able to supply Parisians not only with necessities but with luxuries.
The mute oyster that comes in with the months having the letter "R" in
their names bears eloquent testimony to uninterrupted communications.

I looked in for a few moments this afternoon at the National Library in
the Rue de Richelieu. No signs of war here! A score of inveterate
bookworms were pondering over dusty volumes, inquisitive writers were
exploring literature bearing upon the war of 1870, seeking precedents
and parallels for coming events; a few ladies were looking up files of
old newspapers and fashion plates. The National Library seemed exactly
as in the most peaceful days.

I lunched to-day at the restaurant Beauge, in the Rue Saint-Marc, a
favorite resort of journalists. The manager told me that it would be
closed that evening. It seems that he had received a "third warning" not
to keep open after half-past nine. As he could never pluck up courage to
eject his customers while enjoying succulent repasts, he decided to shut
up his place altogether. The suggestion made by an Irishman, Mr.
Sullivan of Reuter's Agency, to employ a London "chucker-out" did not at
all appeal to his notions of the traditions of Parisian gastronomic
hospitality.

I met to-day another British officer buying books at Brentano's. He gave
me a picturesque description of the German method of advance. "It is the
scientific development of the wild, fanatic, life-regardless, condensed
rush of the Soudan dervishes," he said. "The Germans mass together all
their big field guns. They close in around them serried infantry, goaded
on by their wonderful, machine-made, non-commissioned officers, who
prick them with sword bayonets, and whenever, from wounds or from sheer
exhaustion, men fall out, they are shoved aside, to die by the roadside,