is appropriated to
the unclaimed articles--dim cellar-rooms, lighted with gas. There may be
seen umbrellas by the hundred or the thousand, strapped together in
bundles and stacked up like fagots. Everything is registered, numbered
and catalogued, and if returned to the owner his address and the date
of delivery are carefully noted. The strict surveillance of the police
contributes greatly toward keeping the Parisian cabman honest. Instances
are on record where costly sets of jewels, bags of napoleons and
pocket-books crammed with bank-notes have been faithfully deposited at
the prefecture by their finders. On the other hand, an anecdote is told
of a cab-driver in whose vehicle a gentleman chanced to leave his
pocket-book, containing fifty thousand francs which he had just won at
play. He traced his cabman to the stable, where he was in the act of
feeding his horse, opened the carriage-door, and found his pocket-book
lying untouched upon the floor. On learning what a prize he had missed
the coachman incontinently hung himself.

The great source of supply for public vehicles in Paris is the Compagnie
Generale des Voitures, one of the most gigantic of the great enterprises
of Paris. It possesses five thousand cabs and over two thousand handsome
and stylish voitures de remise. It furnishes every style; of carriage
for hire, from the superb private-looking barouche or landau, with
servants in gorgeous livery and splendid blooded horses, or the showy
pony-phaeton and low victoria of the _cocotte du grand monde_, down to
the humble one-horse cab. This beneficent company will furnish you, if
desired, with a princely equipage, with armorial bearings, family
liveries, etc., all complete and got up specially to suit the ideas of
the hirer. Nine-tenths of the elegant turnouts in Paris are supplied in
this manner. There is a regular tariff for everything: each additional
footman costs so much, there is a fixed charge for powder, for
postilions, for a _chasseur_ decked with feathers and gold lace. You can
be as elegant as you please without purchasing a single accessory of
your equipage.

The cab-horses of the Compagnie Generale are usually brought from
Normandy, and belong to a specially hardy race, such a one being needed
to endure the privations and trials to which a Parisian cab-horse is
exposed. Each horse has to be gradually initiated into the duties of
his new calling: he has to be trained to eat at irregular hours, to
slee