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ciety, between those who drink and those is distasteful, and only as a danger is it pleaswho do not. By excluding the drinkers from respectability, it so far throws them. outside a social restraint, so that, being abandoned to the low society of the grog-shops, many become inebriates who might otherwise remain moderate drinkers.

matter.

The difference between the two nationalities, however, has a peculiar bearing in this The character of the Germans is the opposite of the Americans, in their ability to resist the calls of appetite and the tendency to excess; so that while the Germans can drink with reasonable safety, total abstinence is, for us, the only alternative of general dissipation. A German can stop anywhere along the scale of intoxication, and feel about equally satisfied. He can drink every hour, or every day, or every ten days, and feel much the same. His extensive practice in beer-drinking has made him versatile in his beer customs, and his appetite is accommodating in its demands. We find something similar in the Irish, who, though whisky makes them drunk (which is more the property of the whisky than of the Irish), are not generally made drunkards by it; for they can abstain for weeks and months without special craving; and they can drink every day a little without wanting more. But every American who gets drunk at all is liable to become a habitual drunkard, and no one can trust himself to drinking occasionally or drinking a little. One drink will be followed by many drinks, one drunk by many drunks, a little by more, and, generally, by too much. An American will always have his fill, whether it be in drinking, eating, religion, ambition, wealth, temperance habits, or abstract ideas. He can't rest at that half-way state which characterizes other peoples, but invariably runs to extremes. An American's safety, therefore, consists, not in moderation, but in abstinence. This must be not only from whisky, but also from beer, which is a sort of half-way drink that leads to whisky, or else to excess in itself. The fun of drinking does not commence in America till one gets past moderation. As a harmless indulgence it

There is also a difference in our climate and soil, which besides having something to do with making the peculiar appetite and nervous sensibility of the Americans, effects also a difference in the natural products and processes of fermentation. The wines of America are peculiarly intoxicating. The whisky is more violent than in any other country, and even calls out the curses of the Irishmen. Our beer is by no means as mild as that of the Fatherland. About the first objection that Germans have to America, after the one that there is not much beer, is that the beer is so bad. German beer would not satisfy an American beer-drinker; and our beer makes even Germans drunk. Germans in America often become unwilling inebriates, who, if they had German beers, might remain sober. At home the Germans do not drink one kind of beer, like Americans, but many, some of which are as harmless as soda water. To enter a saloon there and call for beer, would be like entering a restaurant and calling for victuals. There are as many kinds of beer in Germany as of sausage. The Americans have adopted the worst of these, and further spoiled it by excessive strengthening.

Another matter that leaves little occasion for drinking in America, is the fact that we all have enough to eat and of good quality, whereas, the Germans often drink in order to wash down food that is no more palatable than medicine. If Europeans had such rich breakfasts and dinners as we, they would not care for anything to drink with them. We often hear the claim that 'beer is, in itself, nourishing; so that, by drinking beer, they do not need so much solid food (whence beer is sometimes called "liquid bread "). But this claim is not worthy of consideration. To yield as much nourishment as a five-cent loaf requires one hundred glasses. One could drink himself drunk a dozen times before he could eat himself full on the same nourishment. Beer serves them rather in making out with the quality of their food than with the quantity; for with a glass of

beer they can swallow almost anything. True, they do not eat as much as we, but it is because they drink themselves full, and so feel satisfied for the moment; but they soon get hungry again, and so must eat nearly all the time, or, at least, keep filling themselves with something. The beer, like the negro's watermelon, is very good for fullness, but very poor for satisfaction. It gives one a swell, without keeping up the inflation long enough for any practical purpose. There is accordingly much suffering from insufficiency of food, notwithstanding the Germans eat four times a day. Their stomachs are in a chronic state of collapse, notwithstanding their periodical balloon-like distension.

Americans have also homes and a home society, which the Germans have not. They more generally marry, and marry earlier, so that, not having so many bachelors, they have learned to enjoy themselves with their families and near friends; so that they do not need to go to the saloons to spend the time. We could not imitate German public life, so as to get its advantages, and at the same time cultivate our peculiar home life. For the whole question of adopting beerdrinking in America hangs together with the adoption of the other customs of Germany; and the problem is whether, on the whole, we are ready to part with our American customs for the German customs; or whether it would not be better for the Germans, on coming here, to Americanize themselves, and help build up our peculiar western civiliza

tion. What few customs we have touching drink are peculiarly bad, as treating and freelunching, which stimulate to drinking beyond desire, and train novices to be tipplers; and it would only be a developing of these customs in their present badness, if we were to become a drinking nation, and not necessarily an improvement of them with their greater increase. Whereas, in Germany, drinking is for the pleasure of the drinkers, here it is rather for the profit of the sellers; so that in Germany, there is less drinking where it is not wanted, and so, less development of appetite against taste. These facts, together with our constitutional tendency to excess, make the German customs, when transplanted to America, specially deplorable. While we can do many things better than Europeans, we can never learn to drink as well. They can drink morally and even religiously, and they observe a sort of æstheticism in their drinking habits; but the Americans, after taking up drinking at a point where it has ceased to be a virtue, push it beyond all precedents as a vice. A Frenchman once remarked to me, in commenting on the fact that the French drink wine, the Germans beer, and the Americans whisky, that " Wine makes you feel gay; beer makes you like a hog; and whisky makes you say 'tam.'” Now, American drinking, which drops the aesthetical and moral, is mostly a combination of hog and "tam." German beer-drinking furnishes us, on the whole, an example of advantages to which we can never attain, and of evils which we can only transcend. Austin Bierbower.

AN OBSERVATION IN NATURAL HISTORY.

Why does the mermaid carry a mirror,
Smiling and beckoning over the sea;

Singing her song of "Tirra, lirra,

Come, O mariner, come to me!"

Not for her own face-she recks not of fashion;
Toward the fond sailor-boy holds she the glass :
That is her secret-not on his passion,
Just on his vanity works the sly lass.

for E. R. Sill FOR

A. M. pseu

VERSAILLES-PAST AND PRESENT.

hot and dusty Parisian, when, during sultry August days, he hears the cry of the market women: "Pêches de Montreuil! Pêches de Montreuil!" But the sad reality has since forced itself upon our conviction: Montreuil

To no place better than to Versailles can apply the words "How are the mighty fallen!" And the traveler of the present day, well-read in the details of the splendid court of the Louis, the gorgeous' fêtes, the opulence and magnificence that distinguished les Pêches lies on the other side of Paris, this royal residence above all others during and our village has no epithet whatever to the latter part of the seventeenth century distinguish it from its homonyms. and almost all the eighteenth, must feel here most keenly the vicissitudes of history.

True, the gigantic palace erected by the Roi-Soleil still stands. The unrivalled park still offers its manifold attractions to the admiration of the world; the grandes eaux play on the first Sunday of every summer month; but the principle that caused all these marvels to arise out of the solitude of the primitive Versailles has disappeared forever. They remain, and the city that had its existence from them remains-but as some beautiful body preserved by the embalmer's art, after the soul that animated it has passed away.

In the quiet provincial town of today, where even the busiest commercial streets seem half asleep, so little life is there, the casual visitor sees but little to recall the mighty past. But as time goes by, one begins to love the dead-and-alive old place; and in delving into the records of past centuries, many a brilliant scene is reconstructed, many a quaint anecdote recalled, which give life to the lifeless city and people it

anew.

Perhaps the quietest corner of quiet Versailles is the suburb of Montreuil, a separate village until the reign of Louis XVI, and now one of the three quarters of the town, the others being Saint Louis and Notre Dame. Here we have lived for a considerable period, as quietly as though a thousand leagues were between us and the modern Babylon. For some time we remained in the pleasing illusion that this was the famous place whose name brings such pleasant thoughts to the

We indulge in delicious peaches, nevertheless; not the fat, luscious, blooming fruit that welcomes the American returning in summer to his native land, but as the French saying hath it: "Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on alme, il faut aimer ce qu'on a." Have we not existed for years without the baked beans and brown bread which made our Sunday mornings happy in our childhood?

It is indeed a healthy quarter, where we have thus buried ourselves. Our neighbor, the old gardener, is hale and hearty, in spite of his eighty years, and resents so well withal any intrusion on his rights, or what he considers as such, that we suspect him of having imbibed in his youth revolutionary principles, and indulged in the "Rights of Man," by Thomas Paine. He is indeed French, in his natural politeness and gallantry, however. "Behold, mademoiselle," said this gray-headed sinner the other day, as he presented the youngest of our party with some dahlias as old-fashioned as himself, "the young ladies must be taken care of; and, indeed, I remember that I loved them much when young myself; but it is long ago, that; oh, indeed, yes, very long ago!"

At Montreuil we find one of the most touching souvenirs of the Bourbon race. Madame Elizabeth possessed here a country house, presented to her by her unfortunate brother, Louis XVI, in 1781. Surrounded by her ladies in waiting, she passed her time in profitable reading, conversation with her. companions, music, and above all, in doing, good. She was the providence of the poor of the district, until the fatal events of Oc

tober, 1789, tore her from her rustic retreat, and forced her to leave Versailles forever. Strange working of fatality! The purest and best of the Bourbons expiating on the scaffold the follies of their ancestors! The sins of the father are indeed visited upon the children. This country seat of Madame Elizabeth still exists in the Rue du Bon-Conseil, near the imposing Avenue de Paris.

Our quarter celebrated its annual fête but recently, the pretext being the anniversary of Saint Symphorianus, patron of the parish church. The poor saint was but little heard of, however. Perhaps to be exact, I should say not at all; for the triumphal car which promenaded through the principal streets by torchlight at the close of the festivities, was surmounted by a person representing one of the greatest of Versailles celebrities--Hoche, youngest of Republican generals, whose brilliant career was cut short at the age of twenty-nine. "He lived to attain glory; but too short a time for his country's need," was the inscription on the hero's cenotaph, when the sad news of his death had reached his native place, and a formal funeral ceremony took place in his honor. He was born in the Saint Louis quarter, in a simple bourgeois house of the Rue Satory, which on the day of his funeral was covered with sable hangings and adorned with tri-colored flags. The heart of the brave soldier is placed in a chapel of the church of Notre Dame, where a few lines recall his memory and that of his wife, who survived her husband through sixty-two long years of widowhood.

Another son of Versailles who attained distinction in military affairs is less spoken of now-a-days. No street bears his name, no statue of him, either in bronze or in marble, decorates a public square. The too celebrated Marshal Bazaine first saw the light of day (to use a consecrated expression) in a handsome house, the number nine of that Boulevard de la Reine, so well known to all strangers as leading from the railway station to the great and little Trianons. By a strange coincidence, the veteran's native place saw the close of his career; the long and celebrated trial, so well presided over by the Duc

d'Aumale, where all the impassioned eloquence of Lachaud could not arrest the death sentence. Every one knows how this sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment in a fortress, and how a woman's devotion and a most romantic night escape ended the celebrity of him who was once the favorite soldier of France. Bazaine now lives quietly in Madrid, where he has recently published a book, tending to defend his conduct in the sad war of 1870-'71.

But to turn from this sullied record to a brighter and purer one; let us walk a few steps from the house of Bazaine to the Rue des Reservoirs, which forms, with the Boulevard de la Reine, the center of the strangers' quarter of Versailles. At the corner of the Rue de la Paroisse, in that old fashioned house dating from before the revolution, was born almost eighty years ago a man whose name is constantly before the public, and to whom his most ardent opponents cannot deny an indefatigable energy and a most wonderful inventive genius. This man is the Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, the deviser of the Suez and Panama canals; the father of ten charming children, of whom the greater part, bare-armed and bare-legged, are constantly to be seen at Paris, surrounding their father like a brood of chickens; on horseback at the Bois; at mass at the Madeleine; at the circus; at the Champs Elysées; everywhere. Last year a marble slab, commorating the birth of Monsieur de Lesseps, was placed on the house; the inevitable speeches were made, the inevitable banquet took place, and the inevitable crowd stupidly gazed for hours at the plaque and its short inscription long after the ceremony had come to an end.

While here, on the well known Rue des Reservoirs we can see, opposite the ugly theatre which the Sarah Bernhardt of that day, Mademoiselle Montausien, founded before the revolution, the house where died La Bruyère, the celebrated author of "Les Caractères," of whose life and death so little is known, but who left an immortal monument, aere perennius, in a book destined to hold the first rank among French classics

the site of the house, rather, for little now remains of the stately mansion of the Prince de Condé, where La Bruyère lived as tutor of the prince's children. Like all the dwelling houses of the reign of Louis XIV, this one consisted of but two stories and a mansard roof. The great king, wishing to maintain his supremacy in all things, had ordered that no construction in his new city should surpass a certain height. Thus, from his superb palace on the hill, he obtained an unbroken view over the entire neighborhood. Under his reign, the population of Versailles consisted of the small shop keepers, lacqueys, and hangers on of every description who surround a court. That their intelligence and savoir vivre left something to be desired, may be gleaned from the following anecdote, which Narbonne, chief of the police, relates in his diary:

On the occasion of the birth of the Duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the Dauphin, and eventual heir to the throne, in 1682, the narguillers of the parish church (a term best translated into Protestant English by the name vestrymen), as representatives of the bourgeoisie of Versailles, desired to be admitted to present their congratulations to his Majesty, Louis the Fourteenth. Their request was granted by the Governor of the town, Bontemps; and on the day and hour named, the aforesaid high functionary ushered them into the presence of the King. The sight of royalty in all its splendor was too much for a certain grocer of the party, Colette by name, who, giving vent to his loyalty at the expense of etiquette, intoned in a magnificent bass voice, the words of the Catholic service, "Domine, salvum fac regem"; to which his colleagues replied immediately, "Et exaudi nos in die quâ invocaverimus te." This was a little too much for the gravity of even the most serene of monarchs, and Louis XIV could not refrain from a hearty burst of laughter, in which the courtiers naturally joined. As for the unfortunate vestrymen, they were hustled out of the royal presence by the indignant governor, who considered himself responsible for their peculiar behavior. They were henceforward

probably kept at a distance, for we do not hear of them again, until the return of the young king, Louis xv, to Versailles, after an absence of some years, in 1722. The inhabitants of the town naturally wished to compliment his Majesty on what to them seemed a most sensible proceeding, as they had greatly suffered from the absence of the Court at Vincennes and Paris. Bontemps was no longer in office, but had been succeeded by Blouin, like his predecessor first valet de chambre of the King. Every precaution was taken to ensure the good behavior of the delegation, and while the young monarch entered in solemn state the city of his predecessor, and stopped on his way to say a prayer at the Royal Chapel before ascending to his apartment, Blouin shut the vestrymen up in a small ante-chamber, with instructions to await there the hour of the interview. The hour came. The king was ready. Blouin opened the door and announced, 'Messieurs les Bourgeois de Versailles"; but no one was forthcoming! They had dispersed in every direction to admire the pomp of the royal cortége, and when next they applied for permission to congratulate his Majesty, Blouin refused, declaring he had had enough of them.

These royalist sentiments of the Versaillists had sadly changed, however, when the revolution began. The quarter of Notre Dame. was especially noted for its radical principles, and in 1793 a proposition to change the name of the town to that of "Cradle of Liberty" came very near being accepted, as it was approved at first by twelve of the thirteen sections into which the city was then divided. These changes in the names of everything which could possibly recall the past remind one of the Rue Saint Denis, at Paris, reduced to Rue Nis by the radical coachman who carried out to the letter the suppression of Saints, and of the syllable "de" as indicating nobility; -or of the Marquis de Saint Cyr, who found himself by the non-existence of the words Marquis, de, Saint, and Cyr (Sire), plain Citoyen Blank, or the man without a name.

If we come back to the Rue des Reser

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