One distinguished medico’s discovery of the terra incognita of the stomach has netted him, I am sure, a princely fortune.  There seems to be something peculiarly fascinating about the human interior.  One of our acquaintances became so interested in hers that she issued engraved invitations for a fashionable party at which her pet doctor delivered a lecture on the gastro-intestinal tract.  All this comes high, and I have not ventured to include the cost of such extravagances in my budget, though my wife has taken cures six times in the last ten years, either at home or abroad.

And who can prophesy the cost of the annual spring jaunt to Europe?  I have estimated it at thirty-five hundred dollars; but, frankly, I never get off with any such trifling sum.  Our passage alone costs us from seven hundred to a thousand dollars, or even more and our ten-days’ motor trip—­the invariable climax of the expedition rendered necessary by the fatigue incident to shopping—­at least five hundred dollars.

Our hotel bills in Paris, our taxicabs, theater tickets, and dinners at expensive restaurants cost us at least a thousand dollars, without estimating the total of those invariable purchases that are paid for out of the letter of credit and not charged to my wife’s regular allowance.  Even in Paris she will, without a thought, spend fifty dollars at Reboux’ for a simple spring hat—­and this is not regarded as expensive.  Her dresses cost as much as if purchased on Fifth Avenue and I am obliged to pay a sixty per cent duty on them besides.

The restaurants of Paris—­the chic ones—­charge as much as those in New York; in fact, chic Paris exists very largely for the exploitation of the wives of rich Americans.  The smart French woman buys no such dresses and pays no such prices.  She knows a clever little modiste down some alley leading off the Rue St. Honore who will saunter into Worth’s, sweep the group of models with her eye, and go back to her own shop and turn out the latest fashions at a quarter of the money.

A French woman in society will have the same dress made for her by her own dressmaker for seventy dollars for which an American will cheerfully pay three hundred and fifty.  And the reason is, that she has been taught from girlhood the relative values of things.  She knows that mere clothes can never really take the place of charm and breeding; that expensive entertainments, no matter how costly and choice the viands, can never give equal pleasure with a cup of tea served with vivacity and wit; and that the best things of Paris are, in fact, free to all alike—­the sunshine of the boulevards, the ever-changing spectacle of the crowds, the glamour of the evening glow beyond the Hotel des Invalides, and the lure of the lamp-strewn twilight of the Champs Elysees.

So she gets a new dress or two and, after the three months of her season in the Capital are over, is content to lead a more or less simple family life in the country for the rest of the year.  One rarely sees a real Parisian at one of the highly advertised all-night resorts of Paris.  No Frenchman would pay the price.