angry. What right had Tripps or the Queen Fairy herself to make use of my handkerchief? So I jumped up directly, stamped my foot on the ground, and was just going to catch hold of the handkerchief and to upset Tripps, when the impudent little lady opened her wings and perched like a bird upon my hand.

it

"Be kind," she said, "and let me send four men fairies to carry away. I want it so very much."

Tripps began to cry. I am sure she did from her look, but the