[D] Finland still retains its own currency of "marks" and "pennia."
[E] A fact.
[F] The statue of Peter the Great stands at the corner of the Senate-House Square, overlooking the Neva, on a block of Finnish granite twenty feet high.
[G] Since this was written two new lines have been opened.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
THE DEAD OF PARIS.
It is an expensive operation to die in Paris, particularly for a foreigner. If an unhappy American chances to pay the debt of Nature in a furnished apartment or a hotel, the proprietor makes the heirs of the deceased pay roundly for the privilege which their relation has enjoyed. No matter by what manner of death the departed may have made his or her exit, be it chronic or epidemic—anything so impossible to communicate as heart disease or apoplexy, for instance—every article in the room must be paid for at its full value, or rather quadruple that amount. As much as one thousand dollars has sometimes been charged for the plenishing of a room, everything in which, if put up at auction, would not have realized a tenth part of that amount. Through the efforts of our representatives, however, this tax has been fixed at a somewhat less exorbitant amount.
Parisian funerals are conducted by a company—which, like most of such enterprises in France, is a gigantic monopoly—under the direct supervision of the government. The tariff of its charges includes nine grades of funerals, at prices ranging from fifteen hundred dollars down to four dollars. For the first amount the mourners enjoy all the splendors possible to the occasion—a hearse draped with velvet and drawn by four horses, each decked with ostrich-plumes and led by a groom clothed in a mourning livery; velvet draperies sprinkled with silver tears for the porte-cochère wherein the coffin lies in state; and grand funeral lamps lit with spirits to flame around the bier at the church. For the last tariff a pine coffin painted black, a stretcher and two men to bear the body to the fosse commune, are accorded. But between these two extremes lies every variety of funeral that one can imagine, a very respectable affair with two mourning carriages being offered for about sixty dollars. Very few Americans are ever interred in a Paris cemetery, the prejudices of our nation exacting that the remains of the dead should be transferred to their native land. To the foreigner this process appears to be inexplicable, for, as a French gentleman once remarked to me with a shrug of his shoulders, "Only the Americans and English are fond of making corpses travel" (de faire voyager leurs morts). They generally prefer to call in the services of the embalmer, who for a charge of six hundred dollars will do his work wisely if not too well. Still, there are some graves of our fellow-citizens still visible even at Père la Chaise. And at that historic cemetery for years there existed a beautiful spot, a sort of hollow on the hillside, where flowers, trees and grass all flourished luxuriantly, thanks to years of neglect. It was a wild and lovely oasis of Nature in the midst of the stiff, artificial formality of the rest of the cemetery, and became one of the sights of the place. Unfortunately, French formality revolted against the untamed charm of this neglected spot: the proprietor, an American gentleman, was sought out, the lot was repurchased by the city, the trees were uprooted, the hollow filled in, and the beautiful ravine exists no longer.
The Compagnie des Pompes Funèbres is obliged to inter the poor gratuitously; nor is this service light, as the number of free funerals is considerably greater than that of paying ones. The city pays one dollar to the company for each pauper funeral. The mass of material possessed by the company is very great, comprising six hundred vehicles of all kinds, three hundred horses, six thousand biers or stretchers, and a vast number of draperies, cushions, torches, etc. Over five hundred and seventy-five men are employed by this organization. Thanks to these ample arrangements, the terrible spectacle afforded during the cholera outbreaks of 1832 and 1849, when the dead were conveyed to the cemeteries piled in upholsterers' wagons, is not likely to be renewed, as during the exceptional mortality from the same cause in 1854 and 1865 the arrangements were found to suffice for all demands.