THE “COMPARATIVE DIFFERENCE OF LIVING AT HOME AND ABROAD.”

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 35, 29 November 1842, Page 3

THE “COMPARATIVE DIFFERENCE OF LIVING AT HOME AND ABROAD.”

(From the Illustrated English Neios.J The following extract from a letter on the “Comparative Expences of living at Home and Abroad,” will be read with advantage as well as amusement. “You know that my income altogether does not exceed 120 Z. a-year. With this poor stipend, I fancied myself a very poor man in London; and having heard so much of the cheapness of France, I resolved on wintering in Paris. I‘arrived here in the month of November, arid after having visited a hundred lodging-

houses, I at length obtained a very good bed-* room, and a bed-room only, for sixty francs (almost fifty shillings) per month. For three pounds per month, fifteen shillings a week, you know I had a very pretty sitting-room and bedroom in.the vicinity of the University, and the 1 good pefiple of the house prepared my breakfast for me, and cooked my dinner if I wished to’ dine at home. The porter of the house in Paris at which I fixed my quarters; however, told me 1 that nothing of this kind could bd done for me there. Well, I installed myself; and as it was very cold weather, laid in forty francs’ worth of wood, which I expected would last at least two months, for in my London lodgings I paid ninepence per day for a good fire, and was at least seven or eight hours daily at home; whereas it was evident that, as I must go out in Paris .for my meals, I should be little at home. What was my astonishment, therefore, at the end of three weeks, although I had a fire only in the evening, to find that my wood was almost gone ; and God knows I had never once been warm, for the d—d chimney smoked at such a rate, as all the French chimneys do, that I was compelled to sit with my door wide open, to avoid suflb'eation. On the first morning after my arrival, I went to a cafe to breakfast; I had a cup of coffee, which, to say truth, was very good, a small loaf of bread, certainly not enough for a man of good appetite, and a slice of butter, of which it would take nearly a 'hundred to make a pound. The charge for this was eighteen sous, which, with two sous to the waiter, made a franc. In London, I have frequently turned into a decent coffee-shop, and in the upper room, which was visited only by respectable persons, had a large cup of tea and a roll and butter for fourpence halfpenny—just halt what my breakfast cost me here. Then as to dinner. My first visit to a restaurant was rather an unlucky one for my purse; it was to the Freres Provenceaux in the Palais Royal. As I knew nothing of the dishes, I resolved to be guided by two French gentlemen who took their seats at the same time at an adjoining table. I ordered what I heard them ordei*, and had seven or eight different dishes,’ each far'too copious for me ; for I was not then aware that, in order to dine well at these places, without paying enormously, and to have some variety, there must be. two or three persons together, and the order should be given for a single portion, as it is called, for the party. By this means, three persons may have five or six dishes, and pay no more than would be paid by one person. My bill, with a bottle of wine, came to seventeen francs—rather an expensive outlay for a sub. on half-pay. On the following day I went to a restaurant a prix fixe —that is to say, at a fixed price per head, and I had what I then considered to be a pretty good dinner—viz. soup, four dishes, dessert, bread, and half a bottle of wine, for two francs. To this place 1 returned day after day, but I was soon disgusted with it; for I was informed that the cheap restaurateurs are in the habit of buying up what remains every day at the high-priced restaurasits and disguising’ it with sauces, or of purchasing the refuse meat and poultry in the markets. My taste for these restaurants a tant par tctc was much lowered, also, by reading in the journals an account of the seizure of a quantity of horse flesh, from the slaughter-houses for horses at Montfaucon, in the larders of several cheap restaurateurs; and of the condemnation of two scoundrels for killing a number of cats, and disposing of them at the low-priced eatinghouses.”

(From the Nelson Examiner.) We have been informed by Captain Cooney, of the Nimrod, that during his passage from the Bay of Island, he saw fire issuing from Mount Egmont three nights successively.