Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1884 — Tips in Paris. [ARTICLE]

Tips in Paris.

In private life every service rendered by one’s inferiors and servants is equally expected to be rewarded, not only throughout the year, but at the beginning of the next besides. The waiter who tends upon one in the restaurant receives upon an average 4 pence a day for serving one with two meals —6 pounds 1 shilling 8 pence per annum; the waiter at the case receives 2 pence —3 pounds 10 pence per annum; the barber expects 2 pence each tipie he cuts your hair —4 skillings; the attendant at the bath ditto. Seeing that a warm bath is out of question in an ordinary French apartment, one goes at least twice a week—l 7 shillings 2 pence per annum. The concierge expects at ieast 10 francs each time the rent is paid, which is four times a year—total, 1 pound 12 shillings. Woe betide the tenant who fails m this latter quasivoluntary contribution. His most intimate friend will be told ha is not at home when he has made a most important appointment; he himself will be left at the street door after dark until he be clammed with cold or weary with waiting. If the question be asked: “How does the concierge know that it 1 is the defaulter in question who is pulling the bell ?” the answer is, the concierge does not know; but according to her lights, if there be one black sheep in the house, she indiscriminately inflicts suffering upon every inmate. The good pay for the bad; that is the maxim, from which there is no appeal. The

landlord sides witu ms understrapper. If he should dismiss her, the are that the house falls from the fryingpan into the fire. An old Anglo-Paris-ian whose concierge was ill was heard to express the hope that she wonld get over it. “You like her very much?" asked his friend. “Not so,” came the answer; “but I prayed for the removal of her predecessor, and we got worse; I prefer patting up with the known evu.” No Parisian will quarrel with his concierge; if he does, his life will be a misery ever afterward. Until 3 o’clock in the afternoon he will live npon a desert island. Not till that hour will his letters and newspapers come to hand. — Cor. London Globe.