The hair-merchants of France have never been very successful in drawing supplies for their business from England, Germany, or any of the countries in the northern part of Europe.  Lately, however, they have begun to have a good deal of success among the lower classes of the Italians.  Their imports from Italy are already comparatively large, and they seem to be increasing every year.  Such an easy way of getting money as this opportunity affords must appear vastly attractive to the swarms of professional beggars who infest every highway, church door, and public square in Southern Italy, and whose enjoyment of the indispensable dolce far niente cannot be spoiled by merely submitting to the operation of having their hair cut off.  It is probable that they furnish much more of the hair brought from Italy than do the laboring-classes of the cities or the honest contadini of the rural districts.

The idea of actually wearing hair which once belonged to some member of “the unspeakable” lazzaroni tribe cannot be considered a fascinating one.  At the same time it is at least not more unattractive than the consciousness of having fallen heir to the capillary adornments of a Cantonese tonka-boat girl.  And in reality such a feeling, though natural enough, would be based upon nothing but imagination.  All the hair purchased and used by the dealers in Paris, Marseilles, and other French cities to which the Chinese and Italian hair is brought goes through a number of preparatory processes, which cleanse and purify it thoroughly; and when it is ready to be sold again it is probably in as unobjectionable a state as hair can reach.  As for the imagination, if we were to allow it to govern us entirely in all such cases we should soon find ourselves restricted to almost as few comforts and conveniences as those unhappy historical characters whose constant fear of poison reduced their whole diet to boiled eggs.  Still, the feeling is one of which it is very hard to rid ourselves; and in all probability the ladies who derive the most unalloyed satisfaction from their “additional” braids are those who have had them made from “combings” of their own hair.  J.A.C.

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LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

“The Rise of Silas Lapham.”  By William D. Howells.  Boston:  Ticknor & Co.

In his later books Mr. Howells has shown that he is on the point of discovering the secret of the best novelists.  Unabashed by the difficulties and dangers which beset the realistic writer, he has gone to work to describe the simple machinery which puts in motion all human actions and passions, and has given a subtile but sure analysis of certain phases of modern life, and a vivid picture of at least two actual, warm, palpitating, breathing men.  His success in this respect is the more striking because he began by offering us mere pasteboard heroes of