ge exacted from grocers and provision-dealers by cooks and
stewards--a percentage which of course comes indirectly out of the
pocket of the master--the evil has become a crying one, but it is
apparently irremediable. A provision-dealer opened not long since a shop
in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris, and sent round
circulars to all the housekeepers in the neighborhood announcing his
determination of paying no percentage to servants. The consequence was,
that not one of the cooks would buy anything of him, and he has been
forced to break up his establishment and depart. It is an impossibility
to engage a first-class cook without according to her the privilege of
doing all the marketing--a privilege by which she is enabled to more
than double the amount of her wages at her employer's expense.

Among the other drawbacks of a residence abroad to an American woman is
an absence of the kindly deference to which, by virtue of her womanhood
alone, she is accustomed at home. The much-vaunted politeness of the
French nation is the thinnest possible varnish over real impertinence or
actual rudeness. None of the true, heartfelt, genuine courtesy that is
so freely accorded to our sex in our own favored land is to be met with
here. "A woman is weak and defenceless," argue, apparently, a large
class of Parisians, "therefore we will stare her out of countenance, we
will mutter impudent speeches in her ear, we will elbow her off the
sidewalk, we will thrust her aside if we want to enter a public
conveyance. Politeness is a thing of hat-lifting, of bowing and
scraping, of 'Pardon!' and 'Merci!' It is an article to be worn, like a
dress-coat and a white tie, in a drawing-room and among our
acquaintances. We have the right article for that occasion--very sweet,
very refined, very graceful, very charming indeed. But as for everyday
use--_nenni_!" That deep, true and chivalrous courtesy that
respects and protects a woman merely because she _is_ a woman, and
as such needs the guardianship of the stronger sex, is something of
which they have never heard and which they do not understand. They will
hand Madame la duchesse de la Haute Volee or Mademoiselle Trois-Etoiles
into her carriage with incomparable grace, but they will push Mrs. Brown
into the gutter, and will whisper in poor blushing Miss Brown's ear that
she is "une fillette charmante."

And when a Frenchman _is_ rude, his impoliteness is worse than that
of other nations, b