The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-01-18
MADAM OF THE RESTAURANT,
cats; Home Touches in Shops: French
Women Who Help Their Husbands

oh'Sh WHO Help lhe1f Ii uSDanQS.
French restaurants in New York,
ana everywhere else, for that matter,
nave two features which are common
to them all. One is madam at the desk
Inc other is the cat; generally the cats.
IN studio building near the Park
madam of the restaurant possesses
seven cats to which she is devotedly at
tached.
The dean of the feline corps is a cat
that hath a lean and hungry look. This
| IS not because she is not we'll fed. She
simply looks lean and hungry because
it is her nature to. Madam rescued her
from the basement several months ago,
the cat having been chased by dogs I'M
til, in some wild attempt to escape, she
fell into the basement and broke her
leg.
Madam doctored the broken leg and
also nursed the cat out of a state of
nervous prostration, whereupon, like
the grateful creature that she is, Tabby
presented her new mistress with a
large family of kittens. Customers of
the restaurant have taken a friendly in
terest in the raising of the kittens, and
know them almost as we'll as they know
madam. In fact, madam judges her
clients good deal by the way they
treat the kittens.
There is one man who comes here"
she said, land he seems to be perfect
crank. OF course, | don't mind it my
self. I try to think may be he has bust
ness troubles that make him nervous.
But the waiters-oh, they fight about
which one shall wait on him. They hate
1t so. But to-day when he was at lunch
con the two black kittens were down
here, and if ne didn't sit at the table
over there and play with them a long
time! Well, 1 just said to myself that
he couldn't be SO very bad after ALL"
French women have a faculty for
making place of business more or less
homelike. Perhaps it is because in
France the woman has her place in the
shop as much as the man has his. Her
place is behind the desk. and from her
vantage point she takes pretty keen
note of all that goes on. One of her
first principles is to try to establish
frendliness between customer and shop.
In Paris no one, save an American or
an Englishman, thinks of leaving the
shop without a courteous bon jour to-
madam at her place behind the desk.
Happily the custom is continued al the
French restaurants here in New York,
and, as many of the patrons are men
and women who have lived abroad and
know and like the custom, madam does
not have any trouble in transplanting
these little sprigs of courtesy.
The American woman who sits be-
hind the desk in a restaurant is gen.
orally hired cashier, who has to pre-
serve a forbidding aspect or be sub
jected to annoying attentions. That is
her excuse-and it is a good one-for
lack of cordially. The motto in most
native restaurants seem to be: strictly
business Have a cat. or three or four
of them, around the place? Never! Put
your wife in the cashiers place, and let
her cheer your patrons with pleasing
greeting? Perish the thought. And it
keeper. If he We're in France, his wife
would be sitting at the desk, making
change and keeping accounts, while he
attended to the active work Of the shop.
But no, in this country a mans bust
ness and his home are divorced His
wife knows nothing about the one and
he knows almost nothing about the
other. When a customer buys a pie at
an American bakery she gets a slip of
paper with the amount of her pur
chase written on it. She takes it to
desk, where an absent minded hired
cashier makes change, and without
breathing word or hearing one the
customer YEARLY departs.
The plan of giving the woman a place
in the shop seems to work very well
indeed abroad. In that way she has
more variety and color in her every
day life and doesn't have to go gadding
about in the American fashion in search
of something to interest her. She be-
comes a real helpmeet to her husband.
She finds out what money is worth and
how hard it comes. She becomes thrift
ty, as almost everybody does with mon
ey he has hand in earning. If her hus-
band dies, she knows where she stands
and is prepared to go on with the bust
ness, simply painting out his initials on
the signboard and painting in ''Veuve"
in their place. But the whole things
seems more than geographically for
eign to American ideas. The man sell
dom puts his wife into the shop with
him, and as a general thing when he
does do so she is by no means all that
the customer could desire. No com
Portable cats and cheerful friendliness
are included in her programmes.-New
York Sun.