I was in a compartment with a little French boy of twelve, the precise age at which American children, as a rule, deserve killing for their rudeness and general disagreeableness. He was dressed faultlessly, but his clothes were not the chief charm. I sat between him and the open window, and he was eating pears. Now an American boy of that age would either have dropped the cores upon the floor, or tossed them out of the window without a word to anybody. But this small gentleman every time, with a "permit me, Monsieur," said in the most pleasant way, rose and came to the window and dropped them out, and then, "Merci, Monsieur," as he quietly took his seat. It was a delight. I am sorry to say that such small boys do not travel on American railroad trains to any alarming extent. Would they were more frequent. And when in his seat, if an elderly person or any one else came in, he was the very first to rise and offer his place if it were in the slightest degree more comfortable than the one vacant, and the good nature in which he insisted upon the new comer taking it was something "altogether too sweet for anything," as the faro bankeress would say. And this boy was no exception. He was not a show boy, out posing before the great American republic, or such of it as happened to be in France at the time, but he was a sample, a perfect type of the regulation French child. I have seen just as much politeness in the ragged waifs in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the child never saw the blue sky more than the little patches that could be seen over the tops of seven-storied houses, as I ever did in the Champs Elysées. One Sunday at St. Cloud, where the ragged children of poverty are taken by their mothers for air and light, it was a delight to fill the pockets with sweets to give them. They had no money to buy, and the little human rats looked longingly at the riches of the candy stands, and a sou's worth made the difference between perfect happiness and half-pleasure. You gave them the sou's worth, and what a glad smile came to the lips, and accompanied with it was the delicious half bow and half courtesy, and invariable "Merci, Monsieur." One little tot, who could not speak, filled her tiny mouth with the unheard of delicacies she had received, and, too young to say "_Merci_," put up her lips to be kissed. [Sidenote: THE DISGUST OF TIBBITTS.] Tibbitts gave some confectionery to her elder sister, a young girl of eighteen, but she merely said "Merci, Monsieur," and that was all. She took the candy, but declined to kiss him, much to Tibbitts' disgust. [Illustration: "MERCI, MONSIEUR."]