vish attention and luxury on his wife and daughters,
but he will save them the trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His
business is his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun and
glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to enjoy as soon as he
can throw away the cares of his business. In France, a wife is a
partner, a cashier who takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock
and speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both cashier and
bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, Paris included, and behind "Pay
Here," you will see Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money
for the purchase you have made. When I said she is a partner, I might
safely have said that she is the active partner, and, as a rule, by far
the shrewder of the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, her
fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and many a customer
whom her husband was allowing to go away without a purchase, has been
brought back by the wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop.
Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany, to spend a few
days visiting the Exposition. One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards
to buy a white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats which the man
showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and I declined to buy one. I was just
going to leave, when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened
to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and said: "But, Adolphe,
why do you let Monsieur go? Perhaps he does not care to follow the
fashion. We have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last year
that we can let Monsieur have _a bon compte_. They are upstairs, go and
fetch them." And, sure enough, there was one which fitted and pleased
me, and I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, which
the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, but which the wife
managed to secure for the firm.

[Illustration: MADAM IS THE CASHIER.]

No one who has lived in France has failed to be struck with the
intelligence of the women, and there exist few Frenchmen who do not
readily admit how intellectually inferior they are to their
countrywomen, chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this is
not due to any special training, for the education received by the women
of that class is of the most limited kind; they are taught to read,
write, and reckon, and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn
in them, as well as a peculiar talent fo