nd relations of which we
take no heed. Observe a Frenchman of any age and of any station (I have
been quite as much struck with it in the very young men as in the old)
as he orders his breakfast or his dinner at a Parisian restaurant, and
you will perceive that the operation is much more solemn than it is apt
to be in New York or in London. (In London, indeed, it is intellectually
positively brutal.) Monsieur has, in a word, a certain ideal for that
particular repast, and it will make a difference in his happiness
whether the kidneys, for instance, of a certain style, are chopped to
the ultimate or only to the penultimate smallness. His directions and
admonitions to the waiter are therefore minute and exquisite, and
eloquently accentuated by the pressure of thumb and forefinger; and it
must be added that the imagination of the waiter is usually quite worthy
of the refined communion thus opened to it.

This subtler sense of quality is observable even among those classes in
which in other countries it is generally forestalled by a depressing
consciousness on the subject of quantity. Watch your Parisian porter and
his wife at their mid-day meal, as you pass up and down stairs. They are
not satisfying nature upon green tea and potatoes; they are seated
before a meal which has been reasoned out, which, on its modest scale,
is served in courses, and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I will
not say that the French sense of comfort is confined to the philosophy
of nutrition, but it is certainly higher at this point (and perhaps one
other) than it is elsewhere. French people must have a good dinner and a
good bed; but they are willing that the bed should be stationed and the
dinner be eaten in the most unpleasant neighborhoods. Your porter and
his wife dine grandly and sleep soft in their lodge, but their lodge is
in all probability a fetid black hole, five feet square, in which, in
England or in America, people of their talents would never consent to
live. French people consent to live in the dark, to huddle together, to
forego privacy, and to let bad smells grow great among them. They have
an accursed passion for coquettish furniture: for cold, brittle chairs,
for tables with scolloped edges, for ottomans without backs, for
fireplaces muffled in plush and fringe and about as cheerful as a
festooned hearse. A French bedroom is a bitter mockery--a ghastly
attempt to serve two masters which succeeds in being agreeable to
nei