more delicious than
to plunge from the iced-champagne atmosphere of a sparkling winter's day
in America into the nest-like, all-pervading warmth of an American home?
Here such comfort is wholly unknown. The cold, though less severe than
with us, is damp, raw and insidious, and creeps under wraps with a
treacherous persistency that nothing can shut out. The ill-fitting
windows, opening in the old door-like fashion, let in every breath of
the chill outer air. A fire is a handful of sticks or half a dozen lumps
of coal. The _calorifere_, a poor substitute for our powerful
furnaces, is a luxury for the very rich--an innovation grudgingly
granted to the whims of the occupants of the most costly and fashionable
of private apartments. Warmth, our cosy, all-pervading warmth, is a
winter luxury that we leave behind us with the cheerful light of our
universal gas-burners.

In summer we sorely miss the cold, pure ice-water of our native land,
and we long for it with a thirst which _vin ordinaire_ and Bavarian
beer are powerless to assuage. The ill-tasting limestone-tainted water
of Paris is a poor substitute for our sparkling draughts of Schuylkill
or Croton. Ice-pitchers, water-coolers and refrigerators are unknown
quantities in the sum-total of Parisian luxuries. The "cup of cold
water," which the traveler in our country finds gratuitously supplied in
every waiting-room and railway-station, every steamboat, every car and
every hotel, is here something that must be specially sought for, and
paid for at an exorbitant price. Ice can be purchased only in small
quantities for immediate consumption. Ten cents for a few lumps swimming
in water on a tepid plate is the usual tariff for this our American
necessity, this rare Parisian luxury.

The scant supply of water for ablution is another annoyance to the
American traveler accustomed to the hot-and cold-water faucets
introduced into private bed-rooms and hotel apartments, and the capacious
bath-tubs and unlimited control of water in his native land. To be sure,
one can get a bath in Paris, as well as anywhere else, by ordering it
and waiting for it and paying for it; but the free use of water and its
gratuitous supply in hotels, so entirely a matter of course with us, is
here unheard of. As with ice-water, the bath is an American necessity, a
Parisian luxury. However, the latest erected dwelling-houses here have
had water-pipes and bath-tubs introduced. Wealth can command its bath
he