As we stood looking at the Eiffel Tower, poppa said he thought if he were in my place he wouldn't describe it. "It's old news," he said, "and there's nothing the general public dislike so much as that. Every hotel-porter in Chicago knows that it's three hundred metres high, and that you can see through it all the way up. There it is, and I feel as if I'd passed my boyhood in its shadow. That way I must say it's a disappointment. I was expecting it to be more unexpected, if you understand." Momma and I quite agreed. It had the familiarity of a demonstration of Euclid, and to the non-engineering mind was about as interesting. The Senator felt so well acquainted with it that he hesitated about buying a descriptive pamphlet. "They want to sell a stranger too much information in this country," he said. "The meanest American intelligence is equal to stepping into an elevator and stepping out again." But he bought one nevertheless, and was particularly pleased with it, not only because it was the cheapest thing in Paris at five cents, but because, as he said himself, it contained an amount of enthusiasm not usually available at any price. The Senator thought, as we entered the elevator at the first story, that the accommodation compared very well indeed with anything in his experience. He had only one criticism--there was no smoking-room. We had a slight difficulty with momma at the second story--she did not wish to change her elevator. Inside she said she felt perfectly secure, but the tower itself she knew _must_ waggle at that height when once you stepped out. In the end, however, we persuaded her not to go down before she had made the ascent, and she rose to the top with her eyes shut. When we finally got out, however, the sight of numbers of young ladies selling Eiffel Tower mementoes steadied her nerves. She agreed with poppa that business premises would never let on anything but the most stable basis. "It's exactly as Bramley said," remarked the Senator. "You're up so high that the scenery, so far as Paris is concerned, becomes perfectly ridiculous. It might as well be a map." "_Don't_ look over, Alexander," said momma. "It will fill you with a wild desire to throw yourself down. It is said _always_ to have that effect." "'The past ends in this plain at your feet,'" quoted poppa critically from the guide-book, "'the future will there be fulfilled.' I suppose they did feel a bit uppish when they'd got as high as this--but you'd think France was about the only republic at present doing business, wouldn't you?"