The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1897-01-01
NEW YEAR IN PARIS.
An Expensive Occasion For Those with
Scant Purses.

If you are ever in Paris on New Years
day, you will be besieged the first thing
in the morning by host of officials and
semiofficials-that is, they deliberately
Chamber up the stairs of the apartment
houses on their beats and knock at each
door for their dues.
Among She first are two sets of post
men. One set is for the letters and the
other for all journals and small packages.
Each gets SO from you. They are an ill
paid but not hard worked lot If you
have received few kilograms or special
delivery letters within the three months,
the telegraph boy comes, too, for francs.
AS to the policemen on the beat, you hand
them what you please. In these days of
crime on the most frequented streets tho
police come in for many kind attentions
from the trembling upper middle classes.
If you keep a dog, who may be always
taken up without his muzzle, or IL you
come home drunk, you will be sure to
"gratify" the agent.
The concierge, or janitor, Is next to
mount and wish you good and happy.
Some people, In what they call les BONES
maisons, give up as much as $50 as New
Years present to the concierge. The con-
cierge is the servant of the proprietor or
owner of the apartment house. The wages
vary from $40 a year to $500 a year. The
concierge has also room rent free a6 well
as light and heat He or she counts on
500 in gifts from the various locataires
on New Years day, and they receive in
stray gifts through the year $3.50 more
upon an average, so that their gifts are
greater than their salary.
Your servants in their turn make their
own rounds, collecting resolutely from
the employers of all these delivery boys
cash presents OF "a great deal higher order.
The rule of tho servant Is that ON New
Years she must have a substantial present
from every one she comes in contact with.
Where throughout the year she has been
contented with small but regular commits
sions on every purchase that she makes for
her employers, she now expects a solid
gift. Five dollars Is moderate recogni.
ton from tho butcher and the grocer to a
well placed bonnie commanding good
trade.
The kiss of peace on New Years day is
given to all female servants, the pretty and
the ugly and the just and the unjust. In
the Duval restaurants and the Bouilions,
where all the garcons are girls, one of the
most curious slghts OF the year Is seen on
Jan. /. There is continual smacking of
kisses, varying in sound from the popping
of champagne corks to COW pulling her
foot out of the mud Every customer IL
bound to kiss the waiter girl If he neg
leots to do it, she will remind him frankly
You do not kiss them on the mouth, but
on the cheek. Men have been known to
eat five meals at the Duvals on New Years
day for the mere sake Of these embraces,
and to go and eat, against their custom, al
the Cafe Richie, where the walters are buy
men, in order to avoid tho kisses.
All servant girls are not so happy as the
pretty chambermaid or cook well placed in
good household, or the bustling Duval
waiter girl who saves the refuse wine, both
white and red, and makes kind of claret
of the mixture. The poor, plain, inexpe-
rienced and gawky peasant girl who comes
to Paris must naturally gravitate to. be
maid or all work among' the1petty Tarfs
bourgeois, so close, so avaricious and so
greedy. They give little to any one. But
those mentioned arc not tithe of the
persons who expect to partake of your
bounty on the first day of the new year