Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/396

 CHAPTER XII

HE Kinkel family resolved to settle down in England. Kinkel occupied himself for a little while with the study of the most important architecture, picture galleries, and other art collections in Paris, and then left for London. I preferred to stay in Paris for a while, partly because I hoped there to find special facilities for continuing my favorite studies, partly for the reason that Paris was regarded as the great focus of liberal movements on the continent, and I believed it was the most convenient point for one wishing to work as a newspaper correspondent. Thus we parted.

Now I had to begin an orderly method of life and active self-support. My journalistic connections in Germany were quickly resumed, and I found that I could earn 180 francs a month by letter-writing for newspapers. I resolved to limit my regular expenses to 100 francs a month, and thus to lay by a little reserve for emergencies. This presupposed a careful economy, but I soon learned with how little money a person may decently get along in Paris. This school of economy has always remained useful to me. I shared the quarters of my friend, Strodtmann, who had already been in Paris for some time and who occupied a spacious room in a hotel garni in the Faubourg Montmartre. But this common housekeeping did not last long. Strodtmann was not able to preserve order among his things, and as I, too, had my weaknesses in that direction, our room, which served at the same time as a living and sleeping apartment, often presented the picture of most wonderful confusion. It is an old experience, that a person who is not himself very orderly finds the disorderliness of another sometimes quite