ntly taken into account by
the casual observer. There are few English artisans whose supper, except
on Sundays, consists of anything more substantial than bread and cheese.
The Frenchman eats meat at twelve a.m. and at six p.m. The nourishment
contained in the scraps, the bones, etc., is generally lost to the
Englishman: not a particle of it is wasted in France. Be that as it may,
the statistics for 1858 show a consumption of close upon eight ounces
(English) of fresh meat per day for every head of the population. Be it
remembered that these statistics are absolutely correct, because a
town-due of over a halfpenny per English pound is paid on the meat
leaving the public slaughter-houses, and killed meat is taxed similarly
at the city gates. Private slaughter-houses there are virtually none.

Allowing for all this, it will be seen that Paris was not much better
off than other capitals would have been if threatened with a siege,
except, perhaps, for the ingenuity of even the humblest French housewife
in making much out of little by means of vegetables, fruit, and
cunningly prepared sauces, for which, nevertheless, butter, milk, lard,
etc., were wanted, which commodities were as likely to fail as all other
things. Nor must one forget to mention the ingenuity displayed in the
public slaughter-houses themselves, in utilizing every possible scrap of
the slaughtered animals for human food. I had occasion, not very long
ago (1883), to go frequently, and for several weeks running, to one of
the poorest quarters in London. I often made the journey on foot, for I
am ashamed to say that, until then, the East End was far more unknown to
me than many an obscure town in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. The
clever remark of a French sociologist that "the battle of life is fought
below the belt," holds especially good with regard to the lower classes.
Well, I may unhesitatingly say that in no country are the poor left in
greater ignorance with regard to cheap and nourishing food than in
England, if I am to judge by London. The French, the German, the
Italian, the Spanish poor, have a dozen inexpensive and succulent dishes
of which the English poor know absolutely nothing; and still those very
dishes figure on the tables of the well-to-do, and of fashionable
restaurants, as entrees under more or less fantastic names. Is the
English working man so utterly devoid of thrift and of common sense, is
his contempt for the foreigner so great as