The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-08-11

something that the French city pos- sesses and the American city hasn't yet attained. What is that somethingf For one thing, fine rows of trees In the downtown streets"
 People talk as if trees would not grow in business street." he goes on. ''and certainly they will not and do not. treated as we treat theme 1T you were a tree, and the sidewalk shut away the water from your roots--as 1t does over here-you would swear few arboreal oaths. struggle for life a year or two. and then wither and die If, however, your trunk were en- circled. by a huge iron grating like church register, six feet across. the moisture would keep you lusty. It is by this simple arrangement chiefly that the grand boulevards maintain their wealth of greenery."
 Yet more than trees we want fiow- CTS and other green things. he says, and more even than this we need the removal. or at least the mitigation or disf1gurements. The telegraph pole in Paris is a thing unknown. the troll ley pole is becoming more and more rare each year, while advertising. one of the greatest detractions to munich pal beauty, is made artistic by its quality and conspicuous by its lack of quantity.
 Instead of letting the billposter cover an enormous fiat surface as we do," says Mir. Hartt the French roll the fiat surface up into cylinder. thus producing what they call the advertise ing pillar. In this way they reduce the diameter by more than half. while the pillar itself has decorative cam opy top. within which a ring of lights gleam prettily at night and illumines the posters. Equally ingenious Is the f.s- E1t. fr@ ont nA and fitted with panels of translucent glass carrying advertisements. The kiosk becomes toolhouse for street cleaners brooms and shovels, and af. ter dark 1t is lighted from within. But it is in restraining the hideous atrocities of the elevated railway that the French display their finest orig inality The Parisian ''E' avoids the noblest streets, and yet even there it would be infinitely less a curse than it's American prototype It has orna- mental stone pillars and, wherever pos- sible, a screen of foliage on either side, so that you seem almost to be spinning through forest as you ride" Thrift in Little Things.
 Aside from art, then, and down to the sturdy thrift which comes through indirect knowledge of things artful the French farmer is not one who plunders the land of its richness and then leaves it desolate, according to the author. Rather than this, he puts back into the soil all that he takes out. and every year he gets a crop that cor responds to that of the year before, wind and weather permitting. And as the man 1aborer conserves the re- sources of his holdings, so does the woman worker excel in thrift, an in- spring example to the American house. wife. whether tending sheep. selling flowers or sitting behind the counter of a tobacco shop, madame Is ever dil- igently plying her needle on work which she sells to the great depart ment stores, and there is even a les- son in the way the people eat forgot ten portions of beeves and sheep in the manner in which the middle class of Parfsienne lifts her precious skirt and sits on her less precious petticoat when she takes a bench by the way side"
 Nor are these indications of thrift all that MT. Hartt sees in the French q start to get aboard a street car within four blocks of the end of the line," he relates. when the conductor, beside himself with compassion, puts me off with Good heavens, monsieur. this car has but four blocks more to go."
 This method of saving a fare to a fellow mortal might seem to express the uuintessence of French frugality. but the eulogist Is not content even to let the matter rest here. He shows his Frenchman as one who sets before him two definite objects in life--one to provide marriage for his children the other to provide for his own retir- ment from business. He adusts his ex- penditures in accordance with his Tn come so as to allow for this provi- sion, and the result is that eventually he accomplishes his object.
 Possessing this scrupulously cal culated code of economies. carried out to it's minutest detail till 1t becomes a sort of second nature" continues MT. Hartt, your Frenchman prepares ms soul for gayety. Ills lightheartednesS Is largely temperamental, of course, but 1t is at the same time due in no small measure to his sense of security in money matters, his conscientlousness that he is getting on in the world, however ploddingly, and his freedom from that self-reproof which so griev- ously embitters the existence of the rasher and less reasonable American.
 The author approves of the marriage dowry on the grounds that the welded pair are capitalized at the outset, thereby beginning their married life as partners, and in this partnership the wife is oftentimes the shrewder or the two. She doubtless, received two years of business training, while the young man was away serving his two years with colorss for the fact of the young men being away following the flag makes it necessary for many or the young women to take their places in business As to the Frenchman's deliberate resolve to retire from bust ness, with him work is not matter Of amassing millions; 1t is merely means to an end. for with him the great af- fair of life it not work, but rather lire itself"
 "The toiling septuagenarian of New York" runs the story. may have his palace, his villa, his steam yacht and his art treasurers and rejoice to see them pictured in the Sunday papers, but for all of these the septuagenarian of Paris would not give the little red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, which