Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1885 — Housekeeing in Paris. [ARTICLE]

Housekeeing in Paris.

A correspondent of the Boston Transcript writes thus from Paris: When we had been there a week we naturally expected clean sheets on our beds, but we found it was the custom of the house to change the sheets only once a month! I have since heard that it is the usual custom in France even in nice houses. Descendants of Puritan great-grand-mothers, can you believe it? We submitted. howev<jt We also refrained from reprbaoli when Amelia, smilingly and innocent of harm, after depositing on the table our bowls qf chocolate, proceeded to draw our breakfast rolls from her pocket It was better to conform to the custom of the country & possible, and when we tried very hard, as in this instance, we found we could. There was a line of forbearance, however beyond which I could not go. I imagined Amelia saving to herself. “Yes, yes, wash, seruo, scour, and rinse! Is madams already an angel that she must have everything about her perfectly clean and pure ?” Is it possible that Americans have finer senses than their French sisters ? Madame protested that everything in my room was as clean as it could be; and I found dirt in all the creases of crockery. Amelie brought me the slop pail in a triumph of successful deodorization; it wa3 simply nauseous. The table was excellent in its way, a French way, of course and breakfast and dinner were much alike. A soup, two kinds of hot meat, vegetables, salad, bread and cheese sometimes a pudding or custard, fruit but not in abundance, wine, but no ice water—always always those dreadful little “biscuit," dry as a chip and a resting place for flies all through the early part of the meal. When the hot weather came on we longed for the cool chicken salads, cake, lemonade, and ice-cream lunches of home. I had no idea that the .Frenoh were so fond of sausage, which we associate with the Germans; rather but I think We had them in Borne form almost every day. We endured the tougb, close breath of England in the patient hope of better things when we should reach France. The Parisian bread that was set before us had a crust as thick and almost as hard as an oyster shell, and if I say as dirty, too, I shall not much exaggerate; inside it was full of large holes and had a more or less sour flavor. By inquiring and persistent research we found at the bakers’ shops a kind of smalffcubical loaf, that was, —as one of our party expressed it, —“much less indelicate.” Strange to say, this was called English bread. We have come to the conclusion that French rolls, as well as French roll pan 3 are a Yankee invention.