Wheeling Daily Intelligencer

THE INTELLIGENCER.

Mr. Williams, of the Utica, N. Y. Herald writes a very readable letter to his paper from Paris, from which we take the following:

Surely, these Parisians are a puzzle! Our notions of social enjoyment are associated with a quiet home and genial fireside, surrounded by those we love best. But the Frenchman hardly knows what home is. He apparently never thinks of it except as a place to sleep in, or wherein to take refuge when there is no other place to go to. His social gods are vagrant sprites, who take up their abodes in the streets, in gardens and promenades, in cafes and restaurants, in theatres and concerts. At least three-fourths of the inhabitants of this city substantially live away from home. I do not suppose that one Parisian in three ever eats a meal at home. It is a novel spectacle to watch the proceedings of these people in one of the great restaurants about breakfast or dinner time. I suppose myself sitting in one of the eating houses in the Palais Royal. Two or three large rooms are filled with hungry guests. At that small table sits a whole family - father, mother, and half a dozen children, each with his little bottle of wine before him, eating, chatting and laughing as if it were the chief end of life to be merry. Yonder sits a portly lady with two grown up daughters, deeply absorbed in salad and cold chicken. Further on, at a wee bit of a table, sits a young lady quite alone, who has run in from the shop where she serves, to swallow a hasty mouthful. At the other end of the room sits a pale-faced woman in widow's weeds, with two little children - the only joy of her sad life. Vis-a-vis with her sit a couple of brazen-faced wenches, whose painted cheeks and lascivious looks tell too eloquently the life they lead. Here comes strutting into the room a dandy, redolent of musk and rose water, who for lack of other room is compelled to sit cheek by jowl with a wheezy countryman. Here are wealth and poverty - wisdom and folly - age and youth - virtue and wickedness - all mixed up in one vast hodge podge - abandoning themselves in happy oblivion of the distinctions which divide them out doors, to the great business of eating and drinking. Of course, there are places where the great do chiefly congregate; and where the lowly may dine for a song; but in almost any one of the popular restaurants one may also see almost every social grade and condition, from the lordling to the bootblack.