Still, He Frequently
Attains To That Happy Comsummation.
To begin with, is he not in
Gay Paree?
- As it is familiarly called in Rome Center and all
points West? He is! Has he not kicked over the traces and cut loose
with intent to be oh, so naughty for one naughty night of his life?
Such are the facts. Finally, and herein lies the proof conclusive,
he is spending a good deal of money and is getting very little in
return for it. Well, then, what better evidence is required? Any
time he is paying four or five prices for what he buys and does
not particularly need it - or want it after it is bought - the average
American can delude himself into the belief that he is having a
brilliant evening. This is a racial trait worthy of the scientific
consideration of Professor Hugo Munsterberg and other students of
our national psychology. So far the Munsterberg school has
overlooked it - but the canny Parisians have not. They long ago
studied out every quirk and wriggle of it, and capitalized it to
their own purpose. Liberality! Economy! Frugality! - there they
are, everywhere blazoned forth - Liberality for you, Economy and
Frugality for them. Could anything on earth be fairer than that?
Even so, the rapturous reception accorded to a North American pales
to a dim and flickery puniness alongside the perfect riot and
whirlwind of enthusiasm which marks the entry into an all-night
place of a South American. Time was when, to the French understanding,
exuberant prodigality and the United States were terms synonymous;
that time has passed. Of recent years our young kinsmen from the
sister republics nearer the Equator and the Horn have invaded Paris
in numbers, bringing their impulsive temperaments and their bankrolls
with them. Thanks to these young cattle kings, these callow silver
princes from Argentina and Brazil, from Peru and from Ecuador, a
new and more gorgeous standard for money wasting has been established.
You had thought, perchance, there was no rite and ceremonial quite
so impressive as a head waiter in a Fifth Avenue restaurant squeezing
the blood out of a semi-raw canvasback in a silver duck press for
a free spender from Butte or Pittsburgh. I, too, had thought that;
but wait, just wait, until you have seen a maitre d'hotel on the
Avenue de l'Opera, with the smile of the canary-fed cat on his
face, standing just behind a hide-and-tallow baron or a guano duke
from somewhere in Far Spiggottyland, watching this person as he
wades into the fresh fruit - checking off on his fingers each blushing
South African peach at two francs the bite, and each purple cluster
of hothouse grapes at one franc the grape. That spectacle, believe
me, is worth the money every time.
There is just one being whom the dwellers of the all-night quarter
love and revere more deeply than they love a downy, squabbling
scion of some rich South American family, and that is a large,
broad negro pugilist with a mouthful of gold teeth and a shirtfront
full of yellow diamonds.
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