specialty it was to vend _baguettes_, or small rods for beating
carpets, tapestry and padded furniture. His cry was--"Voila des
baguettes! Battez vos meubles, battez vos tapis, battez vos _femmes_
pour UN sou!"

It is said that as this gay chiffonnier went one morning by the
fish-markets uttering this jocose cry, a squad of those formidable
_poissardes_, the fishwomen of Paris, got after him, and administered a
sound thrashing with his own baguettes. Such is the vengeance of the
French-woman!

But there is a curious pathos in many of these cries--queer searching
tones which go to the heart and set one thinking; tones that come again
in times of revolution, and gather into the terrible roar of the
Commune. I sometimes wonder if they ever sell anything, those strange
sad voices of the early morning struggling up from the street. They are
the voices of Humanity on its mighty errand of bread and meat. Some
dozen or so traverse our quarter through the day--some of feeble old
women, full of sharp complaint; some of strong, quick-stepping men; some
of little children with faint modest voices, as if unused to the cruel
work of getting a living. It is these poor people who walk from
Montmartre to Passy in the morning, and in the evening fish for drowned
dogs or pick up corks along the canal of the Porte St. Martin. For a dog
it is said they get a franc or two, and corks go at a few sous a
hundred.

Such is an inkling of the life-histories wafted through our summer
windows by the voices of the street. Well, the sun is brilliant, the
Champs are crowded with the world, the jewelers of the Palais Royal are
driving a thriving trade, the great boulevards are margined by long
lines of absinthe drinkers. Who cares? Only it is a little disagreeable
in the early morning to have one's sleep broken by the pathos of life.
Let us sleep well on our wine, and dine to-morrow at the Grand Hotel. We
shall forget the misery of these patient voices which visit us with
their prayer for subsistence every day.

G. F.

THE ANGEL HUSSAR.

I think some of the best talks I have had in my life have been with
chance companions on whom I have happened in the course of a roving
life--sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes in the railroad-car or
steamboat, and not unfrequently in the smoking-room of a hotel.

If you have ever been in Dublin, you know Dawson street, and in Dawson
street the Hibernian Hotel. I am not prepared to endorse all the
arrange