PARIS PAVEMENT TRADES

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 72, 24 March 1923, Page 26

PARIS PAVEMENT TRADES

i PASSING OF THE PICTURESQUE. To the long list of regretted changes in Paris brought on hy the war another has been added —the disappearance of minor professions which, if unproductive, nevertheless added to the picturesquenes3 of the city. The streets of the French capital no longer echo with the weird call of the empty keg buyer, who before the war could be seen rolling a barrel along the street while in a plaintive aort of cry he invited everybody to sell him empty casks. He has disappeared because the people no longer soil empty casks, as during the war they increased considerably in value. Other quaint figures which no longer are seen include the man who used to squat on the side-walk and mend cracked and .broken china, ami the scissorsgrinder with his creaking bent wheel outfit. The doe; bather and clipper (Tomleur) also is slowly disappearing. Only two now hold forth alon- the banks of the Seine, where twenty operated before the war. Thoir departure probably is due to the fact that madame now favours small lap dogs, which she insists on washing, brushing, and perfuming herself. The latest of the familiar figures to disappear is the French coiffeur. Unlike the ordinary hairdresser, the Paris eoifleur specialised in trimming and even waving men's beards. But the advent of the up-to-date hairdresser who. like the American barber, undertakes to do this, as well as shave and cut the hair of his customers, has killed the specialist.