a large one for roasting ten francs ($2).  Beef and mutton are at about the same prices as in Philadelphia and New York.  Butter costs from sixty to seventy cents a pound.  One can easily see, therefore, that it takes all the skill and experience in domestic economy of Parisian housekeepers to maintain the prices of living at anything like its present standard in pensions and hotels.  But, in truth, the general standard of French cooking has been much lowered since the war.  A really sumptuous French dinner is no longer to be procured at any of the tables d’hote or the leading hotels, and if ordered at a first-class restaurant it will cost twice as much as it used to do.

Rents, though somewhat lowered from their former proportions, are still very high, a really elegant unfurnished suite of apartments costing from five thousand to ten thousand francs a year, according to location; and if furnished, nearly as much more.  Two thousand francs is the lowest rent which economy, desirous of two or three bed-rooms, in addition to the parlor, kitchen and dining-room of an ordinary suite, can accomplish.  There are now in process of construction in the suburbs of Paris several rows of houses built on the American plan, and it is hardly possible to tell how comfortable and home-like the neat separate abodes look to one who has been journeying round amid a series of “floors,” each so like the others.  To the casual visitor there is a despairing amount of sameness in the fitting-up of all French furnished apartments.  The scarlet coverings on the furniture, the red curtains, the light moquette carpet with white ground and gay flowers, the white and gold of the woodwork, the gilt bronze clock and candelabra, the tables and cabinets in marquetry and buhl, are all precisely alike in each, and all wear the same hotel-like look and lack of individuality.  Nobody here seems to care anything for home or home belongings.  A suite of apartments, even if occupied by the proprietor, is not the shrine for any household gods or tender ideas:  it is a place to rent out at so much per month should the owner desire to go on a journey.  No weak sentimental ideas about keeping one’s personal belongings from the touch and the usage of strangers ever troubles anybody’s mind.  Tables and chairs and carpets and curtains are just so many chattels that will bring in, if rented, just so much more income:  around them gleams no vestige of the tender halo that surrounds the appurtenances of an American home.

The servant question is one that is just now of special interest to the American housekeeper in Paris.  I have elsewhere spoken of some of the trials inflicted by these accomplished but often unprincipled domestics on their masters and mistresses, so will not expatiate further on the subject.  I will merely specify as a special grievance the law that forces the employer who discharges a servant to inscribe on his or her character-book a good character:  should