[Illustration: NECESSITY KNOWING LAW.]

I need not explain that I have cast my lot with the Colonial Americans
of Paris, and taken their color. It is a sweet and luxurious mode of
life. The cooks send round our dinners quite hot, or we have faultless
servants, recommended from one colonist to another: these capital
creatures sometimes become so thoroughly translated into American
that I have known them shift around from flat to flat in colonized
households of the second and third stories without ever touching
French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At our receptions,
dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving offence.
Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode Island and
farmers from thousand-acre granges in the West, are obliged to mingle
and please each other. Naturally, we can have no more political
opinions than a looking-glass. We entertain just such views as
_Galignani_ gives us every morning, harmonized with paste from a dozen
newspapers. Our grand national effort, I may say, the common
principle that binds us together as a Colony, is to forget that we
are Americans. We accordingly give our whole intellects to the task of
appearing like Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well.
Miss Yuba Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights,
is now afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a
chambermaid in a white cap, though she came up from California quite
alone by the old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress
well. Shall I soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when
a gentleman of the emperor's body-guard took her for Marguerite
Bellanger in the Bois? Our men, not having the culture of costume to
attend to, are perhaps a little in want of a stand-point. Still,
we can play billiards in the Grand Hôtel and buy fans at the