Children, too, are sent to school in the same unprotected manner: one may meet them any day trooping through the streets, their bare heads shining in the sun or glistening in the rain, according as the fickle sky may smile or weep; and babies are drawn about in the open air, two, and sometimes three of them, crowded into a small carriage and sweltering under a feather bed which covers them to their chins, and yet with their bald pates exposed to all the winds that blow. The ignorant recklessness with which the changes of temperature are met is well exemplified in the attire of little girls and young maidens who participate in the religious processions which take place so frequently in Munich, especially during the spring and early summer. On such occasions, although the weather may be so chilly that the bystanders are wrapped up to their eyes in shawls and cloaks, these young creatures appear clad in thin white muslin dresses, with necks and arms bare, and with no covering upon the head more substantial than a wreath of flowers or a gauze veil: and in this condition they march through the wet and windy streets, and settle down finally to a prolonged service in a church as cold and damp as a cellar.

Another source of harm is the ordinary diet of the citizens. There is probably no large city of the Old World where the lower classes are able to obtain so much substantial food as in Munich. Indeed, there is, properly speaking, no abject poverty in that city, although the population, as a whole, possesses less wealth than is usually found in capitals; one reason of this being the fact that many families who are rich enough to choose their place of residence avoid Munich on account of its notorious sickliness, while their places are filled by tradesmen and artisans of all kinds, who must make a living at whatever risk of life. But, at any rate, no one dies there of starvation, and the great majority of the citizens are able to have meat for dinner every day. Unfortunately, veal—and very young veal at that—is the favorite dish of all classes, so that the benefit derived from animal juices is not so great as it might be. During the recent Franco-German war it was remarked that the Bavarian soldiers were able neither to resist nor to endure so well as the troops of North Germany; and by many this difference was ascribed to the habitual use by the former of veal as the chief article of diet. There is no doubt, too, that the immoderate drinking of beer tends to weaken instead of strengthen the inhabitants, especially as so many of them drink when they ought to eat, even beginning a day's work by chilling their stomachs with this cold beverage, and necessitating thereby a supplementary draught of "schnapps," thus creating excitement instead of nourishment, and superinducing a second bad habit upon a first. Pure Bavarian beer, taken in moderation, would be an excellent thing, for its stimulating and nutritive properties are a good counterpoise to the exhausting effects of the harsh climate; but, alas! this renowned specialty of Munich is losing its ancient fame: the beer is no longer under governmental inspection, and bitter is the general complaint against the brewers on account of its alleged adulteration through the use of foreign drugs and poisonous indigenous plants, to say nothing of its dilution by the retailers with Munich water, itself a poison sufficiently strong. For the rest, the amount of pork and sausages consumed is enormous: the favorite vegetable is the indigestible sauerkraut, and the bread in general use is uniformly bad. Nor can tobacco be considered as otherwise than an article of diet, since the men and boys are hardly ever seen without a pipe or cigar in their mouths, while the women and girls spend the greater part of their lives in an atmosphere blue and heavy with tobacco smoke.

Having now given many reasons why the citizens of Munich ought to be sick, it is time to see to what degree effects correspond to causes in the sanitary condition of the city. Munich is known all over the world as a nest for typhus fever; nor will it soon be forgotten that within a year it has suffered from two distinct outbreaks of cholera, besides being the only city in Europe where that epidemic continued to rage during the winter. The population is estimated at one hundred and eighty-eight thousand, but this number is generally considered as greater than the truth. Statistics show that between two and three thousand sicken annually of typhus, and that of these between two and three hundred die. Some idea of the special tendency to this disease may be obtained by comparing the statistics of Munich with those of Berlin, which is also an unfavorably situated and very unhealthy city. In Berlin, the regiment most exposed to fever loses annually three men: in Munich, the first regiment of artillery loses annually thirteen men. In Berlin, of the whole body of the soldiery—over eighteen thousand men—sixteen men die annually of typhus; in Munich, where the number of the soldiers is only twelve thousand, fifty men die annually of typhus. The disease, too, has been on the increase for the last three years. In 1872 four hundred and seven persons died of it, and during the first four months of 1873 one hundred and twenty-two died. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that many persons visiting Munich contract the fever there, but return home to sicken with it, and that this number has greatly increased since the recent facilities for travel have been extended in all directions from the capital. If all these cases were to be added to the list of victims—and they properly belong to it—the number would be appalling indeed. Even that small body, the Bavarian Parliament, loses one or more of its members every year from the same disease and yet these men are more favorably situated than almost any others as regards protective circumstances. So patent is the danger, and so many are the instances of disease contracted during a short stay in the capital and carried away to spread contagion in remote places, that frequently persons chosen to honorable and lucrative official positions refuse to accept because, in order to hold such situations, they must reside temporarily or entirely in Munich. Finally, the general unhealthiness of Munich cannot be questioned, since statistics show that nearly fifty per cent, of the children born there die in infancy, and that the death-rate for the whole population is nearly forty in a thousand.

But is there no help for this state of things? The foregoing account of the principal causes of disease suggests naturally the means of at least partial cure for the accumulated evils under which the benighted city is suffering. It is true that the climate must always be unfavorable to persons of a certain constitution, but its bracing air is a tonic to those who are able to bear it, and its fierce winds serve to sweep away many an impurity. It is true, also, that the soil must always be in some degree a manufactory of injurious effluvia, and that the vicinity of that long strip of marshy bottom known as the English Garden must continue to be a source of mischief; but if the dead had never been buried in the neighborhood of the town, and if the excreta of the living had not from the beginning until how been allowed to corrupt the air and the water, the occasional prevalence of vegetable miasma would give comparatively little trouble. In fact, the extreme backwardness of the people with regard to knowledge of, and obedience to, the simplest sanitary laws is a great aggravation of both their necessary and unnecessary ills. During the recent cholera epidemic the physicians complained that all rational means of abating the plague were continually thwarted by the ignorance and obstinacy of the lower classes. Very few families kept remedies in their houses, and yet in many cases medical aid was not applied for, lest the regulations concerning the disinfection of furniture and the burning of bedding, and other clothing should be enforced. There was the greatest dissatisfaction with the prohibition against the holding of public balls and other amusements wherein health would be particularly exposed; and the foolish citizens crowded all the more into the unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and concert-halls, and persisted in supping on heavy food and cold beer in the open air, as though on purpose to spite the over-anxious magistrates and doctors. Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower classes. People who ought to have known better defied the cholera in excess of rioting, while those of another turn of mind gave way to superstitious fears, and as soon as they felt the first symptoms of the disease fled to the cold, damp churches and wasted in prayer upon their knees the few precious hours which, spent in a warm bed and under the influence of proper remedies, might have ensured them the salvation of at least their temporal life.

To go still higher. Although Munich had warning of the approach of the epidemic months before it broke out, no sufficient means were adopted by the authorities to fortify the city against its attack. All summer long the street-drains sent up their concentrated stenches and the undrained streets spread far and wide their promiscuous abominations. The general daily disinfection ordered by the city government was never thoroughly enforcedly the police, and as often as a lull occurred in the virulence of the pestilence it was almost totally neglected by the citizens. When the plague ceased for a few days in the autumn, the chief medical authorities announced that it was at an end; and when it broke out again, these wise ones comforted the public by assuring them that it was only a "Nach-epidemie"—an after epidemic—that is, a final effort of the mysterious poison, like the last flashing up of an expiring flame. And yet this "after epidemic" lasted more than five months, and was more virulent in its workings than had been the three months' visitation in the previous summer! The official reports and scientific discussions of the subject were unsatisfactory to the last degree. The principal object seemed to be, not to cleanse Munich and get rid of the pestilence, but to substantiate the proposition that the variations in the sanitary condition of the city are intimately connected with the rising and falling of the ground-water (grund-wasser)—a theory which, whether true or not, is of small practical value under existing circumstances, since the ground-water, so far as quality is concerned, is entirely beyond human control, while the drinking-water and the sewers are capable of improvement.

It is but justice to say that a few physicians—who, having recently come to Munich, are properly impressed with its sanitary deficiencies, and one, at least, who, long a resident, has a thorough knowledge of what is wanted, and sufficient common sense and courage to speak out—do not hesitate to declare that the bad water and bad drainage of that city are the principal causes of its everlasting typhus and its frequent epidemics. But these men are in bad odor with their colleagues, and are denounced on all sides as enemies of the fair fame and prosperity of Munich. Certain physicians of high standing there laugh at the fuss made about the water, and tell their patients, even foreigners, to drink all the water they want; while it may be doubted whether any, excepting the few referred to above, have any adequate idea of the injury constantly accruing from the unwashed drains and the crowded cemeteries.

And Munich will be visited with a succession of "after epidemics," and physicians will continue to talk nonsense and make blunders and be at their wits' end, so long as they persist in ignoring the true causes of these plagues and in delaying to apply the only remedy. Water is what Munich needs—pure water for the people to drink and to cook with; plenty of water for them to bathe in; water to wash out the vaults and drains; water for a daily flushing of the sewers. As long ago as 1822 a competent authority pointed out an inexhaustible source from which water might be obtained, with a fall sufficient to obviate the necessity of any hydraulic works for its elevation. There is in the Bavarian Mountains, not far away, a lake of remarkably pure water, situated at such a height that the level would be above the loftiest houses in Munich. The estimated cost of bringing the water into the city is only five millions of gulden (about two millions of dollars). It seems surprising that with this excellent opportunity at hand there should be any hesitation about accepting it. And yet, after having been possessed of the knowledge for more than fifty years, there was only one vote in favor of the enterprise when the subject was discussed in a meeting of the municipal and medical authorities a short time ago. The proverbial thriftiness of the German is apt to degenerate into stinginess when the object to be attained is of general rather than individual benefit; and though Munich claims a high place as an art-centre, it would take a long time to convince its citizens that three hundred millions of kreuzers are but as dust in the balance when weighed against the value to the world of Kaulbach.

One step, however, has been gained. The urgent need of an abundant supply of good water, which is so patent a fact to all strangers visiting Munich, is beginning to dawn upon the intelligence of the community. The connection between cause and effect was so evident during the cholera epidemic of last year that even Ignorance recognized the Law, while Superstition dared only whisper of "judgments," and refrained from attempting to propitiate the destroying angel by religious mummeries until it was certain that his wrath was nearly spent. But it is to be feared that, taking counsel of penuriousness, an attempt will be made to utilize certain sources which have recently been discovered near the city, and which are not only insufficient, but impure, instead of bringing, once for all, a full supply for every purpose from the neighboring mountain lake.

The dragon that haunted the soil of Munich in the old days is still poisoning the springs and the atmosphere with his pestilent breath, nor can he be tempted forth to his destruction until he shall see his reflection mirrored in fountains of pure water.

E.

Nevertheless, these very creatures are still in Paris in great numbers. The most elegant tourist who has walked the streets of the French capital this year, though he kept strictly to the choicer quarters, has touched elbows with these creatures unconsciously; and if he has ventured into the Belleville quarter, into the regions beyond the Place of the Bastile, into the neighborhood of the Panthéon or the Gobelins tapestry-mill, he has been jostled against, on the narrow sidewalks of narrow streets, by thousands of them. They are not such a conspicuous feature of the city's daily life now as they were when the volcano of revolution was belching its lava torrent through the streets; but they are there. They are not now occupied in the way they were then; they make less noise; they dress more quietly; they attend, in one way or other, to the business of getting a living. Some are working at trades; some are playing at soldiers; some are keeping cabarets; some are driving fiacres. I am morally certain the rascal who drove me home from the Gymnase one night was a petroleum-flinger at the most active period of his existence. "Give me your ticket, cocher," I said to him; for the law requires the cabman to give to his fare, without solicitation, a, ticket with his number, and the legal rates of fare printed on it. He cracked his whip at the left ear of his steed, and drove on without paying any attention. "Give me your ticket," I repeated. This time he shrugged his shoulders—it requires a really superhuman effort on the part of a Frenchman to refrain from letting his shoulders fly up to his ears, whatever his determination to control himself—but drove on in silence. Then I brandished my umbrella, and punching him with that weapon in the back in an energetic manner, repeated, "Cocher, oblige me with your ticket, tout de suite." He turned round on his seat in a fury. "Ah, ça!" he roared, thee-thou-ing me as an expression of his direst rage and power of insult, "where hast thou come out of, then, that thou hast no sense left thee at the last?" Yes, I am morally certain he helped burn the Tuileries, that fellow!

Others of the former demons who howled in the Commune mobs are now doing the congenial work of thievery which they did before the Commune days, and especially during them. They are not the worst-looking of the demons. A thief is generally a rather sleek-looking person in his station. Rich thieves treat themselves to the best of broadcloth and the shiniest of tall hats. Poor thieves usually at least shave their faces, and try to look unforbidding. If they wear a blouse, it is because they belong on a social scale which does not dream of wearing a coat. The blousard of Paris may be either a thief or a working-man: he is always the one or the other, and sometimes he is both.

The great mass of those who rioted in the Commune—the rank and file of that turbulent army—may be found wherever there are blouses in Paris. Occasionally, arrests are made, even now, of men who were prominently active, unduly noisy, in that terrible time: the French police has got a list of such, and will go on tracking them down and bringing them to punishment for years to come, or until the next revolution arrives. In a most respectable street in the Faubourg St. Germain, where I lived, a quiet wine-seller next door to me was arrested and his business broken up nearly two years after the war was over, his only offence being that he had been too active a Communist. Later, an industrious blousard of my acquaintance was arrested at his work, and sent to prison for the same offence: he was a carriage-maker. In the Rue de Provence an old woman who begged very assiduously with a drugged baby, and whom I used to watch from my window by the half hour, fascinated by her practical methods of doing business, was hauled up one day on the same charge, and went her way with the gendarme, to be seen no more. A meeker-looking old creature I never saw as she leaned against the wall over the way, and collected sous industriously from the passers-by, and hid them in a pocket in the small of the poor baby's back; but I was told she displayed tremendous energy as a pétroleuse in those other days when robbery was a better trade than even beggary.

You may have observed, when you have been returning home from the opera some night in Paris, in the gloom succeeding midnight, a dusky figure moving along by the paved gutter in the shadow of a large square lantern which he carries. The lantern has a light only in front, and catches your eye as it glides along two or three inches above the paving-stones, so that you see the figure in the shadow behind it but dimly. Close down to the stones it throws its glare for two or three feet about, and into that glare-emerges a hook—an iron hook—which pokes and prods at>out in the gutters, and now and then fastens like a finger on a wisp of paper and disappears behind the lamp. Following the hook with your eye, you see that it deposits the wisps of paper in a deep basket fastened on the back of a man. The is shaggy, dirty and begrimed. He wears a hat which he has at some fished out of a gutter, a ragged blue blouse, a raggeder apron, which was in its brighter days a coffee-sack, and wooden shoes upon his feet. A short pipe, sometimes alight, but more often empty, is in a corner of his mouth. No one needs to be told who he is or what his calling. In the argot of the blousards he is known as the Chevalier of the Hook.

The ragpicker of Paris has been often written of, but what I have read of him has never shown him to me in quite the colors I have found him in by personal observation and inquiry concerning his ways of life. He has been somewhat idealized in print, I find. Victor Hugo has presented him in a light not unlike that of Cooper's noble savage—with large difference of color and pose, of course. The average Frenchman knows Cooper's noble savage as well as we know Hugo's romantic ragpicker, and he knows nothing of the American Indian besides. (It is a curious fact, which I may note in passing, that the only American author whose writings appear to be really well known in Paris to-day is Fenimore Cooper. Next to him stands Edgar Poe—Poaye, as the French call him, pronouncing both the vowels.) There is a street in the crowded quarter of Paris back of the Panthéon which has the, reputation of being the especial haunt of the ragpickers. It is called the Rue Mouffetard, and includes many of this class of blousards among its population; but as there are over twenty thousand ragpickers in Paris, it needs little argument to show that they are not all hived in the Rue Mouffetard. Great numbers live in the Brise Miche quarter, behind the church of St. Méry; at Montmartre, along the Canal de Bièvre; in the purlieus of Belleville; out beyond the Bastile; in fact, wherever there is dirt enough to suit their tastes. For if the truth is to be written here, it must be said that the ragpicker of Paris is the most degraded creature ever met in the guise of a human being. I have met Digger Indians, too, in California. There is something to be said in defence of the bestiality of a Digger: he has not been exposed to the refining influences of surrounding civilization; he was reared in darkness and ignorance; so were his fathers before him for many generations; the white man and his ways have just dawned upon the poor Digger's consciousness; and so on. These things cannot be said for the ragpicker of Paris. He is almost equally dirty with the Digger, and he lives in the gayest capital of the world. He is also almost equally ignorant with the Digger: neither can read or write; neither has any idea whether the world is round or flat; neither is aware, save dimly, that there are other lands and other peoples than his own; but the ragpicker is in a city full of books and newspapers (and, oddly enough, is a principal purveyor for the mills that make paper for printing); and the Digger has the advantage in the comparison. The Digger lives in vicious sexual relations, but in this particular point the comparison leaves the Indian far in advance of his rival, for the ragpicker's customs in this regard are worse by far than those of even the most degraded Indians of America. There is nothing in any savage country more horrible, more astounding and incredible than the practices of the ragpickers of Paris in respect of the relations between the sexes. They are so atrociously vile that it is difficult to state the truth in cleanly words.

You may have heard that a ragpicker who has risen to the rank of a boss in his trade, and so remains at home in a shop and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre. A woman attaining this dignity is called an ogress. The terms are not idle ones. Like many of the words and phrases of slang they are based on the clearest conception of the merits of the case. An ogre or ogress without a daughter, real or adopted, lacks the first requisite for doing a successful business. The ogre or ogress has his or her especial workmen, who go out and scour the streets, bringing home their load, and being paid in board and lodging simply. When there is a daughter in the business the workmen are her husbands. The process of divorce is easy, and consists simply in the ragpicker's returning with his hotte (la hotte is the basket which hangs on the back) to some other ogre or ogress after his daily or nightly tour of the streets. Marriage among the ragpickers of Paris is so rare an incident as to be virtually no part of their plan of life.

The Paris ragpicker is seldom seen in the streets by day: his most profitable season is the night. And what meagre pickings are his at the best! what despicable bits of paper, of twine, of coal-refuse, of rejected food, bones, potato-skins, he gathers carefully in his hoard! A bit of paper no larger than a postage-stamp he saves. A crust of bread no bigger than a walnut is a prize, for rare are the households in Paris in which a crust that is large enough to be visible to the naked eye is allowed to be thrown into the street. Standing and watching this poor wretch prodding in a gutter after hopeless infinitesimals, I have pictured to myself what emotions would surge through his breast if a New York garbage-barrel were to be set down before him. I am not sure he would be able to refrain from fainting away at sight of such a mine of wealth. Happy ragpicker of New York who takes his morning stroll and his lordly pick from the contents of the teeming barrels our servants set out on the pavement for him! He does not have to work at night: he is a sort of prince, compared to his Paris fellow. If a Paris ragpicker could have the monopoly of the barrels in a single block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, I am convinced he would retire from business at the end of ten years with an independent fortune—that is, if with the New York barrels he could have the Paris market and live on Paris fare. It is an old story that in Paris nothing is wasted. The very mud in the streets is gathered up and sold. There is a market for everything.

An important division of the army of blousards is that composed of the street-sweepers of Paris. They share the Rue Mouffetard and the Place Maubert with the ragpickers, and, like them, are scattered about in various poorer quarters of the city. Ever-picturesque argot has given them a name of ridicule, and calls them les peintres and their brooms their inspired brushes. Every tourist has seen those unhappy wretches at work, sometimes alone, sometimes in gangs of three or four, men and women together. There is no distinction of sex in this branch of industry, as indeed there is in none of the lowest fields of labor in Paris. Women and girls are quite often ragpickers; among the street-sweepers they form a good half of the force; they are also street—peddlers, dragging cartloads of vegetables about and crying aloud their wares; they are porters, lugging bundles on their backs; they are oyster-openers, hacking away with iron knife at coarse shells; they even drive drays and big market-wagons; they split wood and shovel coal, and in a hundred ways confound and confuse those theorizers who pretend that male bone and muscle is by nature brawnier than female. The female scavengers are quite as strong, quite as coarse, quite as dirty, and can smoke their pipes with quite as much gusto as their male compeers.

The scavengers are six thousand in number, and are employed by contractors, who pay them at the rate of four to eight sous per hour. They use up seventy thousand brooms a year, and the filth they gather is rotted in pits and sold for manure, yielding about seven hundred thousand dollars a year. Until the rubbish of New York streets is made to yield a profit in a similar manner our streets will never be cleaned as they should be. But I fear it is hopeless to expect that New York streets will ever be cleaned as they are in Paris, from lack of the human element that does the work in the French capital. A hard ten hours' work would yield the Paris scavenger forty to eighty sous, and on this sum he would be rich, for he can clothe and feed himself on a sum which would scarcely buy a New York laborer what drink he needs alone, to say nothing about food and clothing. But the Paris scavenger is rarely privileged to work ten hours a day, and his earnings the year round will barely exceed on an average twenty-five cents a day. For this sum he can have sufficient food, and as for clothing, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he never buys any. At various stages in his career he becomes possessed by a stroke of fortune of some article of cast-off clothing, which he wears, as it were, for life. Ordinarily, the poorest blousard has a new blouse once in five or ten years, and a new pair of wooden shoes in the same time; but the scavenger's apparel is for ever old, and he never lays it off. I have seen thousands of men and women in Paris of whom it would be mere idle dreaming to suppose that they undressed themselves at night. Their clothing was practically as much a part of them as their skins. It is only in the matter of lodging that the lowest classes of Paris are hard pressed. Rents in Paris are high. Few families, even of the better sort of blousards, have a home attractive enough to compete with the fascinations of the street or the café. Even in the Rue Mouffetard there are cafés where wine is sold at two sous the glass, and even cheaper, which would put to the blush some of the most frequented "saloons" of Broadway in point of elegance and comfort for the lounger. Stuccoed walls, frescoed ceilings, huge mirrors, velvet sofas, marble-topped tables, gleaming chandeliers, gilt and glitter that would be called "palatial" in New York, make the place attractive. Yet a man could hardly be too ragged to be welcome therein if he had a few sous in his pocket.

The scavenger and the ragpicker, being the lowest grade of blousards, do not always rise to the dignity even of a blouse. They wear a coat sometimes, but it is a marvel of a coat, and was in the last stages of tottering old age before it fell to the blousard. They wear leather boots too sometimes, instead of the wooden shoes belonging to their station, but they are boots which are but a mockery and a delusion, and yield the wearer no comfort. A respectable blousard—a carpenter or a shoemaker or a member of any honest trade—would scorn to be seen in any other dress but his neat blouse, unless on some great day, a fete, his wedding or at church, when he wears his only coat, or his father's or a friend's. The blouse is in its sphere a badge of respectability to the wearer, and honest blousards look upon the assumption of a blouse by a thief as a gross imposition upon the public at large and an outrage upon honest workingmen. There is a wide range of quality in blouses, too. I bought one in the Rue Mouffetard, to wear as a protection in some of my night-wanderings, for the sum of forty cents: it was a plain frock of coarse stuff, with a string at the neck. But there were blouses of several degrees of fineness in the shop—some of very fine linen, tied with a white silk ribbon, and neatly embroidered. The usual color of blouses is white, blue or black. The material is often a coarse, warm cloth, such as one might make a very respectable overcoat of, I should think. In cold weather it is common to see men wearing two or even three blouses, one over the other. Caps are sold at from twenty to sixty cents each in the same street. It will be seen that clothing is inexpensive to the blousard, and as the fashions never change with him, he never lays aside a garment till it is quite worn out.

One of the peculiar features of low Paris is the shop for the sale of articles at the uniform price of one son. One before which I paused in the Rue Mouffetard was presided over, by two women—evidently grandmother and granddaughter. The former was as grotesque a type of the jolly old vendeuse of Paris as it would be possible to find. A low, winey humor twinkled in her little black eyes, hidden in wrinkly wads of fat; her nose glowed with good feeling; her toothless mouth smirked good-naturedly. A worn shawl covered her chunky shoulders, and a cap like a muslin and flannel extinguisher protected her bald old head from the weather. The granddaughter, being young and rather pretty, was less interesting as a picture of a curious type. The shop occupied a corner, and seemed to literally overflow upon the sidewalks of the two streets, so that care was needful in moving about to avoid stumbling over the profuse array of objects which littered the way. A group of old women were standing near, laughing and chattering in toothless merriment over some mysterious cause of amusement, which I grievously suspected to be myself, the apparition of a foreigner being no doubt an uncommon one in that quarter. But the women of the shop, having an eye to sales, were obsequiously polite to the stranger. I engaged in conversation with the old woman, who proved quite communicative, and set me off on a path of inquiry which yielded information of curious interest.

"Voyez!" cried out the younger woman from behind the broad counter open to the street, and spread with a literally innumerable variety of articles—"Voyez! All one sou! your choice in the sale!"

To study the shop was to find many suggestions of the types of people living in the surrounding buildings—alphabets and whistles for children; playing-cards for gamesters; camphor cigarettes for invalids; sewing-cases for work-girls; mirrors for coquettes; and toys innumerable, "all one sou." In the grand shops on the fashionable boulevards you may see the last new mode in toys—for no season goes by in Paris without bringing some especial toy or toys to become "the rage"—but in the Rue Mouffetard the toys are all classics. They have been handed down from generation to generation precisely in the forms you see them here. Babies who are now tottering grandfathers and grandmothers played with the toys of the "boutique à un sou" in their day, as the babies of the present do, and paid the same price for them, in spite of the changes of time and the decreased purchasing value of the son in most respects. I bought a large collection of these toys purely as objects of curiosity, and it was really amazing to see, when spread out on a table, what a collection I had gathered for the incredible price of sixteen cents. Many of the toys would be readily recognized as old acquaintances in America, but others, common here for a hundred years past, I never saw at home. The articulated monkey chasing his nose over the end of a stick; the wooden snake undulating in a surprisingly life-like manner; the noisy "watchman's rattle," which in our village was popularly supposed to be the constant companion of the New York policeman on his beat; the jumping-jack, the wooden sword, the whip and the doll,—all these are household friends in the humblest American homes. But not so the frog which jumps with a spring, the wooden hammers which fall alternately on their wooden anvil by the simplest of contrivances, and the horseman without legs, whose horse has a whistle instead of a tail. How any one of these articles could be sold for a sou passed my comprehension until I learned details so surprising as to throw this one quite into the shade.

There are blousards whose whole lives are passed in carving these toys from the wood of the linden tree, and daubing them with the most flaming reds, the most glittering yellows, the most dazzling blues, that ever colorist beheld. The toy whips with handles decorated with gilt paper wrapped about them spirally are said to be exclusively made by Israelites, but the ingenuity of the human mind has not devised an explanation of this curious fact. The papier-mâché sheep is one of the most elaborately fashioned toys sold for a sou, and the mode of making it is this: The workman takes old scraps of paper and mashes them in water to a pulp: this he sticks around the inside of a rude mould, which is in two parts, one for each side of the sheep. When the two sides are moulded, he sticks them together and dips the whole in a pot of white mucilaginous paint. When this coating is dry, he tattoos the sheep according to his fancy, covers its back with a bit of sheepskin, and ties a red string around its neck. And all this work for a sou? is one's incredulous question. Why, our blousard would think his fortune was made if he could get a sou for it. The retailer in the Rue Mouffetard sells it for a sou: the man who made it would be happy if he could sell it at the rate of eight sous the dozen, but, like most other workers, he must deal with a middleman. No retailer could take his stock off his hands in sufficient quantities: he must sell to a wholesale dealer in the first place, and the wholesale dealer sells to the little shopkeeper at eight sous the dozen. All this work for half a sou, then! And when it is added that the workman has to furnish the materials for his work besides, it really entitles the toy to a niche in the realms of the marvelous. I have found my eyes growing moist in New York as I listened to the tales of sewing-girls who made coarse shirts at six cents apiece, and found the thread, but such cases were exceptional, and could only be viewed in the light of intolerable hardships; while the poor wretches who make these toys at these prices are following the trade to which they were bred, and which their fathers followed before them, and their only fear is that they may be unable to get enough of this work to do. Each of the other toys in my collection is made at the same or a smaller price. The little lead candlestick is sold by the wholesale dealer at four sous the dozen. Whistles are sold at two sous the dozen. There are little watches of stamped brass with a crystal, movable hands, and a cord of yellow cotton with an occasional gold thread running through it, which are sold wholesale at seven sous the dozen.

"Voyez! Make your choice, brave parents! If the little one pulls in pieces the object of his affection, no matter: it will not derange your resources to replace it."

Courier, in the preface to his translation of Herodotus, tells us that Malherbe, the courtier, used to say, "I learn all my French at the Place Maubert," and that Plato, who was a poet and did not like the lower orders, nevertheless called them his "masters of language." The gamin of Paris, who is the father of argot, long ago gave to the quarter of the city through which the Rue Mouffetard runs a name which clings to it tenaciously. He called it the "quartier souffrant"—the suffering quarter. A designation like this, given by a magazinist, would be fitting enough, certainly, but received into the current slang of Paris, it becomes a really striking phrase. It is nothing to read of a suffering quarter, but it is almost startling to hear an omnibus conductor call out, "Place Maubert! Rue St. Victor! Panthéon! Quartier Souffrant! Anybody for the Suffering Quarter?" and to see a rheumatic old woman, tottering with years and clad in dirty rags, get down and go clattering off into the quarter to which she so palpably belongs.

The Rue Mouffetard, which in old times was a continuation of the Place Maubert from the river Seine, then extended in an unbroken line to the Barrière d'Italie, at the remote southern limit of the city of Paris. The Haussmannizing reform which set in under the Empire went at the horrible neighborhood with a sort of sublime fury of destruction. Whole blocks of dark, forbidding buildings were obliterated by the pickaxes of the blousards, who thus assisted at their own regeneration. The result is, that there is a long and wide avenue now stretching its lines of lamps into the distance from the point where the Rue Mouffetard stops and the Avenue Gobelins begins. The old street—the portion of it which remains—looks with a dazed and dirty sorrowfulness up the broad, clean avenue which once was dirty and narrow like itself. The work of transformation ceased with the breaking out of the war with Germany. So did the like work in numerous other quarters of the town which needed it quite as badly as the Rue Mouffetard. But under the government of the Septennat the work has been resumed in some degree. The double purpose is hereby served of letting in light on the dark spots of the town, and of giving employment to the needy blousards, who might get into obstreperous moods again if crowded too hard by poverty and want. It seems at first sight an awful destruction of property, this work of demolition, but I believe it has been proved that the rise in value of the real estate thus regenerated more than compensates for the losses sustained, in the long run. All the blousard cares about the matter, however, is that it gives him work, and that is what he craves.

To see gangs of brawny fellows tearing down walls, ripping off doors, carrying away timbers on their shoulders when a street is in its decaying stage, is to see a most interesting sight. At the entrance of the street a sign is put up: "RUE BARRÉE." The front walls of buildings torn away, winding staircases are seen climbing up with all their burden of years upon them and all their secret weaknesses exposed. Sometimes these stairways are of stone, sometimes of wood: when the latter, if in a fair state of preservation, they are taken away bodily, to be put up again in some remote quarter of the town. Shop-windows are offered for sale for like purposes. At night the scene is made lurid by the glare of triangular lanterns, which throw out their warning red light, and the entrance to the street is carefully guarded. Gradually the old buildings are taken to pieces and removed, bit by bit. New walls of creamy stone, with modern windows, handsomely carved cornices, stone piazzas, and the like, are built up. The street has become widened where it was narrow, and straightened where it was crooked. The very sidewalks on either side of the new boulevard or avenue are as wide as was the whole of the old street which has now disappeared. And with the old street the old tenants have disappeared too. Handsome shops occupy the ground-floors, wealthy citizens live in the richly adorned apartments on the upper floors. The blousards who hived in the old street have found a nook in some other old street, or they have fled to the suburbs—the best place for them, as it is for all people of limited resources in all large towns.

WIRT SIKES.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PERILOUS TRUCE.

The very stars in their courses seemed to fight for this young man.

No sooner had Wenna Rosewarne fled to her own room, there to think over in a wild and bewildered way all that had just happened, than her heart smote her sorely. She had not acted prudently; she had forgotten her self-respect; she ought to have forbidden him to come near her again—at least until such time as this foolish fancy of his should have passed away and been forgotten.

How could she have parted with him so calmly, and led him to suppose that their former relations were unaltered? She looked back on the forced quietude of her manner, and was herself astonished. Now her heart was beating rapidly; her trembling fingers were unconsciously twisting and untwisting a bit of ribbon; her head seemed giddy with the recollection of that brief and strange interview, Then, somehow, she thought of the look on his face when she told him that henceforth they must be strangers to each other. It seemed hard that he should be badly used for what was perhaps no intentional fault. If anybody had been in fault, it was herself in being blind to a possibility to which even her own sister had drawn her attention; and so the punishment ought to fall on her.

She would humble herself before Mr. Roscorla. She would force herself to be affectionate toward him in her letters. She would even write to Mabyn, and beg of her to take no notice of that angry remonstrance.

Then Wenna thought of her mother, and how she ought to tell her of all these things. But how could she? During the past day or two Mrs. Rosewarne had been at times singularly fretful and anxious. No letter had come from her husband. In vain did Wenna remind her that men were more careless of such small matters than women, and that it was too soon to expect her father to sit down and write. Mrs. Rosewarne sat brooding over her husband's silence; then she would get up in an excited fashion and declare her intention of going straight back to Eglosilyan; and these fitful moods prayed on the health of the invalid. Ought Wenna to risk increasing her anxiety by telling her this strange tale? She would doubtless misunderstand it. She might be angry with Harry Trelyon. She would certainly be surprised that Wenna had given him permission to see her again—not knowing that the girl, in her forced composure, had been talking to him as if this avowal of his were of no great moment.

All the same, Wenna had a secret fear that she had been imprudent in giving him this permission; and the most she could do now was to make his visits as few, short and ceremonious as possible. She would avoid him by every means in her power; and the first thing was to make sure that he should not call on them again while they remained in Penzance.

So she went down to the small parlor in a much more equable frame of mind, though her heart was still throbbing in an unusual way. The moment she entered the room she saw that something had occurred to disturb her mother. Mrs. Rosewarne turned from the window, and there was an excited look in her eyes. "Wenna," she said hurriedly, "did you see that carriage? Did you see that woman? Who was with her? Did you see who was with her? I know it was she: not if I live a hundred years could I forget that—that devil in human shape!"

"Mother, I don't know what you mean," Wenna said, wholly aghast.

Her mother had gone to the window again, and she was saying to herself, hurriedly and in a low voice, "No, you don't know—you don't know: why should you know? That shameless creature! And to drive by here! She must have known I was here. Oh, the shamelessness of the woman!"

She turned to Wenna again: "Wenna, I thought Mr. Trelyon was here. How long has he gone? I want to see him most particularly—most particularly, and only for a moment. He is sure to know all the strangers at his hotel, is he not? I want to ask him some questions. Wenna, will you go at once and bid him come to see me for a moment?"

"Mother!" Wenna said. How could she go to the hotel with such a message?

"Well, send a note to him, Wenna—send him a note by the girl down stairs. What harm is there in that?"

"Lie down, then, mother," said the girl calmly, "and I will send a message to Mr. Trelyon."

She drew her chair to the table, and her cheeks crimsoned to think of what he might imagine this letter to mean when he got the envelope in his hands. Her fingers trembled as she wrote the date at the head of the note. Then she came to the word "Dear," and it seemed to her that if shame were a punishment, she was doing sufficient penance for her indiscretion of that morning. Yet the note was not a compromising one. It merely said—

"DEAR MR. TRELYON: If you have a moment to spare, my mother would be most obliged to you if you would call on her. I hope you will forgive the trouble.