Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-10-03
SHOPPING IN PARIS.
Olive Logan Says II Is a Wild and Pro-
ruisctaous Scramble.

Olive Logan Says IL Is n Wild and Pro-
miscuous Scramble.
Mark Twain is not the only American
who has been Disguised with the pushing,
the scramblng, the incivility of the whole
mob at the great French shops, buyers as
well as sellers, counter-jumpers as well as
purchasers. The crowds at the Louvre, the
Bon Marche or the Printemps, on any fine
afternoon, is something that must be seen
TO be believed. The manners that prevail
exclaims Olive Logan in the Boston Tran
script. Customers dispute the ownership
OF various things by pulling them out of
each others hands; toes trodden on; in
spectors eye inperLinently young and old
to discover thieves; then the elbow digs,
and flushed faces, the torn clothingl FL
nally comes the push of the people up to
the pay desk, in a line, like pigs to the
slaughter-house. YoUr purchases have
been taken from you to be tied up Mistakes
must be freqent IN this department. a list
of the articles Is read out by a perspiring
clerk and total is given. You lay down
money and it is Immediately snatched up.
No receipt is given. You have come, seen
and had your funds conquered from you;
now you may 90 or stay; no one needs you
further. Perhaps you will feel disposed to
rest awhile in the luxuriously furnished
salon dc lecture Of the establishment and
read the morning papers. Unfortunately,
it is crowded, like every other place on the
premises. The reading-rooms of the great
French shops are beginning to figure IN
the works of contemporaneous French nov
elists as convenient place Of illicit rendez-
vous. A glance around one of them often
shows couples of fact, not fiction, whose de-
meanor favors the supposition that they
have met by appointment and not "by
chance.n
Shopping is a great enjoyment to some
women, great bore to others; both classes
prefer the shops to which they are accus-
toned. There are hundreds Of women in
New York who live in hotels and boarding
houses who spend the whole day and every
day in what they call shopping, that is -
say, they go into stores and look at goods
for hours just as an amusement. They
don't buy what they see; they only see what
they would like to buy. The passion has
other varieties. l know a man who used to
go and look at every house he could hear Of
that was to let or for sale, trying to see how
near he could find house that was like the
house he would live in if he was rich. He
found good many houses; the only trouble
was to find the money for them. So it is
with many New York women who go shop
ping, Fortunately for them the clerks in
New York are patient, and will take the
leisurely murmured excuse, "Well, I'll
think it over" as as sufficient Offset for get
ting down and doing up again whole car
go of dry-goods.
London shop-keepers expect their custom
ers to know what they want and take it if
they find it; French shop-keepers display
more wares on their counters than they
have got on their shelves, in the hope Of
tempting weak human nature-the weak
feminine nature buy what Is shown,
whether needed or not In London shop
customer will always be treated with
great civIlity; in French shop customer
Will not be treated at all; she will simply be
endured. Something Of this passive disre-
spect of the Customer is to be encountered
in those great private shopping institutions
of England, the cooperative stores. A set
OF for its unpleasantness in this case, how
ever, is the undoubted cheapness of the ar
ticles, which are actually sold at wholesale
rates.
By the way of concluding what / have
written on shopping in London and Paris, 1
may quote the excellent Spanish proverb,
nowhere more appropriate than in this con-
nection: 1.-THE way TO DO poor is to buy what
/ you don't want"