I can offer no visual proof to back my word; but by other testimony I venture the assertion that when a boulevardier feels the need of a bath he hangs a musk bag round his neck--and then, as the saying is, the warmer the sweeter. His companion of the gentler sex apparently has the same idea of performing daily ablutions that a tabby cat has. You recall the tabby-cat system, do you not?--two swipes over the brow with the moistened paw, one forward swipe over each ear, a kind of circular rubbing effect across the face--and call it a day! Drowning must be the most frightful death that a Parisian sidewalk favorite can die. It is not so much the death itself--it is the attendant circumstances. Across the river, in the older quarters of Paris, there is excitement when anybody on the block takes a bath--not so much excitement as for a fire, perhaps, but more than for a funeral. On the eve of the fatal day the news spreads through the district that to-morrow poor Jacques is going to take a bath! A further reprieve has been denied him. He cannot put it off for another month, or even for another two weeks. His doom is nigh at hand; there is no hope--none! Kindly old Angeline, the midwife, shakes her head sadly as she goes about her simple duties. On the morrow the condemned man rises early and sees his spiritual adviser. He eats a hearty breakfast, takes an affectionate leave of his family and says he is prepared for the worst. At the appointed hour the tumbrel enters the street, driven by the paid executioner--a descendant of the original Sanson--and bearing the dread instrument of punishment, a large oblong tin tub. The rumble of the heavy wheels over the cobbles seems to wake an agonized chord in every bosom. To-day this dread visitation descends on Jacques; but who can tell--so the neighbors say to themselves--when the same fate may strike some other household now happily unconscious! All along the narrow way sorrow-drooped heads protrude in rows; from every casement dangle whiskers, lank and stringy with sympathy--for in this section every true Frenchman has whiskers, and if by chance he has not his wife has; so that there are whiskers for all. From the window of the doomed wretch's apartments a derrick protrudes--a crossarm with a pulley and a rope attached. It bears a grimly significant resemblance to a gallows tree. Under the direction of the presiding functionary the tub is made fast to the tackle and hoisted upward as pianos and safes are hoisted in American cities. It halts at the open casement. It vanishes within. The whole place resounds with low murmurs of horror and commiseration.