AN ENFORCED TRIP TO PARIS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XVIII, 1 May 1897, Page 546

AN ENFORCED TRIP TO PARIS.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.) Leaving a charming climate like that to be found in Upper Egypt during the month of February for the cold, frost biting one of the French capital is not what we could look forward to with ecstasy. It was my misfortune to be so situated during a severe winter not many years back, due to trying, as foolhardy people will sometimes do, to administer a pill to my beloved foxterrier without gloves, Dan at the time having developed curious ways, which afterwards a council of worthy doctors decided must have been rabies. At first when trying to administer the pill, I had put on a pair of stout gloves, but finding my fingers all thumbs, as the saying goes, and the pill no nearer its destination, I discarded the same, only' to be rewarded by a sharp snap on one of my thumbs. Thinking nothing of the matter, and having at last succeeded in accomplishing my task, I left Dan locked in for the night. By next morning he had left this world, and friends, on hearing of the same, advised me to take his body to Cairo. I procured my oldest portmanteau, and

turned it for the first time in its career into a dog coffin. A week later, due to doctors’ advice and very much against my will, found me on my lonely journey to Paris —lonely, because it is not the season of the year for tourists to wend their way homewards from the gaiety of a Cairo season. Nothing to rouse my falling spirits occurred until I reached the Paris terminus at midnight, with snow thick upon the ground and Jack Frost doing his level best to make everyone keep indoors ; at least, it was so with all of the obliging cab-drivers on that bitter night ; no money would at first tempt them to leave their shelters. In despair an enterprising porter seized a cab, packed my small belongings therein, and pulled a grumbling cabman out of his shelter by the heels, but cabby resented this method of gaining a fare. Jehu was furious and in turn hurled part of my belongings into the snow. It was another twenty minutes before I could calm my irate driver and persuade him to mount the box. When at last we did begin to move, one would have thought he wished to catch an express train on the other side of the city, instead of only driving to a quiet hotel. How we escaped an accident is only known to Providence, for it was at a galloping pace I was carried over the frozen snow and curbstones, perfectly regardless of the few slow moving vehicles to be seen on the road. My miseries were not done with when we reached the hotel. The hall porter could give me a room, but as for troubling himself about a fire at that time of night, or rather morning, was more than he expected anyone could ask for. By means of great persuasion, and the necessary jingle of coin I managed to raise a bundle of sticks. Next day found me at the Pasteur Institute, and being a newcomer, I was quickly treated, but only to find as treatment went on, my turn became later and later. Rich and poor are treated alike, and justly this world’s riches do not give one precedence over his fellow creatures when one and all are there from the dread of being at any time seized by that awful malady hydrophobia. Words cannot relate how pleased I was to get back to the cloudless sky over my Egyptian home, for wood chip fires were for ever wanting fuel, and bodily warmth seemed to me to have been left behind in the land of the Pharaohs.