e it two days."

"Two days and a half, monsieur."

"Two days and a quarter," I said; "give it me the day after to-morrow at
three o'clock in the morning."

"Ah, monsieur, ten o'clock."

"Make it ten minutes to ten and it's a go," I said.

"Bon," said the tailor.

He kept his word. I am wearing the fantaisie as I write. For a
fantaisie, it is fairly quiet, except that it has three pockets on each
side outside, and a rolled back collar suitable for the throat of an
opera singer, and as many buttons as a harem skirt. Beyond that, it's a
first-class, steady, reliable, quiet, religious fantaisie, such as any
retired French ballet master might be proud to wear.

_II.--The Joys of Philanthropy_

"GOOD-MORNING," said the valet de chambre, as I stepped from my room.

"Good-morning," I answered. "Pray accept twenty-five centimes."

"Good-morning, sir," said the maitre d'hotel, as I passed down the
corridor, "a lovely morning, sir."

"So lovely," I replied, "that I must at once ask you to accept
forty-five centimes on the strength of it."

"A beautiful day, monsieur," said the head waiter, rubbing his hands, "I
trust that monsieur has slept well."

"So well," I answered, "that monsieur must absolutely insist on your
accepting seventy-five centimes on the spot. Come, don't deny me. This
is personal matter. Every time I sleep I simply have to give money
away."

"Monsieur is most kind."

Kind? I should think not. If the valet de chambre and the maitre
d'hotel and the chef de service and the others of the ten men needed to
supply me with fifteen cents worth of coffee, could read my heart, they
would find it an abyss of the blackest hatred.

Yet they take their handful of coppers--great grown men dressed up in
monkey suits of black at eight in the morning--and bow double for it.

If they tell you it is a warm morning, you must give them two cents. If
you ask the time, it costs you two cents. If you want a real genuine
burst of conversation, it costs anywhere from a cent to a cent and a
half a word.

Such is Paris all day long. Tip, tip, tip, till the brain is weary, not
with the cost of it, but with the arithmetical strain.

No pleasure is perfect. Every rose has its thorn. The thorn of the
Parisian holiday-maker is the perpetual necessity of handing out small
gratuities to a set of overgrown flunkies too lazy to split wood.

Not that the amount of the tips, all added together, is anything
serious. No