There are Tweeds in every country, but these were greater than our great peculator. The Emperor Napoleon and Baron Haussman were just as much greater than Tweed as France is greater than the single city of New York. But then their opportunities were greater. Had Tweed had a chance he might have risen to the front rank. It is perhaps as well for Paris that it had an Emperor, and possibly it would have been better for the United States had she had a King in her earlier days. For a republic will never do toward the beautifying a city or country what an Emperor will. I helped to elect a member of Congress once, who, finding that a single door in the Capitol at Washington cost twenty thousand dollars, exclaimed against the extravagance of the country. "Why," said he, "a good two inch pine plank door, painted white, with three coats of paint, can be had in Upper Sandusky for eight dollars, and it would do just as well as this infernal bronze thing covered all over with figures." Had Paris been governed by a Congress, the honorable gentlemen from Normandy, and Savoy, and other out-lying districts, would never have paid for the wonderfully beautiful boulevards that make Paris the most beautiful city in the world. The old alleys were good enough for their fathers, and why not for the present generation? But the will of a single man did it, and the memory of that man is still worshiped in Paris. Dead though he be, he wields power in Paris to-day, and had not his son been so reckless in Africa, the chances are a hundred to one that he would to-day be occupying his father's throne. New Paris is made up of beautiful wide boulevards, some of them two hundred feet wide, with sidewalks at least thirty feet wide on either side, and lined with shops and cafés, the shops devoted almost entirely to the sale of articles of luxury. The cafés are very peculiar. Paris lives, as much as possible, out of doors, for Paris desires to see and be seen. Therefore, in front of every café, under tasteful awnings, are chairs and little white sheet iron tables; there sits Paris, drinking its drinks and eating its light repasts, from early morning till very late at night. To an American it is a most peculiar sight. No matter where you go, in old Paris or new, it is the same, except in the grade of the people. In old Paris you see blue blouses and calico dresses at these tables, and in new Paris broadcloth and silk, but the tables are there on the sidewalk, and the people sitting by them, the same in one as in the other, and very jolly they are. [Illustration: THE LOUVRE FROM THE RUE DE RIVOLI.] [Sidenote: DRINKING IN PARIS.]