working men, in the larger forms of buttons.
We remember to have often seen it; but
never to have asked what it was.

The subsidiary concerns of these large
manufactories strike us by their importance,
when on the spot, though we take no heed to
them in our daily life. When the housewife
has taken into use the last of a strip of pearl
buttons, she probably gives to the children
the bit of gay foil on which they were tacked,
without ever thinking where it came from, or
how it happened to be there. The importation
of this foil is a branch of trade with
France. We cannot compete with the French
in the manufacture of it. When we saw it
in bundles—gay with all gaudy hues—we
found it was an expensive article, adding
notably to the cost of the buttons, though its
sole use is to set off their translucent quality,
to make them more tempting to the eye.

We saw a woman, in her own home,
surrounded by her children, tacking the buttons
on their stiff paper, for sale. There was not
foil in this case between the stiff paper and
the buttons, but a brilliant blue paper, which
looked almost as well. This woman sews
forty gross in a day. She could formerly, by
excessive diligence, sew fifty or sixty gross;
but forty is her number now—and a large
number it is, considering that each button has
to be picked up from the heap before her, ranged
in its row, and tacked with two stitches.

Here we had better stop, though we have
not told half that might be related on the
subject of buttons. It is wonderful, is it
not? that on that small pivot turns the
fortune of such multitudes of men, women, and
children, in so many parts of the world; that
such industry, and so many fine faculties,
should be brought out and exercised by so
small a thing as the Button.

MY AUNT IN PARIS.

DURING a residence in Paris last year, I
found myself taking considerable interest in
Mademoiselle Delphine, the only daughter of
the dirty little tailor who officiated as my
portier. Mademoiselle Delphine was not in
the literal meaning of the term beautiful;
but she compensated, better even than most
Frenchwomen, for its absence, by insensible
charms, and graces that defy equally criticism
or classification. I was sallying forth one
morning as usual to transact—if I may be
allowed the expression—my idleness, when,
after several fruitless calls upon the cordon, I
entered the Loge du Concièrge. I found
Delphine " desolated," as she informed me, and in
tears, as I could see for myself. I was not
long in eliciting the secret of her sorrow,
which was communicated to me in the strictest
confidence;—she had a lover—which is not
unusual in other countries besides France;
and this lover was a soldier, which in France
is particularly usual. Like many other gallant
young fellows, this soldier had a soul above
five sous a-day, and lived as much above that
moderate income as kindness and credit would
permit. His regiment had been lately ordered
into the provinces, and previously to his
departure, Delphine, it seems, had administered
to some pressing requirement by a timely
loan. He was to return on the morrow, and
Delphine did not know how to meet him,
because—because—she at last said, reluctantly
—because she had been compelled to borrow
the money in question upon the security of
her only valuable possession—a bracelet—the
love-gift of the soldier himself. To meet him
without wearing his gift, and in silence, would
be impossible; to confess that she had parted
with it, although it had been devoted to
his use, would seem mean and mercenary; or,
what was immeasurably less to be endured,
commonplace. She had no other means of
redeeming the gift or accounting for its loss,
and was desolée accordingly.

This dismal tale called, of course, for consolation.
That the kind of consolation I administered
was speedy and effectual, may be gathered
from the immediate disappearance of all traces
of desolation. Delphine was enchantée, and
expressed herself in the superlatives which
only a Frenchwoman can muster on the
shortest notice. I had roused her from
desolation to ecstasy. She was enchanted and
enraptured. I was noble and generous; my
bounty would be forgotten never!

"But," I asked, " where am I to find this
bracelet, which is so necessary for the
preservation of tranquillity between you and
your fiancé?"

"It is at my Aunt's," was the reply.

"Your Aunt! Mercenary old lady! Surely
she does not take in security when she
helps lovers and relations out of their little
distresses ?"

Delphine smiled, and enlightened my
innocence by some explanations, which I will
here enlarge upon for the benefit of the
reader.

My Aunt, it appears, belongs to a very
large family in Paris—a family, in fact, as
large as the entire population of that city, and
which increases year by year with the census
returns. Her relatives are of every grade;
from the Montmorencies—who are at the
present moment glowing again under ancestral
titles of at least six weeks' standing—down to
Monsieur Gougon, the chiffonnier, condemned
to " pick up a livelihood," with no other title
than his prescriptive title—to whatever he
can find. It must not be supposed, however,
that all of this numerous family are on the
same degree of intimacy with the respected
lady: the Montmorencies are a little too high,
and the Gougons scarcely high enough, to take
much notice of her. She is principally
cultivated by classes, ranging somewhere between
the two extremes—a medium, certainly, but
one which can scarcely be described as the
golden. To say that they have " expectations"
from the old lady, would be saying little enough,