PARISIAN BREAD CARRIER.
The very first thing that strikes an American in Paris with astonishment is the meagreness of the water supply in the houses. You look for the faucets which supply your room with hot and cold water, as at home, but you don’t find them. A chambermaid pours out about two quarts in a diminutive pitcher, and that is expected to last you for purposes of ablution twenty-four hours. And this with the Seine running directly through the center of the city. The houses are from five to seven stories high, but all the water used in them, for all purposes, is carted up to the top by men. My landlord told me it was cheaper to have it so carried than to put plumbing in his house, and pay the water-tax, “and we don’t use much of it, anyway,” he remarked, and he was right. Still, accustomed as I have always been to the use of a great deal of it, it took me some time to fall into their ways. Pure water is a very good thing to have plenty of, but it’s all a matter of habit, I suppose. A man can get to be a Frenchman, in time, if he tries hard enough. Nothing is impossible, where there’s a will and a stubborn purpose. But to keep oneself clean with a pint, or thereabouts, of water per day looks rather difficult to a novice.
John Leech was very fond of illustrating this peculiarity of the French people, in Punch, years ago. When the first English Exposition was in progress in London, the city was overrun with French. One picture he made was of two elegantly dressed young Frenchmen, standing in front of an ordinary wash-stand, on which was the usual pitcher, washbowl, soap-dish, etc., and underneath was this conversation:—
Alphonse—What is this?
Henri—I do not know. It is queer!
The good Leech doubtless exaggerated, as all satirists do, but he had sufficient foundation for his skit.
FRENCH CLEANLINESS.