There Are Few Finer Things Than To Go Into Paris For The First
Time On A Warm, Bright Saturday Night.
At this moment I can think
of but one finer thing - and that is when, wearied of being short-changed
and bilked and double-charged, and held up for tips or tribute
at every step, you are leaving Paris on a Saturday night - or, in
fact, any night.
Those first impressions of the life on the boulevards are going
to stay in my memory a long, long time - the people, paired off at
the tables of the sidewalk cafes, drinking drinks of all colors;
a little shopgirl wearing her new, cheap, fetching hat in such a
way as to center public attention on her head and divert it from
her feet, which were shabby; two small errand boys in white aprons,
standing right in the middle of the whirling, swirling traffic,
in imminent peril of their lives, while one lighted his cigarette
butt from the cigarette butt of his friend; a handful of roistering
soldiers, singing as they swept six abreast along the wide, rutty
sidewalk; the kiosks for advertising, all thickly plastered over
with posters, half of which should have been in an art gallery and
the other half in a garbage barrel; a well-dressed pair, kissing
in the full glare of a street light; an imitation art student, got
up to look like an Apache, and - no doubt - plenty of real Apaches
got up to look like human beings; a silk-hatted gentleman, stopping
with perfect courtesy to help a bloused workman lift a baby-laden
baby carriage over an awkward spot in the curbing, and the workingman
returning thanks with the same perfect courtesy; our own driver,
careening along in a manner suggestive of what certain East Side
friends of mine would call the Chariot Race from Ben Hirsch; and
a stout lady of the middle class sitting under a cafe awning
caressing her pet mole.
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