breath. For fifty centimes he'll bow low enough to crack himself. If
you gave him a franc, he'd lie down on the floor and lick your boots. I
know he would; I've seen them do it.

So when the news comes that you propose to take a bath, he's right along
side of you in a minute, all civility. Mind you, in a really French
hotel, one with what is called the old French atmosphere, taking a bath
is quite an event, and the maitre d'hotel sees a dead sure fifty
centimes in it, with perhaps an extra ten centimes if times are good.
That is to say, he may clear anything from ten to twelve cents on the
transaction. A bath, monsieur? Nothing more simple, this moment, tout de
suite, right off, he will at once give orders for it. So you give him
eleven cents and he then tells the hotel harpy, dressed in black, like
the theatre harpies, to get the bath and she goes and gets it. She was
there, of course, all the time, right in the corridor, and heard all
that proceeded, but she doesn't "enter into her functions" until the
valet de chambre tells the maitre d'hotel and the maitre d'hotel informs
her officially of the coming event.

She gets the bath. What does she do? Why, merely opens the door of the
bathroom, which wasn't locked, and turns on the water. But, of course,
no man with any chivalry in him could allow a harpy to be put to all
that labour without pressing her to accept three cents as a mark of
personal appreciation.

Thus the maitre d'hotel and the valet de chambre and the harpy go on all
day, from six in the morning when they first "enter into functions"
until heaven knows when at night when they leave off, and they keep
gathering in two cents and three cents and even five cents at a time.
Then presently, I suppose, they go off and spend it in their own way.
The maitre d'hotel transformed into a cheap Parisian with a dragon-fly
coat and a sixty cent panama, dances gaily at the Bal Wagram, and
himself hands out coppers to the musicians, and gives a one cent tip to
a lower order of maitre d'hotel. The harpy goes forth, and with other
harpies absorbs red wine and indescribable cheese at eleven at night in
a crowded little cafe on the crowded sidewalk of a street about as wide
as a wagon. She tips the waiter who serves her at the rate of one cent
per half hour of attendance, and he, I suppose, later on tips someone
else, and so on endlessly.

In this way about fifty thousand people in Paris eke out a livelihood by
tipping one