The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-12-03

are tables piled high with bargains and customers pushing and scramb- ling to buy. The store windows are a museum of fine stuffs, novelties and new creations, and some tiny shops have window displays worth fortune. l stopped this afternoon on a fashionable street before a store not much bigger than a piano box, whose little window contained show of wrist watches such as, venture to say, you cannot find in New York or Chicago. Behind the plate glass against a background of black velvet were scores of wrist watches, each as small as a postage stamp. and many but little thicker. One, the size of my thumb nail, had a face of platinum encircled with dia- monds, and the bracelet to which it was fastened was of pearls exquisite ly set. Had I a sweetheart I would have walked to Berlin to buy it.
 Other watches were fastened to rib bons of silk. Some were set in pearls and some hung on bracelets decor ated with diamonds. In a store win dow farther on 1 saw collection of nothing but cigarette cases gold and silver and diamond strewn. and in another, that of famous dressmaker was a doll dressed as a model. It represented new costume, and the lace was so artistieally cut that the doll might hold an honored place in almost any museum.
 The store windows here are better dressed than those of America. In the larger establishments they can hardly compete with New York, but in the little shops they are far more artistic than ours. This is so of even fhp Shnn- n ntif of ha quarters of Paris. Take a fruit store. Each rosy checked peach lies in a bed of white cotton, straw berries as Dig as hens egg are each wrapped in green leaf, and half dozen blue piums, or three or four punches of grapes are laid out cn the tat e as though for banquet. It is the same in the grocery stores where ST s.ashes ana turnfps. green beans Bad peas are piled up as at one of our county iairs; and the chickens and game are dressed with their heads tucked un- der their wings. The chickens lie on their breasts. with a little printed price mark pinned to the center of each rosy back. They are clean enough to kiss and I iG not wonder they sell.
 These displays all stop with the evening. The stores, which open at about a. m.. close at p. m., when every window is covered with a shut ter that slides down from the top. making a wall of sheet iron over the frtnt. At the same time the clerks leave. crawling out through a little door in the iron about a yard high, a long procession of women and me T going forth single file like so many dogs. They straighten up immedi- ar1I
 launtily that one would never inn agine they had been working ali dav.
 In the Department Stores
 Paris has 100 small shops and fac tories where Chicago or Philadelphia each has one. The French nation is one of individualists, and every little store has it's speciality. But there are also department stores, some of which cover acres and compare fa- vorably with those of the states. Here the business done is enormous. The buildings themselves are thronged, and the sidewalks are given up to counters. where one may see men, women and children pulling over the goods and fighting for bargains. In the small shops there are often no price marks, but in the department stores the goods have tags with plain figures, and the tourist need not be on his guard against paying more than he should.
 The clerks everywhere are uni- formly courteous and almost always well dressed. The women clerks wear only black, and the floor walkers have long coats like those of the old fashioned preacher. Many of the clerks have luXuriant whiskers, for in France the hair grows on mans face. l may say also on the head, for we Yankees have seven bald heads where the French have one. There are quite as many young boards as old ones, and I have mid dle aged clerks waiting on me who look as though they had never been shaved. 1 like to study the whiskers. They are beautifully combed and now and then parted in the middle. Thousands of men wear moustaches, and some such fierce looking ones