Dancing is the favorite amusement in Paris, and these exercises are conducted on a grand scale, even during the summer season.  I attended a Public Ball one evening, when almost the entire floor (covering nearly three fourths of an acre) and the adjoining garden of about the same area, were thronged by thousands of gay and jovial dancers, all wild from the excitement produced by the rhythmical motions and music of that playful exercise.

Incidents.

The reader can not be more curious to know how one that is unacquainted with the French language can get along in Paris, than I was when I first took up my residence there.  The first morning I went out to seek some place where I might get fresh milk; Lait is the French name of it as I found it in my conversational guide book.  I soon found that name upon a card of pasteboard hanging at the door of a shop where bread and fruits were displayed in the window.  On entering the store a clever Frenchman politely addressed me, but he soon discovered that I was none of the loquacious kind, in French.  I asked for lait, pronouncing the word as if it was spelt l-a-t-e, but he did not understand me.  I could adorn my conversation neither with verbs nor with adjectives, so I repeated the word lait several times with the rising inflection, by which he readily inferred that I wanted something, though what that something was, remained a mistery to him, all the same.  By and by, I pointed out the word lait to him, on seeing which, he exclaimed “——­ du la!” and gave me what I wanted.  Thereafter I visited him from two to five times every day, according to convenience, to get my “du l[=a]_it!_”.  Of “du pae_in_” (bread) and smoked sausages, I constantly kept a supply in my satchel, so that when I entered a new city, I could well get along until I had become acquainted.  Fruits and a very healthy and nutricious kind of nuts, (the Brazilian nuts), I bought in great abundance and exceedingly cheap from such as hawked them about on the streets.  Five to ten centimes (1 to 2 cents) would buy 7 or 8 large Brazilian nuts and 6 to 8 fine juicy pears, or as many delicious plums, of which I was extremely fond.  By thus reducing the number and variety of my dishes at the regular meals, I only enhanced the pleasures of the palate instead of reducing them; for he who “does not eat but when he is hungry, nor drink except when he is thirsty,” will enjoy the humblest meal much more than the pampered dedauchee can relish the richest feast.  As beer does not please my palate, and because the water fountains of Paris were often out of my reach when I was thirsty, I soon took fruit to supply the place of drink, and thus, in Paris already, I laid the foundation of a dietary system that ensured me not only health, happiness and convenience of procuring it alike in all countries, but that proved to be very economical too.  For from 40 to 60 cents a day, I supplied all the necessaries, and more of the luxuries of life, than most of us are accustomed to, even in voluptuous America.