reasures, this goodly city! She lavishes
them on all comers without fee or favor. All day long her princely
art-galleries stand open to welcome the passing visitor. One comes and
goes unhindered and unquestioned in church or museum, and even the
service of guides and boats and cars to the sewers, and of official
guides to the Catacombs, is given without compensation--nay more, all
fees are strictly; forbidden. There is no city on earth that receives
its guests with such splendid and lavish hospitality. Apart from one's
board and lodging, it is possible for a stranger to come to Paris and to
visit all its principal sights without the expenditure of a single sou.
And for the persons who, prolonging their stay, wish in some sort to
take up their permanent residence in Paris, things are smoothed and
ironed and the knots picked out in the most wonderful way. Your board is
dainty and your bed soft. Velvet-footed and fairy-handed beings minister
to your wants. You are clothed as if by magic in garments of marvelous
beauty. The very rustle of your letter of credit is as an open sesame to
treasure-chambers to which Ali Baba's cavern was but a shabby cellar.
And if, on the contrary, your means are limited and your wants but few,
the science of living has been so exactly conned and is so perfectly
understood that your franc-piece will buy you as many necessaries as
ever your fifty-cent greenback did home, and that, too, in face of the
fact that all provisions are now, owing to the war and the taxes, as
dear, if not dearer than they are in Philadelphia. If a stranger comes
to Paris and wishes to live comfortably and economically, there are
plenty of respectable, well-situated establishments in the best section
of the city where he can obtain a comfortable, well-furnished room and
well-cooked, well-served meals, for eight to ten francs a day--such
accommodations as five dollars would scarcely avail to purchase in
Philadelphia or New York.

The whole secret of the matter is, that in France everybody understands
the art of making the most out of everything. No scrap of food is
wasted, no morsel cast aside, till every particle of nourishment it can
yield is carefully extracted. The portions given to the guests at the
minor hotels, where one lives _en pension_ at so much _per
diem_, are carefully measured for individual consumption. The slice
of steak, the tiny omelette, the minute moulded morsels of butter, even
the roll of bread and l