of forthcoming marriages among the
small shopkeeping class, and takes his notes of
the bride, the colour of her hair, complexion,
and style of face and figure on the steps of the
mairie as the wedding party enter the building.
On the shoemaker's principle, that there is
nothing like leather, he remarks to the bridegroom,
whom he subsequently intercepts at
the door of the restaurant where the "nôce" is
to be celebrated, that a wedding without poetry
is deprived of all its sentiment, and then
proceeds to show that happy individual the little
string of compliments, which have already done
duty hundreds of times, but which he gives
him to understand have been inspired by the
charming bride of to-day. To remove any
feeling of apprehension which might be
entertained with regard to his appearance in the
midst of an elegant company in threadbare
attire, he takes care to inform the bridegroom
that he has a dress suit at home—meaning
that, if engaged, he knows where to hire one.
After dinner he recites his poetical rhapsody
in praise of the bride, for which his fee is
ordinarily fifteen francs, though he will not disdain
a smaller sum.

Another curious specialist was the man who
gained his living by guessing riddles, that is to
say the rebuses, charades, and logogriphes
which it was the fashion with certain
newspapers to publish periodically, with the view, it
is supposed, of sharpening the intellects of
their more obtuse subscribers. In those quarters
of the city where the class of small renters
abound, an extraordinary excitement used to
prevail at all the cafés, estaminets, and boarding
houses on the mornings these intellectual
problems made their appearance. Profiting by
this circumstance, a small band of Å’dipuses
arose who, as early as possible after the papers
were published, and they had themselves
solved the enigma of the day, commenced their
rounds to the various cafés, and for a fee of five
sous privately furnished the proprietors with
a written solution of the problem. In these
golden days riddle-guessers with a large
connexion would make as much as forty francs out
of a single rebus.

Until ousted by recent demolitions, or by
virtue of sanitary regulations, there existed, in
the very heart of Paris, close to the College of
France in fact, a town-bred goatherd who kept
his herd, more than fifty in number, up five
pairs of stairs in a couple of ordinary sized
rooms divided into as many stalls as he had
goats, and made his living by selling their
milk. Dressed in a short jacket, gaiters, sabots,
and broad-brimmed hat, and with the orthodox
crook in hand, he used daily to drive the
animals to pasture some couple of miles off, ten
at a time; and to see of a morning the goats
descending the polished stairs, slippery as any
Alpine glacier, was a singular sight. The man
had been originally a bricklayer's labourer,
whose wife gave birth to three children at a
single confinement, when, according to the
prevailing custom under such circumstances,
she was provided by the authorities with a
couple of goats to assist her in suckling them.
Wife and children, however, alike died, and
the bereaved husband and father, finding
himself in undisturbed possession of the animals,
abandoned the hod for the crook, and became
a breeder and tender of kids, and dealer in
goats' milk. He nourished his animals in
accordance with certain formulae drawn up for
him by some medical students, and over their
different stalls were inscribed not only their
names, but the particular kind of food they were
fed upon. Thus we read:

"Mélie Morvanguilotte, fed upon carrots,
for Madame M., suffering from disease of the
liver.

"Jeanne la Ross, hay and mint, Mademoiselle
A., chlorosis.

"Marie Noel, born at the stable, by Marius
out of Jeanette, nourished upon iodurated hay,
for the son of Monsieur R., poorness of blood."

The colouring of meerschaum pipes wholesale
by chemical means has given the death-blow to
a particular industry which used to thrive in
Paris. While walking along the quays one was
accustomed to meet a tribe of vagabonds strolling
gravely up and down, smoking pipes of a
value that seemed to belie their honest possession
of them. One naturally asked oneself how
it was that all these Parisian lazzaroni possessed
such pipes, and managed to pass their entire
time in smoking. It turned out that the pipes
were not exactly their own, and that smoking
was their trade. The way they went to work
was this: They smoked a common pipe until
it was well coloured, and then exchanged it for
an uncoloured pipe of superior quality, which,
after colouring, they exchanged in turn, and
so they went on until the pipe dealer felt
himself warranted in entrusting them with pipes of
some value, in exchange for those they bought.
These they would colour at the rate of from
half a franc to a franc each, according to size,
payable half in cash and half in tobacco at the
wholesale price. Such adepts had they become,
and so laboriously did they puff and blow,
that, with a consumption of half a franc's
worth of tobacco, they could produce one large
or a couple of smaller masterpieces a day,
which gave them a net profit of fifty centimes,
thus expended by them: