the departing help have been sent away for gross immorality, theft or drunkenness, and should the master write down the real reason of the dismissal, he renders himself liable to an action for defamation of character.  The person, therefore, who engages servants from their character-book has no real guarantee as to their worth.  It is a well-known fact also that the intelligence offices in Paris are far more anxious to obtain places for bad servants than for good ones, because the former class return to them more frequently, and are consequently the better customers.  As to the percentage exacted from grocers and provision-dealers by cooks and stewards—­a percentage which of course comes indirectly out of the pocket of the master—­the evil has become a crying one, but it is apparently irremediable.  A provision-dealer opened not long since a shop in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris, and sent round circulars to all the housekeepers in the neighborhood announcing his determination of paying no percentage to servants.  The consequence was, that not one of the cooks would buy anything of him, and he has been forced to break up his establishment and depart.  It is an impossibility to engage a first-class cook without according to her the privilege of doing all the marketing—­a privilege by which she is enabled to more than double the amount of her wages at her employer’s expense.

Among the other drawbacks of a residence abroad to an American woman is an absence of the kindly deference to which, by virtue of her womanhood alone, she is accustomed at home.  The much-vaunted politeness of the French nation is the thinnest possible varnish over real impertinence or actual rudeness.  None of the true, heartfelt, genuine courtesy that is so freely accorded to our sex in our own favored land is to be met with here.  “A woman is weak and defenceless,” argue, apparently, a large class of Parisians, “therefore we will stare her out of countenance, we will mutter impudent speeches in her ear, we will elbow her off the sidewalk, we will thrust her aside if we want to enter a public conveyance.  Politeness is a thing of hat-lifting, of bowing and scraping, of ‘Pardon!’ and ‘Merci!’ It is an article to be worn, like a dress-coat and a white tie, in a drawing-room and among our acquaintances.  We have the right article for that occasion—­very sweet, very refined, very graceful, very charming indeed.  But as for everyday use—­nenni!” That deep, true and chivalrous courtesy that respects and protects a woman merely because she is a woman, and as such needs the guardianship of the stronger sex, is something of which they have never heard and which they do not understand.  They will hand Madame la duchesse de la Haute Volee or Mademoiselle Trois-Etoiles into her carriage with incomparable grace, but they will push Mrs. Brown into the gutter, and will whisper in poor blushing Miss Brown’s ear that she is “une fillette charmante.”