New York Dispatch

FRENCH ECONOMY.
THE
CAUSE OF FRENCH RECUPERATION.

The French butcher separates the bones from his steaks, and places them where they will do the most good. The house-wife orders just enough for each person, and no more, even to the coffee. If a chance visitor drops in, somebody quietly retires, and the extra cup is so provided, but nothing extra by carelessness or intention. When the pot has boiled, the handful of charcoal in the little range is extinguished, and waits for another time. No roaring cook-stoves and red-hot covers all day long for no purpose but waste. The egg laid to-day costs a little more than the one laid last week. Values are nicely estimated, and the smallest surplus is carefully saved. A thousand little economies are practised, and it is respectable to practice them. Cooking is an economical as well as a sanitary and gustatory science. A French cook will make a franc go as far as an American housewife will make three, and how much farther than the American Bridget nobody knows; we should probably be greatly astonished, could the computation be made. How much of the financial, recuperative power of France is owing to her soups and her cheap food; better living, after all, than the heavy bread and greasy failures of our culinary ignorance. The French man's or woman's financial conscience will not permit waste, or exceeding the income, no matter how small. The Paris workman saves something every day out of his little wages, despite all the city enticements, and by-and-by is apt to go back to his native village and purchase his little plot, and live on it contented, never poor enough to be insolvent. With French economy, we should not only be richer than France, but our rapidly-accumulating material resources would help to build a national prosperity and renown that France, with her antecedents and encumbrances, can never emulate. The want of our financial future and our national honesty is—not more greenbacks, but—more economy.—Springfield Republican.