T HE next morning we were up and dressed at ten
o'clock. We went to the commissionaire of
the hotel--I don't know what a commissionaire is,
but that is the man we went to--and told him we
wanted a guide. He said the great International
Exposition had drawn such multitudes of English-
men and Americans to Paris that it would be next
to impossible to find a good guide unemployed. He
said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he
only had three now. He called them. One looked
so like a very pirate that we let him go at once.
The next one spoke with a simpering precision of
pronunciation that was irritating, and said:

"If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande
honneur to me rattain in hees serveece, I shall show
to him everysing zat is magnifique to look upon in
ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pair- faitemaw."

He would have done well to have stopped there,
because he had that much by heart and said it right
off without making a mistake. But his self-com-
placency seduced him into attempting a flight into
regions of unexplored English, and the reckless ex-
periment was his ruin. Within ten seconds he was
so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn

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