OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

SOCIETY IN PARIS.

If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance. Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our grand entertainments two great rushes take place—the one toward the dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and a snare.

In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments on a larger scale, such as soirées musicales, evening receptions, etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed entirely of cold dishes—chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a Parisian open his eyes—ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia banquet.

It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great encouragement to the givers of soirées in general. With us, to entertain as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless, she shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week, when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she organizes a little soirée twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited. The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford to give her friends pâté de foie gras and hothouse strawberries, and they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.

The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses, which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to pass the remainder of the evening—a practice which proves that in Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in" after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not, after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on the face of the earth in all respects. That pleasant willingness to accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of American society would do well to study after the example set by their Parisian brethren.

A Parisian dinner-party is far less conducive to indigestion than is one of our own. Not only are the courses fewer, as I before remarked, but the viands are less rich in quality and are served in smaller portions. Delicacy of flavor, and not solidity, is the result aimed at by a true French cordon bleu. There is also considerable taste and ingenuity displayed in serving the ices, which are brought to the table in all manner of pretty and fanciful forms. Thus, at one dinner-party a basket formed of brown nougat was handed round. It was filled with apricots moulded in peach-tinted ice and of delicious apricot flavor. At another the basket was of white nougat, and the ice-cream was colored and moulded to represent pink and crimson roses. On another occasion a large silver dish was borne in, on which was placed a bundle of asparagus, the stalks held together by a broad blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was untied, the stalks fell apart, and one was served to each guest, together with a rich sauce from a silver sauce-boat. The asparagus-stalk was composed of vanilla ice-cream, and the green part of pistacchio ice, while the sauce was a delicately flavored cream. The imitation of the vegetable was perfect in every particular, and was thoroughly deceptive. The floral decorations at dinner-parties are usually on a far less extensive scale than with us. A single basket tastefully arranged for the centre of the table is considered quite sufficient, except on occasions of extra magnificence and importance.

The official balls at the Élysée, of which two or three are usually given every winter, are very informal in character. The American traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the Élysée. Madame MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room, which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening, there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes, combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less so than were the official fêtes given under the Empire, when the superb apartments of the Hôtel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The Élysée is much too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year, but still great enough to render a ball at the Élysée anything but a comfortable form of enjoyment.

There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that is the card-playing—nay, to put it accurately, the actual gambling—which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of Baden-Baden and of Homburg—the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the amusements in the back parlor of the White House.

But if French society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and all-important feature. Two great points are de rigueur in a Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, but those two qualities must not be lacking. And they shade things off so much more minutely than they do with us. A ball-dress cannot be a dinner-dress, and vice versâ; while in America the same toilette is considered appropriate for both occasions. If a dinner-party is to number over twelve guests, a low-necked dress is admissible; otherwise, the dinner-dress must be made with open corsage and half-long sleeves. The same shade of glove is not suitable at a wedding-reception that is proper for a formal call. The handsomest of walking-dresses is inadmissible to receive calls in or to wear out in the evening to the opera or to a small party. The very length of skirt that is appropriate for each festive occasion is regulated by the laws of fashion. A lady at the Grand Opéra or Les Italiens must not wear her opera-cloak after she takes her seat in the theatre: it is considered only a wrap, no matter how magnificent or costly it may be. Fancy jewelry of all kinds is entirely out of fashion, and is seen no more: pearls and precious stones alone are worn on full-dress occasions. This rule has, it is whispered, caused a great increase in the trade of dealers in imitation jewelry, those who cannot afford the real article taking refuge in the highly vraisemblable splendors of wax-lined pearls and paste diamonds. It is rumored that after one of the great official balls of last season a superb diamond necklace was found behind one of the cushions of a sofa at the Élysée. It was placed in the hands of the prefect of the police, where it remained for some time without any claimant presenting herself. Finally, it was decided that the ornament should be sold and the proceeds applied to the relief of the poor of Paris. A jeweler was accordingly summoned, who, by the application of acids and a file, soon proved conclusively to the authorities that the precious trouvaille was a worthless piece of imitation. Sardou's heroine in his Maison Neuve, who sells her small real diamonds in order to appear at a ball ablaze with paste, is a true character of the epoch, and was evidently sketched from real life. But the disappearance of the masses of clinquante which used to be worn some years ago is a positive boon to the lovers of correct taste in dress.

Another striking feature of European society to an American is the predominance of old women therein—ladies of sixty or seventy years of age, very much coiffées, tremendously dressed and glittering with gems. This element is far from being an attractive one. A venerable dowager with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both sexes. Well, after all, it is better so—that is, so far as balls and dancing-parties are concerned. Seventeen in white tarletan is a far more beauteous and appropriate ornament for a ball-room than is seventy in white brocade or rose-pink satin.

L. H. H.

NATIONAL FORMS OF GREETING.

The general structure of a language is admitted on all hands to be a good index of the character of the people using it. To cite but two instances: the firm, compact, stern mould in which a Latin sentence is cast seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly, compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time; whose flexible wit needed, as it created, the vehicle of its communication; and whose philosophical acumen could flash out in no speech less capable of manifesting delicate shades of thought.

What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type of the Semitic race—the Hebrew. The history of the Jews—at any rate as it is set forth in their own sacred Books—is pre-eminently the history of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of conscience. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main object of the Lawgiver—keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the conscience unaccused—to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." To this bear witness the plaints—the like of which no other ancient literature furnishes—of their royal Psalmist, the type of what was best and noblest in his race—plaints which mourned not so much outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else was bright—plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the de profundis of all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race could not be more clearly shown by volumes.

With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the "blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego his tête-à-tête. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.

might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one; and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind: witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylæ and the fields of Marathon and Platæa. But when the serious business of life gave time, wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and from him, then, what greeting so natural as Χαιρε! ("Rejoice!" "Be happy!")?

As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of

Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,

although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman—when the spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law, mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded sanctions—who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period—he who used his ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers. Phœbus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the "Mavortia mœnia" would stand for ever. To him the state was everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!") at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.

To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no people are appearances more studied or cared for. Courage, undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can have a good mise en scène for its exhibition. Deportment is the great thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly intercourse—even though one may know that feelings are not very deep—by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing things?—so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races, which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as "Être de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist, Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but under each or all, whether for good or evil, manners will rule until the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say, naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you carry yourself?")?

If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"? He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides, to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker in his History of New York," as a grave historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the gravity, of the Teuton—his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of the minutiæ of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet, plodding thoroughness—a looking at things in all their bearings, an exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of fact or of speculation, a constant striving to find out all about whatever he takes in hand—is not this one of his most marked characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be, if he is gravely polite, "Wie befinden Sie sich?" ("How do you find yourself?")?

Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the New; whose Anglo-Saxon homes are models of what is nowhere else so readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own—a compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than his salutation, "How do you do?"?

J. A. H.

SEASONABLE READING.

I once wrote for a monthly magazine an out-door paper—a summer study, intended to enliven the reader's feeling rather than enlighten his understanding—and timed the production of it so that it should appear during the winter. The thought that it would be read only by bright firesides cheered me not a little in the writing. The editor, endeavoring to propitiate that thoughtless creature, "the general reader"—in matters of art but another name for "the general prejudice" or "the general ignorance"—notified me in January that he would prefer to hold the contribution till summer came again, when it would be regarded as "more appropriate, and just the thing to be read under green arbors and spreading beeches." I was glad to know that he thought it just the thing to be read anywhere, but nevertheless resolved to lay before the general reader, or the general prejudice, or the general ignorance, my little protest.

Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs, symbols—all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward, when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. If the work be good, we are glad to abstract our eyes, for the time, from all else. We can do this best when the scene from which the work was studied is shut farthest away from sight. Summer landscapes themselves are one thing, and we enjoy them in summer: such landscapes utilized—they cannot be reproduced—by art, are another thing, and these we enjoy at the winter fireside, when the eye sees nothing without except leaden clouds and effacing snow. Not even the average American would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. He should not want the little bit that he selected, narrowed, intensified, idealized, and then imperfectly transcribed from memory, brought out and set up before a reader whose eye is filled at every glance with the overpowering and inexhaustible realities of Nature herself.

Just the thing to read in the blistering days of July, if anything can be read then, is a graphic description of a snowstorm, or a lively account of the way a polar bear invaded the ice-hut of a benumbed Eskimo, or a history of the Washington Monument: something cold. Ice is as grateful in your dog-day literature as in your August julep. No one will hold that at such a time he prefers to contemplate a picture of Sahara or of a frying-pan. On the same principle, let us have, in art, our green leaves and warm colors amid the frosts of midwinter. Only the atmospheric extremes, summer and winter, can be seriously considered in "seasoning" periodical literature, the months our almanacs call spring being neither one thing nor another. In capricious April, however, a vision of golden and placid October would seem to be the proper thing, as would the freshness of May in the mellow melancholy of autumn. If editors receive more censures than compliments for publishing certain articles, into which the element of "news" does not enter, six months after the seasons of which they treat, there is one obscure contributor at least who considers the necessity a virtue.

C. H.

[According to the theory of "C. H.," the Christmas number of a magazine should be filled with midsummer idyls, while Christmas carols would be the appropriate reading in July or August. He thinks this would provide a grateful relief—like ice on a hot day or a blazing log on a cold one—from the effects of any intensity of temperature in the opposite seasons. But this is confounding sensations with mere conceptions, and seeking to "cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast." The ice cools and the fire warms, but a description of one or the other in place of the reality would make its absence only the more intolerable. Reynolds the dramatist tells us that one of his summer pieces was damned, owing to a scene in which the actors were served with plentiful libations of cool drinks—a tantalizing spectacle that drew a storm of hisses from the hot and thirsty audience. We hope the editor whom "C. H." has so inconsiderately assailed may not be tempted to revenge himself by exposing his contributor to a similar mishap.—Ed.]

A HINT FOR THE CENTENNIAL.

The interest in the approaching Centennial celebration at Philadelphia is daily widening and extending, and if those entrusted with its management prove themselves competent for the work, and show that they are duly inspired with its breadth and its significance to the world, before the end of the present year there will not be a hamlet in the land whose citizens are not made prouder of their nationality and individually anxious to contribute something to its glory. It should be made the grandest occasion of the kind which the world has ever witnessed, for if it be anything less than that, it will fail to respond to the honest aspirations and generous pride of the American heart. Aside from the museum proper—the collection of past and present manufactures, past and present implements of industry—every day should witness some grand tournament, like that trial of grain-reapers which took place at the exposition at Paris in 1855. The scene was a splendid field of grain forty miles from the city. Three machines—one English, one French (from Algiers), and one American—were the weapons of the contest. The audience was a crowd of curious witnesses gathered from every quarter of the globe. At a signal from the judges' stand the fine machines started and moved each over its allotted acre, cutting down and raking the grain like magic. The Algerian machine did its work in seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to three reapers, all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening shouts of applause.

SHRIMPS.

Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man, but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive qualities—may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected. Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may not be the common shrimp (Crangon vulgaris).

Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water, pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water. It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes of the tail are subjected to the same process.