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 sugar continually as other women munch sweets, and as she disliked cold red wine, she insisted on heating it with quantities of sugar until it was turned into a syrup. When my grocer sent in his monthly account, with sugar at sixpence a pound in enormous excess, I felt it would be a singular advantage for Ireland if a little judicious thrift were practised in Irish homes. The young lady's father went bankrupt shortly afterwards, and I cannot say I was at all surprised. He was an ordinary burgess, who worked hard to maintain a large and extravagant family, and my guest once told me that her sister frequently ran up a bill at the florist's for boutonnières to the sum of thirty shillings a month, which her father had to pay. French thrift, if it does so often touch hands with meanness, at least implies the exercise of a quality we all should admire, even when we cannot practise it, thanks to taste, training, or temperament—hardness to ourselves, the capacity for voluntary self-suffering.

The first thing that strikes you as you enter a French beeswaxed flat in winter is the chill of it. Few but the very rich know the delights of generous fires, of well-carpeted houses, of warm, comfortable, and luxurious interiors. Silver appointments and splendid napery, which you will find nowadays in the commonest Irish homes, are here unknown, and people of the class who in England dress for dinner here wear the clothes