Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-06-15
PHRASE.

PHRASE.
When one comes of family Of ballet dam
GERS, one comprehends that life has its in
CAPABILITIES Not of fortune-no but of fate.
Frequenters of the coulisses at the Chatelet
still remember a certain 'Phrasie-a girl Of
10, modest, slim, quiet eyed-who used to
wait with her sisters cloaks at the wings
She did not dance herself; when only baby
she had turned her ankle In practicing her
little steps under her mothers tutelage-oh,
that hard, green eyed Mere Crugeaudl-and
though she had grown up beauty, marvel
of grace and symmetry, the ankle was stiff
what you, mesdames, who dance at the Hotel
Continental, would have called supple The
Crugeaud family called it stiff. See therel
Hundreds, Thousands of francs lost for little
thickening of bone. So 'Phrasie sold flow
ers, and went on sometimes as q page If
she had only had a talent for acting! But
dancing was the sole talent Of the Crugeaud
family.
For girl of no more than sixteen to dis
appeari You conceive, at the time, what
surmises what astonishmentl Not but what
many people could tell you where she was;
ah, TO certainty! They could tell you, but
they did not. Him, hml you don't knowi
Stall 60 over the jena bridge, turn to your
left and-follow your nose, my dear fellowl"
Oraoles, you see, must observe approved me-
thods However, 'Phrasie was soon forgotten
by the chorus girls and pompiers and fire.
quenters of the couliSses-most of them-and
when the Crugeauds said that she had gone
to America they were laughed at All, yes,
America lies across the Seine-and Vile
d'Avray is its capital-perhaps
But one Sunday morning, not long ago,
Madeleine Crugeaud-she is the oldest-she
played Mademoiselle Apollon, In L'Olympe
AUX Femmes, you remember-took her cigar
cite from her straight lips at Vile d'Avray,
and said carelessly, but candidly: 81 tell
you, 'Phrasie never came here; she went to
America; she is in America now-at Phila-
delphia."
"Ah, thatl And why did she go to Amer
lea, thenf'
''Shall 1 tell your said Madeleine, still
careleSsly. ITO avoid the CONSUMPTION, mon
cherI"
Yes, it was to avoid the CONSUMPTION that
a white aproned flower girl, an exile from
her native violets and marguerites, yet find
ing home among the sweet meadow flowers
of foreign land, sat in the doorway of a
huge financial palace in the broad, strag
Cling, rectangular city which Penn, the
Quaker, dedicated to peace and brotherly
love- Money rules in Philadelphia now
money, and a strange fertile renaissance,
which erects colossal and daring temples to
the Quaker Mammon.
The glittering streets are long and straight
and narrow, but the populace expands and
spreads itself out, laughing nasally but
joyously, in the broad wooded parks and the
rich grass fields that surround the city. To
these parks and fields 'Phrasie came in the
early, dreaming spring mornings, mornings
touched with light, inconstant haze, so soon
to slip away before the suns SMILE and gath
cred her violets and lilac sprays, returning
still early with full basket TO the great
thoroughfare, Chestnut street. She break
tasted on the swift train that bore her back
to the city; moment sufflced TO eat her
frugal rolls and fruit. And when she arrived
at her doorway she sat down and sang to her
self, under her breath:
Je ne suis plus La Marjolaine.
1t had been on the impulse of sudden
moment Of temptation and horror that this
Marguerite of the coulisSes had fed to save
herself-hed TO land which she knew only
by name Poverty, i'll fortune, oppression
these one can fight against and still cling 20
ones home; but when ones home itself, ones
mother
All, do not let us speak of thati
And yet an exile suffers Yes, even though
she finds compatriots to lodge with, her own
tongue TO sound in her ears, an honest life;
even though her sisters write TO her, not I'M
kindly, though capriciously and half mock
ingly; though her adopted home is kind
and every one encourages her; though
laughing, harsh voiced young mechan-
les and clerks come and make love to her
-ah, but an honest love, you comprehend, an
open, young Jacques Bonhomme love, without
frenzy or deceit-the sort of love that is 50
rare at the Chatelet, except in the brains of
some of the vaudeville writers, and there it
stays-in spite Of all this, an exile regrets, her /,
heart is heavy, and the violets in her basket /
swim into faint blue cloud as her eyes gaze i
over them far away into a land of poplars
And the young clerks and mechanics, could |
no one of them remove the cloudi
One day there came down Chestnut street /
a new figure; PHRASE had never seen it be- |
fore among all the faneurs and hurrying men |
OF business. A tall mana militaire quoif- |
DTOQZeG, SlntMs, cAb4s A4eAHOSNLAAS, Win u /
long. slow step that carried him quietly past |
other pedestrians. BE had the air Of an eagle, |
and a silaen, black mustache covered bis |
mouth 'Phrasie stopped in her singing.
The militaire halted as he espied her basket. |
He bought a bunch of violets and fixed them
in his coat. Then be paid her with a smile,
and double price and walked on
Phrasie had only started because he looked
SO much ike Frenchman.
Almost every day after that the nilitaire
came with his magnificent stride 10 the eIiled
girls basket and bought flowers from IL
And he always paid double, BE always
bought violets; be picked up bunch from
the basket, smiled, nodded, tore OF the little
green leaf and slipped the flowers into his
outtonhole. Then be walked on. Perhaps
I one Of the clerks or mechanics had been
oassing by be might not have liked TO see that
Can one honestly pay doublel
In the coulisses flowers NAV sell at hun
;redfold prices, but such militaires are one
among hundreds.
When one first sees them. :rernbles;