ly, eternally. "I swear to you, monsieur,"
will your Parisian say, "that your work shall be done in two hours,"
Esteem yourself fortunate if it is finished in two days: very probably
two weeks will see it still uncompleted. Send for a workman to execute
some little job about your house. "He will come at once--yes, at
once." Days roll round, and he never comes at all. Your dressmaker
agrees to make you a dress for a certain price: your bill comes
home for half as much again. An American in Paris ordered an extra
door-key, giving the original key as a pattern. The key was to cost
four francs. Here is a copy of the bill as presented:

Francs.
For taking off lock (a process wholly unnecessary,
by the by), 1-1/2
For putting it on again, 1-1/2
Workman's time, 1
Journey from shop (about half a square), 1
Key, 4
____
Total 9

Another American sent for a bell-hanger to inspect an electric bell
which was thought to be out of order, but which proved on inspection
to be all right. He got a bill of five francs, whereof one item ran
thus: "_For looking at the bell_, 2 francs." He had not touched the
thing, be it borne in mind.

I cannot refrain from here making answer to a remark too often
heard from American lips, that America is as immoral as France--that
American society is every whit as depraved as the French. It is _not_.
The immorality of America is as a festering wound on an otherwise
healthy body: the immorality of France is like a scrofulous taint that
poisons the whole life-current. One gets weary and heartsick with the
old eternal song, the everlasting theme, which is sung and told and
dramatized and written about and painted--that flies in your face at
every corner and stares up at you from every inch of printed paper,
every square of colored canvas, in the whole nationality. And to sum
up at last this, "a woman's opinion," I will freely state that the
longer I live in France the more I admire the Parisians and the less I
like them.

L.H.H.

THE COLLEGIO ROMANO.

The Collegio Romano was always worth a visit, because it contained the
celebrated Kircherian Museum and the admirable observatory pre