Rollo in Paris

by Jacob Abbott

"No," replied Jennie; "I am not sleepy the least in the world. See."

Here Jennie opened her eyes very wide, and looked Rollo full in the face, by way of demonstrating that she was not sleepy.

Rollo felt very much perplexed. When he pictured to himself, in imagination, the idea of being whirled rapidly through the Boulevards, on such a pleasant summer evening, in a carriage which he should have all to himself, with the top down so that he could see every thing all around him, and of the brilliant windows of the shops, the multitudes of ladies and gentlemen taking their coffee at the little round tables on the sidewalk in front of the coffee saloons, the crowds of people coming and going, and the horsemen and carriages thronging the streets, the view was so enchanting that it was very hard for him to give up the promised pleasure. He, however, determined to do it; so he said,—

"Well, Jennie, I'll stay. I will go out and tell mother that I am not going to ride, and then I will come back."

For the first half hour after Mrs. Holiday went away, Rollo was occupied with Jennie in looking over some very pretty French picture books which Mrs. Holiday had bought for her that day, to amuse her because she was sick. Jennie had looked them all over before; but now that Rollo had come, it gave her pleasure to look them over again, and talk about them with him. Jennie sat up in the bed, leaning back against the pillows and bolsters, and Rollo sat in a large and very comfortable arm chair, which he had brought up for this purpose to the bedside. The books lay on a monstrous square pillow of down, half as large as the bed itself, which, according to the French fashion, is always placed on the top of the bed. Rollo and Jennie would take the books, one at a time, and look them over, talking about the pictures, and showing the prettiest ones to each other. Thus the time passed very pleasantly. At length, however, Jennie, having looked over all the books, drew herself down into the bed, and began to ask Rollo where he had been that day.

"I have been with uncle George," said Rollo. "He said that he was going about to see a great many different places, and that I might go with him if I chose, though he supposed that most of them were places that I should not care to see. But I did. I liked to see them all."

"What places did you go to?" asked Jennie.

"Why, first we went to see the workshops. I did not know before that there were so many. Uncle George says that Paris is one of the greatest manufacturing places in the world; only they make things by hand, in private shops, and not in great manufactories, by machinery. Uncle George says there must be as much as eight or ten square miles of these shops in Paris. They are piled up to six or eight stories high. Some of the streets look like ranges of chalky cliffs facing each other, such as we see at some places on the sea shore."

"What do they make in the shops?" asked Jennie.

"O, all sorts of curious and beautiful things. They have specimens of the things that they make up, put up, like pictures in a frame, in little glass cases, on the wall next the street. We walked along through several streets and looked at these specimens. There were purses, and fringes, and watches, and gold and silver chains, and beautiful portemonnaies, and clocks, and jewelry of all kinds, and ribbons, and opera glasses, and dressing cases, and every thing you can think of."