I have heard English people criticise the parsimony of the first French breakfast, because you generally find a couple of lumps of sugar on the side of your saucer instead of a sugar-bowl, and a pat of butter and a single small roll instead of the domestic loaf and a butter-basin. I own I give my preference altogether to the dear, neat little French tray. When I go on visits to friends in France, I find nothing so charming as to be wakened every morning by a beaming Frenchwoman of the people, whose manners are always so perfect, who is a human being, and not, like the well-trained English servant, a machine; who opens the shutters and lets in light with her fresh, soft “Good-morning,” and approaches the bed with a small, dainty tray, exquisitely laid; such coffee or chocolate as you will get nowhere else, and everything so trim and minute—the two lumps of sugar, the tiny pat of butter, the hot roll—what ogre could demand more on returning from the land of dreams? Naturally, the English fashion calls for a more liberal supply, because there you are cleansed, combed, and buckled in the shackles of civilisation downstairs, perhaps after a morning run—and the scent of bacon and eggs is refreshing to the keen nostril. But more than this neat little French tray contains would be too much in a bedroom, and nobody but that Irish girl I referred to, with morbid taste, could clamour for a sugar-bowl to sweeten a single cup of coffee. Then mid-day, when the sun is high in the heavens, gathers the family round the second breakfast-table. Amongst the well-to-do this is a meal to shame the frugal British luncheon. It consists of an _entrée_, a roast dish, vegetables, a cold dish, a sweet, dessert, and cheese. No need to mention the cooking. That is sure everywhere to be excellent, though even among French cooks there are grades. Here you will of a surety not be struck by the pervasion of economy, but that of plenty. You will understand why the comfortably-off French, when they lunch at British tables, lament that they are starved. Indeed, when you have the good luck to partake of French hospitality, you will find it the best in the world. At no tables will you eat so well and so plentifully as at the tables of your French friends, and in no land on earth will you enjoy such delightful conversation as theirs, where they know how to speak and have something to say. In England people are always on their guard, are often afraid to talk their best, lest they shall prove bores or eccentrics. In France the bore is the person who has nothing to say, and the eccentric is thanked for frankly revealing himself as such. Only be intelligent, be individual and interesting, and then you may rattle on to your liking, and provided you tumble with glory, you may choose between the devil and the deep sea with equal unconcern. The people around you, the most susceptible and sympathetic to individual value, will be far too busy