Summer, setting in with great punch triality, has accentuated one of the chief characteristics of Paris—noise. As one lies panting through the hot night, with windows wide open to catch a breath of sir, one realises, in the contre of the city at any rate, that Paris hardly ever sleeps. Thanks to an oft-abused but wise Licensing Act, London really doos goto bed for a time; but in Paris the Hulles are astir before the cafes clot Only between two and five o'clock in the morning is there anything like lull. Then the dustman set to work to stir you up. They haul the gar-page box violently out into the empty it, i which sound like " quarrel but ar only the French way of carrying on friendly conversation. By this time the cabs, igling bells and whip-crack-have begun again, Iimmenéo milk-carts, full of rattling cans and driven by imperious men in smock frocks, gallop past, raising every echo in the street, At seven o'clock the omnibuses are lumbering over the paving-stones and all hope of peace is gone: Paris is awake and at work. All day long, everything in the street seems to be done with the greatest possible amount of clamour, Carters ply rheic whips with fiendish skill, choosing the narrowest ways for their best effects, so that the snap of the lash will magnified into a report like a pistol of. Motor-cars in hundreds add impatient note to the chorus. Even the cyclist announces himself with hoarse horn. A dog, usually excitable and with vendors, and unintelligible cries from hawkers, and you have a permanent pandemonium to which the nervous temperament accommodates itself with difficulty. Nevertheless, grounds for thankfulness are not wholly absent. There are very few piano-organs, no German bands, no chapel bells, and no Salvation Army processions,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.