OUR PARIS LETTER.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2498, 8 January 1877, Page 3

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(FEOII OUR OWif COBUEBPOKDENT.)

Pabis,.October 19. The journals are devoting what remains of the Parliamentary vacation- to discuss what was of a practical nature in the recent Workman's Congress. The French mind is naturally inclined to generalize subjects, and to run after the ideal; future Congresses will become more precise us they gain experience. The drift of these discussions is, that every facility ought to be afforded to the trades to form co-operatire associations and syndics, so long as their tendency is not to impede the freedom of the workman by imposing on him conditions that would amount to a tyranny, arid that nothing is to be sanctioned which would limit production. The idea to be able to develope a state of society, where woman would be as well paid as men, is regarded as preposterous : she is physically unequal, to struggle in the various kinds of manual industry; she is not the bread -■winner, only a simple

assistant contributing her little to the

general income of the household. It is this fact that compels females of good 'social position to quietly —secretly if you will—devote much of their time to fancy work in order to supplement the badly

remunerated liberal professions, and,their increasing social exactions. The circumstances are the same where the peasant women having no oUt-door- work in winter take needle work at prices that their sisters in Paris could not accept. In the case of prisons or convents, their ouvroirs are partly maintained by the Government and charity, which, enables orders for needlework to be taken irrespective of rate of remuneration, and which depresses the scale of wages of the professional needlewoman. This .is an abuse, and ought to be combat ted by a syndic, that would protect woman's work from such a depreciation. It is recommended that all employment of a character to suit females, such as printing, clerkships, &c, ought to be thrown open to them. The boot and .shoemakers are about celebrating the anniversary of their patron, Saint Crispin; formerly these two branches of the same trade did not

stable their horaes together, now they dwell in harmony. One subdivision of

the order has allbut disappeared— the cobbler; the city improvements hare destroyed hi? hooks arid corners. . However/ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries he was a positive power, anci took; an active part in all the stirring events of; the period. The cobblers had their stalls around the walls of the Louvre, two poles and a tarpaulin completed the. structure. Pending the massacre of St. Bartholomew, they saved many; Huguenots, by concealing them under piles of old shoes, or hides of . leather. As painters always whistle, cdbblers are addicted to singing; in 1789 they were the first to display the republican cockade, and with the tailors, contributed largely to the armies of the Mother Bepublic and of JNapoleonL; they were the most satirical in their political songs, and the severest orators of. the carrefours. Disgusted at the foundation of a constitutional monarchy, instead of a Republic,, after' the revolution of 1830 they gradually dwindled away, and are now only to be found occupying a pigeon-hole' in some wine shop or woodman's store, or better, acting as posters, than whom none are more faithful or attentive. Boot and shoemaker's shops at present in Paris, are called " Docks," aa consoling to the proprietors perhaps as the word Mesopotamia to the old women in her parson's sermon ; these docks are veritable salons, fitted up with mirrors, velvet-covered chairs and sofas; some provide cigars for well-known customers, others only the lights, and a few subscribe for a journal at one sous. Better late than never; after four centuries nearly of oblivion, Christopher Columbus is to be canonized; it is but a small reparation the Church make's to a celebrity; it is so much tormented when in the flesh j it is also a pretty compliment to make to the Centennial. The Archbishop of Bordeaux is entrusted with the task of drawing up the great navigator's claim for beatification; the boys in blue will at last have an orthodox saint. No progress is reported by the Bishop of Orleans as to his brief in the matter of canonizing Jeanne d' Arc; Marie Antionette is also down on the roster, but Napoleon I, always a man of violence, is called already a saint by his partizans, without ever demanding persnißsiou of the College of Cardinals. At Limoges, a clergyman during a procession, knocked off' the hat of a bystander with his harretta, and then called a gendarme to do his duty, which the latter did, by first punching the accused's stomach, and then slapping his face. The young man offered no resistance; took some of the crowd for witnesses, who testified to the truth of his defence that he had duly taken off his hat, both when the Crucifix and the Host passed, but as it was raining, he replaced his hat on his head. He took an action against the priest and the gendarme; the former was ftcquitted, as the blow did the plaintiff "no bodily harm so as to incapacitate him for work;" the gendarme was acquitted on the count of the blow in the stomach, as it was merely pretty Fanny's way for opening a passage in the crowd, but he was fined ten francs for inflicting the slap; to add to the smiling around, the plaintiff was condemned to pay expenses. This looks like Justices' justice. It is proposed to borrow something from the German empire ; the philanthropists of France —few in number-—happily, and the specimens rather fossilized, advocate the adoption of the Bavarian plan of guillotining, that of bandaging the culprit's eyes with black tulle. But our model headsman, Roch, has several times stated that his patients lose all rational consciousness from the moment he commences to make their last toilette,' viz., clipping the hair off the back of the head and cutting away the shirt collar. Paul Feval, the popular novelist, has recently been converted to Catholicism from Atheism ; he confesses that one day being in a distressed state of mind, he " called upon God ; " next day he had a " soul t6te-a-tete " with a clergyman, who might have been his son, and the third day he felt he was numbered with the Elect, went to church, and adored a saint. His readers, however, complain that since he has become a Christian his stories are about as interesting as a charity sermon. A few days ago tbe funeral of a woman took place in the Eve St. Honore. As the'friends were waiting outside for ". the ' coffin to be lifted," a policeman arrived with an order to direct the hearse to the Morgue instead of to the cemetery, where

a post mortem examination was to be held; a case of suspected poisoning, much, to the sorrowing husband's surprise. At the same moment a poor man rushed into a butcher's shop, close by, and seizing a knife stabbed himself to death ; so that, as a menYber of the funeral party remarked, they had not their walk for nothing. M. Deville in reply to a surgeon extolling the progress made in anatomy: " You are like the cabmen, you know all the streets, but nothing that is taking place in ( the houses" I The late King Leopold suddenly asked Nadar, the aeronaut; «• Is it possible y<m are a republican?" "And you, sire?" "Oh !" added the King laughingly, " I'm not permitted to be one." In some Paris school* the play-grounds are so small that the pupils are marched in rows duck- fashion, and ordered never to push one another.