The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1878-11-13

gle, still does she decline TO throw up tic
sponge and still in her most debiitated
condition, she has definite place, ascertained
influence and some power, aud constitutes
cogwheel in the complicated machine Of
French society. Were there poor law
in France she would think great many
times before retiring to the seclusion of the
poor house In the provinces the old wo-
man is frequently charming-her sixty,
seventy, or eighty years to the contrary
Notwithstanding. Her cap and apron are
so white and pink, her garrullty is so grace
fully genial that you forget all her wrinkles
and grizzled locks; and you need do no
great violence to your imagination in as
suming her to be pretty. But in Paris, it
it must be candidly admitted, the old wo-
man is, as rule, frightfully ugly, and her
manners are the reverse of agreeable. I'm
fortunately metaphorically, although not
botanically, there is no rose without
thorn. Cupidity, rapacity, and
francs and ccntimcs on the brain are the
thorns which cluster most thickly about
the stalk Of the shining French virtue Of
Thrift, and which make the French old
woman an extremely unlovely and rcpulsvc
parsonage. Thrift is almost to as great an
extent the leading characteristic Of the
shop-keeping classes; but with them it is
not associated with parsimony. The Paris
ian boutiquier is no niggard, no misery
curmudgeon, like the cultivateur of the
provinces. The shopkeeper and his wife
are on the contrary, genial, frce-handed
self-indulgent people within certain recog.
nized limits They are fond of cheap
amusements. They prefer the feasts which
do not cost much and it is principle never
departed from that the expenses of their
menus plaisirs must not in any way interfere
with the snm of the profits which they think
they ought to derive from their trade
Strict adherence to this principle makes
them about the most grasping tradespeople
that have ever met with in the course of
tolerable extensive preambulation OF the
civilized world. The principle Of realizing
SO much benefce, by whatever means the
profit is to be effected, has another and
very unpleasant result. 1t leads to very
inferior articles being sold at very eytor-
tionate prices, and to no department OF
trade will this remark apply more closely
than to the article of gloves. You may
give five and six francs a pair in Pars, and
in the most fashionable shops in Paris, fol-
gloves with two buttons, and from eight to
twelve francs for ladies' gloves with from
three to six buttons In Piccadilly or Re
gent street about the same prices
might be charged; but the difference il
simply this. that in London at well-knowr
shop you always obtain for first-rate price
a iirst-rate article. In Paris you pay thu
high price, and you very often get in return
nothing but a publishing article. which
splits up the back us soon as you draw il
on. As for the ee-franc- fifty glove:
which are sold in the Passages, which ar
wretchedly cut, which are of miserably un
sound skins, which are made without gus
sets, and which are often soiled | should
advise you to have nothing to do witt
them You may buy better in Tottenham
Court Road for eightcen-pence From tho
last three-franc fifty gloves | ventured upor
"a pair at five francs-serenty-fiye hay
ing turned out a lamcntable failure
the left thumb came off bodily ere
| had got the digits well "homc.' This il
rendered all the more eXasperating by the
remembrance that about the best gloves il
Europe are made at Grenobc, and that TIT
very best of the Grenoble gloves are sent t.
England simply because the English Gus
toner will not pay large price for al
inferior article But the foreign visitor t.
Paris Is completely at the mercy Of tn,
shopkeeper, and is fain to take upol
trust any article which the shopkcepe
desires to sell him and at whatever rate HI
chooses to ask for it. The boutiquier OIL
his side is so remarkably frugal, 50 exem
plarily thrifty, that he forgets to be honest