sales, lost articles, rewards and municipal decrees.
Shopping in St. Pierre is a profitable pursuit provided one's wallet is filled with American coin or bank-notes. Though articles are priced in francs and centimes, the currency of the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, England and Switzerland is accepted, and change is made in any one or all of these. Strangely, very little French money is in circulation, and a bonus of two per cent, is demanded on French gold wherewith to pay customs fees. An American dollar, silver or paper, is worth 108 sous. Observe then: one enters the Bureau des Postes near the square and tenders an American quarter of a dollar in payment for stamps approximating in French money 1 franc, 25 centimes. Instead of taking a discount on the foreign coin, the uniformed representative of the Government returns with the stamps two copper sous. With these two sous another stamp may be purchased which has a carrying value of two American cents.
Again, one yearns for a certain chocolate bar, made in the States and sold there for five cents. St. Pierre shops offer the confection at five sous each. You buy two for ten sous, and receive in change for a fifty-cent piece, forty-four sous, instead of the forty expected. Four sous is the price of a siphon of soda which if desired will be sent to your door as a bonus on two bars of American candy, whose cost is less here than in the States.
For no apparent reason, French tobacco which
