uses in Monte Carlo were hotels, or
pensions, or furnished villas, or furnished apartments, and if one could
be content to live in the atmosphere of the Casino, which is not
meteorologically lurid, I do not know where one could live in greater
comfort. It is said that everything is rather dearer than in Nice, for
instance, but such things as I wanted to buy I did not find very dear.
The rates at the most expensive hotels did not seem exhorbitant when
reduced to dollars, and if you went a little way from the Casino the
hotels were very reasonable, so that you could spend a great deal of
money at the tables which in America you would spend in board and
lodging. I fancy that a villa could be got there very reasonably, and as
the morals of all the inhabitants are scrupulously cared for by the
administration of the Casino, and no one living in the principality is
allowed to frequent the gaming-tables, it is probable that domestic
service is good and cheap. If I may speak from our experience at our
very simple little hotel, it is admirable, one waiter sufficing for ten
or twelve guests, with leisure for much friendly conversation in the
office, between the breakfasts served in our rooms and the excellent
dinners at the small tables in the salon. If you liked, he would speak
French or Italian, though he spoke English as well as any one, and he
was of that excellent Piedmontese race which has been the saving salt of
the whole peninsula. As for the food, it was far beyond that of our
cold-storage, and it must have been cheap, since it was provided for us
at the rate we paid.

The cost of dress varies, according to the taste of and the purse,
everywhere. White serge seemed the favorite wear of most of the ladies
one saw in the street at Monte Carlo, especially in the region of the
Casino. This may have expressed an inner condition, or it may have been
a sympathetic response to the advances of the flowers in the pretty beds
and parterres so fancifully designed by the gardeners of the
administration, or it may have been a token of the helpless submission
to which the windows of the milliners and modistes reduced all comers of
the dressful sex. Many of the men with the women, or without them, were
also in white serge, but they seemed more variably attired; there was a
prevailing suggestion of yachting or automobiling in their dress,
though doubtless most of them had not sailed or motored to the spot.
Some few, say four or five, may