OUR PARIS LETTER.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4051, 22 December 1881, Page 3

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(FBOM OTJJft OWN COKEEBPONDKNT.)

Paris, October 6

St. Cloud Fair has terminated ; the last day was better than the first. Many American and English visitors looked in on that time honored institution the few spared by demolishers and reformers. The balls that recall the light of other days to so many grey-haired philosophers are dying out: Aunt Sally, drawing room targets for rifles and pistols, electric toys, and other progresses of the age have finished them. Even the alfresco dinners are no more, where fowls and plain joints were cooked on the green, customers dancing the Font D'Avignon, as the finest diversion till the waiter announced the repast was served, and gallantry was kept busily employed lending a knife or fork to the lady next to you, or moderating her shrieks, as insects unknown to naturalists dropped into a plate of soup, and swam for their lives. The wine consisted of the worst that all the country round could concentrate; the last of the seasou's melons there received their apotheosis, and by the time a joyous soul reached Paris in a " buckoo," be was ready for instant admission into an hospital ward, and the strongest remedies against cholera. On the present occasion the only original toy that was brought out was a Kroumir pulling the tail of a pig ; last year a Jesuit occupied the Kroumir's place. Same journals find in the toy the text for b sermon on "Tunisian affairs, viz., that it was in order to chastise a case of pig-stealing, that France has now to expend her blood and treasure.

Perhaps after the rage for Japanese and Chjnese curiosities^ classical antiquities, come next. The Louvre has opened a salle for the exhibition of Tunisian diggings—splinters from Carthage. The most wonderful circumstance about the show, is making a charge of one franc for admission. In the present temper of the French hardly any discovery from Tunisia would attract them, save perhaps the finding of the Trojan horse, or the collar of Ulysses' dog. Some lamps in pale and black clay indicate much advance certainly in art and delicacy of desigD. The specimens of antique jewellery are rather heavy, and the lady subjects of the Dido dynasty must have had very stout necks to support the weight of the collars exposed. Parisiennes are only equal to sustaining a necklace of the finest gold with a wild boar for a pendant. j

The winter is coming upon us in seven league boots; after vowing we would not commence fires, we bare bad to surrender, but man proposes, and God disposes; similarly with the struggle for demi season tiolettes : they have vanished like ghosts at cockcrow, to make way for furs and livery-sharped coats: thick flannels are being drawn from their biding places, where their unpopularity during the dog days, compelled them to seek refuge; the papers are full of advertisements of cough mixtures, as neglecting a •old might compel us to fall back in consumptive hyposulphites. We are inundated with circulars to now purchase screened or unscreened coal from Walls, or the world's end, the chestnut men with their Italian grin, count upon good wasting times, and have no faith in mild winters or green christmases. The police notices impress upon householders the value of salt as a clearing away agent of ice, and snow of a reasonable dept; the public warm plunge baths will soon be inaugurated ; the soldiers will have their free days, and the populace tickets at ..reduced prices; the bath will in end resemble a pool of, Bethesda, though the assurance be given that a stream of water fresh from boilers and cisterns will ever percolate the reservoir. Emile de Girardin paid Chateaubriand 2,009 francs for a contribution, not larger than ,a bank of England note, but the letter doubled the circulation, of his periodical. It has been ascertained that for success as an author, as for a politician, it is essential to have the ladies on your side.

At a recent meeting of the carpenters who are in strike, a speaker deplored the weakness of some of the men accepting the terms offered by employers; the treason he attributed to the bad example left by Bazaine. An old soldfer complained of a porcelain manufacturer receiving the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor. " The porcelain is better than himself, for it is never decorated till it has undergone fire." Dr to a son-in-law : " Your mother-in-law;is very unwell, her tongue is extremely foul," " That convinces me doctor, sho is in robust health."

A husband in coming home found his wife cutting out some article of tdress from the refuse covering of an umbrella. "Always prodigal" he exclaimed shaking his fist at her.

Bride : " Oh! Mamma you know lam not entitled to wear orange blossoms ? " "Tut, tut, my dear, you know they are only artificial flowers.