FOR HONEST FOLK.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 November 1924, Page 8

FOR HONEST FOLK.

PARIS, THE TRUSTFUL. Is there aiiy other city in the world, I wonder, that would trust me as implicity; Paris'? This _ unquestioning assumption of my honesty., make's an honest man of me willy-hilly every morning when I buy my newspapers (Writes F. G. Hurreli, iri the! Daily Mail). t might buy them at the kiosk on the boulevard, but I prefer to go to the little shop in a side street. Here the papers are arranged on a bench outside the window. Madame is busy inside and leaves the little stall outside to look after itself. I choose my papers and reckon up •my hill. I do hot call Madame. There is ia saucer on the bench containing coppers. Into this I put my money, and should I require change I take it. This is not a dispensation for my special benefit. It is'Madame’s method of dealing with the world. The newspapers and the saucer are a common sight in the Gay City—memorials to a fine faith in human nature. When I have finished my dejeuner it is Jacques, the waiter, and not niyself, who asks “Combien?” This method of doing business came to me with almost bewildering surprise one day when I had potted the items of my bill on a scrap of paper. “How nitfi&Ji?” I asked Jacques. ‘'But monsieur has reckoned it!” be exclaimed. I began to point out the objection to an ex parte statement in such a matter. He shrugged his shoulders. “Combien?” he asked. , I told him and - paid the bill as I had made it. And so it always is. I eat my meal, make out' the hill, and Jacques takes my money, never so much as glancing at my figures. Jacques—and he is but one of hundreds of Parisian waiters who do the same—trusts me‘ implicitly. There is a little woman just outside Plaxis on the Versailles Road who keeps a petrol pump. In the early stage of a . fairly long motor-car jourri£y I had pulled up, at, her little establishment to replenish my tank. I discovered then that I had left my money at home. I explained my predicament to Madame, Her reply was to fill the tank. I pressed her to take my watch as a guarantee of my return. She laughed the proposition to scorn. Monsieur, she said, would doubtless be passing that Way again, and she hoped he would not give himself the pain of making a special journey. Very early in life, ere hardly its chubby, little legs, have learned to walk, the French child accompanies its mother tO some quiet church. Inside all is dim, save in one corner perhaps where a galaxy of candles burn befoVe a shrine. In a rack near the shrine are new candles of many • sizes. There are thin, tiny wafers that cost but a so.U, and there are long, stately candles that cost a franc or; two.. The prices are marked fiver each division. The mother with her child takes a', little candle from l the tack, and a little pink hand drops the money in a box. No one is there to see that the coin is the proper one. There is only mystery and shadow—-and a shrine. Is this the secret fif it all ? I wonder.