We are still afflicted by the shortage of small change, the authorities not having yet overcome the difficulties of procuring the right kinds of paper and ink with which to manufacture the promised one-frane and 50-centime notes. Stamps, the principal substitute, have gone out of favour in the open markets, where the stall-holders now reject them utterly. They complain that unscrupulous persons are putting used stamps into the transparent paper packets that have had to do duty for coins. and that this trick, when detected. is the cause of serious friction and loss of temper. They fall back, therefore, upon card coupons, in. terchangeable among the stalls and shops of a street. but not outside its limit, a complication sxaich the oaks resent.
Now that the milkman demands 25 centimes to deliver a quart of milk and the baker 19 centimes to deliver a loaf, every article of food has to be fetched and paid for daily, and more small money than ever is required in consequence of this additional worry. With all these complications, higher omnibus and tube fares, steadily rising prices and an impending gigantic increase in taxation, the lot of the housekeeper in Paris is far from happy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.