step ashore, and asked him what he went away out there for? He said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still, he could not understand. He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The doctor

tried him, but he could not understand the doctor. I asked this boatman to explain his conduct, which he did; and then I couldn't understand him. Dan said:

"Oh, go to the pier, you old fool- that's where we want to go!"

We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak to this foreigner in English-that he had better let us conduct this business in the French language and not let the stranger see how uncultivated he was.

"Well, go on, go on," he said, "don't mind me. I don't wish to interfere. Only, if you go on telling him in your kind of French he never will find out where we want to go to. That is what I think about it."

We rebuked him severely for this remark, and said we never knew an ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and the doctor said:

"There, now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means he is going to the hotel. Oh, certainly we don't know the French language."

This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism from the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of

last at a governIt was easy to re

great steamships, and stopped at ment building on a stone pier. member then that the douain was the custom-house, and not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French politeness, the officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined to examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the first café we came to, and entered. An old woman seated us at a table and waited for orders. The doctor said:

"Avez-vous du vin?"

The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate distinctness of articulation: "Avez-vous du vin!"

The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said:

"Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere. Let me try her. Madame, avez-vous du vin? It isn't any use, doctor-take the witness."

"Madame, avez-vous du vin- ou fromage— pain-pickled pigs' feet-beurre - des cefs-du beuf - horseradish, sour-crout, hog and hominyanything, anything in the world that can stay a Christian stomach!"

She said:

"Bless you, why didn't you speak English before?I don't know anything about your plagued French!"

The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member

spoiled the supper, and we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could.

Here

we were in beautiful France in a vast stone house

of quaint architecture surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French signs- stared at by strangely-habited, bearded French people-everything gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that at last, and beyond all question, we were in beautiful France and absorbing its nature to the forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to feel the happy romance of the thing in all its enchanting delightfulness—and to think of this skinny veteran intruding with her vile English, at such a moment, to blow the fair vision to the winds! It was exasperating.

We set out to find the center of the city, inquiring the direction every now and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending just exactly what they said in reply - but then they always pointed— they always did that, and we bowed politely and said "Merci, Monsieur," and so it was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member, anyway. He was restive under these victories and often asked: "What did that pirate say?"

"Why, he told us which way to go, to find the Grand Casino."

"Yes, but what did he say ?"

"Oh, it don't matter what he said.

-

we under

stood him. These are educated people not like that absurd boatman."

"Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that goes somewhere for we've been going around in a circle for an hour - I've passed this same old drug store seven times.'

We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood (but we knew it was not): It was plain that it would not do to pass that drug store again, though we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from following finger pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected member.

A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets, bordered by blocks of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone,- every house and every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a mile, and all brilliantly lighted, brought us at last at last to the principal thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations of gas-burners, gaily-dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks-hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and laughter everywhere! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to get there, and a great deal of information of similar importance all for the benefit of the landlord and the secret