The Parisian may economize in household matters, in the question of another egg for his breakfast, and in the turning of an uneaten entrée into a soup, but in public he is most generous; and he is in nothing so generous as in his reckless use of gas. He raises ten lamp-posts to every one that is put up in London or New York, and he does not plant them only to light some thing or some person, but because they are pleasing to look at in themselves. It is difficult to feel gloomy in a city which is so genuinely illuminated that one can sit in the third-story window of a hotel and read a newspaper by the glare of the gas-lamps in the street below. This is a very wise generosity, for it helps to attract people to Paris, who spend money there, so that in the end the lighting of the city may be said to pay for itself. If we had as good government in New York as there is in Paris, Madison Square would not depend for its brilliancy at night on the illuminated advertising of two business firms. Individuals follow the municipality of Paris in this extravagance, and the Ambassadeurs' is in consequence as brilliant as many rows of gas-jets can make it, and these globes of white light among the green branches of the trees are one of the prettiest effects on the Champs Élysées at night. They do not turn night into day, but they make the darkness itself more attractive by contrast. The performers at the Ambassadeurs' are the best in their line of work, and the audiences are composed of what in London would be called the middle class, mixed with cocottes and boulevardiers. You will also often see American men and women who are well known at home dining there on the balcony, but they do not bring young girls with them. It is interesting to note what pleases French people of the class who gather at these open-air concerts. What is artistic they seem to appreciate much more fully than would an American or an English audience--at least, they are more demonstrative in their applause; but the contradictory feature of their appreciation lies in their delight and boisterous enthusiasm, not only over what is very good, but also over what is most childish horse-play. They enjoy with equal zest the quiet, inimitable character studies of Nicolle and the efforts of two trained dogs to play upon a fiddle, while a hideous, gaunt creature, six foot tall, in a woman's ballet costume, throws them off their chairs in convulsions of delight. They are like children with a mature sense of the artistic, and still with an infantile delight in what is merely noisy and absurd.