nch rags, in a foreign tongue, aren't ashamed to be
published in the same capital with it. It doesn't take above a quarter
of an hour to read in the mornings, but it's a quarter of an hour of
solid comfort that you don't expect somehow abroad. If the _New York
Herald_ were only published in Rome I wouldn't mind going there."

"There's something," said poppa, thoughtfully, as we ascended to the
third floor, "in what Malt says."

Next day we spent an hour buying trunks for the accommodation of the
unattainable elsewhere. Then poppa reminded us that we had an important
satisfaction yet to experience. "Business before pleasure," he said,
"certainly. But we've been improving our minds pretty hard for the last
few days, and I feel the need of a little relaxation. D.V. and W.P., I
propose this afternoon to make the ascent of the Eiffel Tower. Are you
on?"

"I will accompany you, Alexander, if it is safe," said momma, "and, if
it is unsafe, I couldn't possibly let you go without me."

Momma is naturally a person of some timidity, but when the Senator
proposes to incur any danger, she always suggests that he shall do it
over her dead body.

I forget where we were at the time, but I know that we had only to walk
through the perpetual motion of Paris, across a bridge, and down a few
steps on the other side, to find the little steamer that took us by the
river to the Tower. We might have gone by omnibus or by fiacre, but if
we had we should never have known what a street the Seine is, sliding
through Paris, brown in the open sun, dark under the shadowing arches of
the bridges, full of hastening comers and goers from landing-place to
landing-place, up and down. It gave us quite a new familiarity with the
river, which had been before only a part of the landscape, and one of
the things that made Paris imposing. We saw that it was a highway of
traffic, and that the little, brisk, business-like steamers were full of
people, who went about in them because it was the cheapest and most
convenient way, and not at all for the pleasure of a trip by water. We
noticed, too, a difference in these river-going people. Some of them
carried baskets, and some of them read the _Petit Journal_, and they all
comfortably submitted to the good-natured bullying of the mariner in
charge. There were elderly women in black, with a button or two off
their tight bodices, and children with patched shoes carrying an
assortment of vegetables, and middle-aged