ittle _sucrier_ and cream-jug placed before
each person, have each been carefully gauged as to the usual dimensions
of an ordinary appetite. Nothing is squandered and nothing is wasted.
When one recalls the aspect of our hotel tables at home--the
bread-plates left with their piles of cold, uneatable corn-bread, and
heavy, chilled muffins and sodden toast uneaten, uncared-for and wasted;
the huge steak, with its scrap of tenderloin carefully scolloped out,
and the rest left to be thrown away; the broiled chicken--the legs
scorned in favor of the more toothsome breast; the half-emptied plates
of omelettes and fried potatoes,--one realizes how low prices for board
in Paris are still compatible with the increased price of provisions,
and why we must pay five dollars at home for accommodations for which we
expend two here. The same wastefulness creeps into all the details of
our hotel-life. If we want a glass of ice-water, for instance, we are
straight-way supplied with a pitcher brimming over with huge crystal
lumps of transparent ice. One-half the quantity would suffice for all
actual purposes: the rest is left to melt and run to waste.

The fact is, that we citizens of the United States live more luxuriously
than any other people on the face of the earth. On an average we dress
better, fare better, sleep softer, and combat the cold in winter and the
heat in summer with more scientific persistency, than do any of the
so-called luxurious nations of Europe. Take, for instance, the matter of
heating and lighting. A few of the leading hotels in Paris, and a small
minority among the most expensive suites of private apartments, have gas
introduced into all the rooms, but as a general thing it is confined to
the public rooms, and the unfortunate wight who longs to see beyond the
end of his nose is forced to wrestle with dripping candles and unclean
lamps, known only by tradition in our native land. The gaslight, which
is a common necessary in the simplest private dwelling in an American
city, is here a luxury scarcely attainable save by the very wealthiest.
And we do not know how precious our gaslight is till we have lost it. To
sit in a dim parlor where four lighted candles struggle vainly to
disperse the gloom, to dress for opera or ball by the uncertain glimmer
of those greasy delusions, is enough to make one forswear all the
luxuries of Paris, and flee homeward forthwith.

Then in winter comes the question of warmth. What is