The simplest kind of dress, one for which a Parisian of modest tastes pays 100 francs, would cost an American lady at least 100 dollars. A visiting dress costing, in Paris, 500 francs, in New York, would be 500 dollars. A hat that would be charged 50 francs is worth 50 dollars. The rest to match.
Here is a dressmaker's bill which fell under my eyes in New York. Divide each amount by five, and you have the sum in pounds sterling.
| Robe de chambre | 200 | dollars |
| Cloth dress | 175 | " |
| Opera Cloak | 500 | " |
| Riding habit | 180 | " |
| Bonnet | 30 | " |
| Theatre bonnet | 50 | " |
| Black silk dress | 240 | " |
| Ball dress | 650 | " |
Added up, this makes 2025 dollars, in English money a total of £405. In this bill there is neither mantle, linen, shoes, gloves, lace, nor the thousand little requisites of a woman's toilette, and it is but one out of the three or four bills for the year.
I am convinced that an American woman who pretends to the least elegance must spend, if she be a good manager, from £1000 to £1500 a year. Add to this the fact that she loads herself with diamonds and precious stones. But these, of course, have not to be renewed every three months.
A great number of Americans come to Europe to pass three months of every year. This is not an additional extravagance, it is an economy. They buy their dress for a year, and the money they save by this plan not only pays their travelling expenses, but leaves them a nice little surplus in cash.
A hotel bedroom on the fourth floor, for which you would pay five francs a-day in Paris, in New York is five dollars. A cab which costs you one franc and a half in France, or one shilling and sixpence in England, costs you a dollar and a half in New York.
The dollar has not more value than this in the lesser towns of the United States. The omnibus, for instance, which takes you to the station from your hotel for sixpence in England, or half a franc in France, costs you half a dollar in America.
Copper money exists in America; but if you were to offer a cent to a beggar, he would fling it at you—fortunately there are very few. When the barefooted urchins in the South beg, their formula is: "Spare us a nickel," or "Chuck us a nickel, guv'nor." The nickel is worth five cents, or twopence-halfpenny English money. The only use of the cent that I could discover was to buy the evening paper.