396 COFFEE. 



the cafes, where more or less business is transacted over coffee and 

 cigars, or perhaps a glass of absinthe or other liqueur. Dominoes 

 and cards are sometimes brought into play here to M'hile away 

 another couple of hours until " 'Change " time, when everybody 

 doing a wholesale business goes " on 'Change." Here, for about 

 an hour, business is transacted and information acquired, after 

 which some proceed to their offices to finish correspondence, while 

 others go to their homes, the usual dinner hour being about seven 

 o'clock. "While there are hard working exceptions to this rule, 

 the above description fairly represents the life of an average 

 wholesale merchant in France, but the retailers have a much 

 harder time, their shops being kept open on an average as many 

 hours as those of retail dealers in our country, and the men not 

 only work themselves, but their wives and children work also. 

 Indeed female labor in France is quite a feature. Most of the 

 sales in retail shops of every branch of trade are made by women, 

 and, to their credit be it said, they are, as a rule, much more in- 

 dustrious, energetic, and frugal than the men. In short, they are 

 every way more self -helpful than women are in America, and it 

 would be much better for the United States if shopkeepers 

 generally could receive the same efficient aid from their wives 

 and daughters that French shopkeepers do. I was much im- 

 pressed with this thought on reading, a few days since, a let- 

 ter from a grocer in Yirginia, who remarked that his wife, in 

 his absence, took charge of the store, and could sell and put iip a 

 bill of goods and say " thank you, sir," in as acceptable a manner 

 to a customer as any salesman could. 



It is conceded here, in France, that but for the savings of the 

 women belonging to the lower and middle classes the milliards of 

 the Prussian war indemnity would not have been paid so promptly 

 as they were. And this can be readily understood when we esti- 

 mate what the earnings of say 5,000,000 women are for a single 

 year. At two francs a day for 300 days in the year only, each 

 person would earn 600 francs, or $120, making the aggregate 

 earnings of 5,000,000 women equal to $600,000,000 annually. 

 Whether there is a greater or less number of laboring women 

 than this I cannot say, but in a population of 38,000,000 this 

 would seem not an unreasonable proportion; and certain it is 



