[Illustration: EXTREMES MEET.]

Here the veterans, returned again to childhood, bask in the sun, and,
watching the fort-building, forget their terrible campaigns amidst
snows and burning sands, delighting to turn an end of the jumping rope
or to trot a long-robed heiress on, perhaps, the only knee they have
left.

[Illustration: THE STAFF OF LIFE.]

Parisians are very fond of uniforms, and so begin to employ them in the
dress of citizens as soon as they make their entry into the world, even
before they are registered at the mayor's office; for the caps and
cradles of a boy (or _citoyen_) are decorated with blue ribbons, and
the girl (or _citoyenne_) with pink.

Every boys' or girls' school of any pretension has a distinctive mark
in the dress, and so has each employment or trade,--the butcher's boy,
always bareheaded, with a large basket and white apron; the grocer's
apprentice, with calico over-sleeves and blue apron; and the
pastry-cook's boy, dressed in white with white linen cap, who despises
and ridicules the well-blacked chimney-sweep, keeping the while at a
respectful distance. And we must not forget the beggars, with their
carefully studied costumes of rags, or the little Italians, born in
Paris, but wearing their so-called native costume, which has been cut
and made within the city walls.

The little ones of the outskirts of the city are generally independent
and self-reliant youngsters, and sometimes, before they are quite