could only be viewed in
the light of intolerable hardships; while the poor wretches who make
these toys at these prices are following the trade to which they were
bred, and which their fathers followed before them, and their only
fear is that they may be unable to get enough of this work to do. Each
of the other toys in my collection is made at the same or a smaller
price. The little lead candlestick is sold by the wholesale dealer at
_four_ sous the dozen. Whistles are sold at _two_ sous the dozen.
There are little watches of stamped brass with a crystal, movable
hands, and a cord of yellow cotton with an occasional gold thread
running through it, which are sold wholesale at seven sous the dozen.

"Voyez! Make your choice, brave parents! If the little one pulls in
pieces the object of his affection, no matter: it will not derange
your resources to replace it."

Courier, in the preface to his translation of Herodotus, tells us that
Malherbe, the courtier, used to say, "I learn all my French at the
Place Maubert," and that Plato, who was a poet and did not like the
lower orders, nevertheless called them his "masters of language." The
gamin of Paris, who is the father of argot, long ago gave to the
quarter of the city through which the Rue Mouffetard runs a name which
clings to it tenaciously. He called it the "quartier souffrant"--the
suffering quarter. A designation like this, given by a magazinist,
would be fitting enough, certainly, but received into the current
slang of Paris, it becomes a really striking phrase. It is nothing to
read of a suffering quarter, but it is almost startling to hear an
omnibus conductor call out, "Place Maubert! Rue St. Victor! Pantheon!
Quartier Souffrant! Anybody for the Suffering Quarter?" and to see a
rheumatic old woman, tottering with years and clad in dirty rags, get
down and go clattering off into the quarter to which she so palpably
belongs.

The Rue Mouffetard, which in old times was a continuation of the Place
Maubert from the river Seine, then extended in an unbroken line to the
Barriere d'Italie, at the remote southern limit of the city of Paris.
The Haussmannizing reform which set in under the Empire went at the
horrible neighborhood with a sort of sublime fury of destruction.
Whole blocks of dark, forbidding buildings were obliterated by the
pickaxes of the blousards, who thus assisted at their own
regeneration. The result is, that there is a long and wide avenue now
stre