The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1893-05-27
Thibcdaux Sentincl.
ADVENTURES ON AN OMNIBUS.
Strange Things Happen Every Day to Her
Who Looks for Them.

Strange Things Happen Every Day to Her
Who Looks for Them.
A traveller through the world does
not need to visit strange countries.
More wonderful than these touch him
on every side. The roof of an amnibus
may be as fruitful as a journey by land
or sea. Anglo-Saxons, as a race, when
at home wrap themselves like Napoleon
in the mantle of their own individual
ity. But abroad the American species
at least is much more alert. The con-
ductor of a Paris omnibus, if he knows
no other English, can say two words,
and when he sees coming one of the
American students of all the arts,
he asks with explosive effect loop
stairs?" The roof of a Paris
omnibus is a little sociable world.
The American student wanting to
practice the French finds there an oc-
casion. Her French is pretty apt to
betray her nation. And if the brief
journey is finished without something
of incident, character, friendly inter-
course, information to add to the day,
from the wonderful abundance, from
the marvellous fertility of the great
gift which is our for a time, and which
we call life, it is because the eyes have
been resolutely shut that we may not
see.
In one such journey a well-dressed
French-woman performed some gra-
cious act and a conversation followed.
She had married a countryman and
had spent years in Tonquin and in
China. Her conversation was not only
entertaining but marked with that
clear, sane perception of things and
their relations which belongs to the
orderly mental makeup of the practi-
cally minded French bourgeois. When
the gardens of the Luxembourg
were reached and she ran to
get down she said: "We are
two women who have never seer one
another before. We meet, we speak,
we spend some agreeable moments to-
gether. AS two travellers coming from
out the unknown, we only touch in
passing and go u ways, never to meet
again. 1t is sad, and yet how sweet"
Then with a handclasp she was gone.
Again a poor consumptive, hollow
eyed and hollow-cheeked, entered.
There was an American woman present
in whom the man seemed to awaken
some associations. Her eyes moistened.
the tears began to chase one another
down her cheeks. The man perceived
that in some way he had touched her
3pd sat humbly apologize, gazing at
her timidly from time to time. At
length he rose to GO; she was now
weeping. He paused on the step. The
guard moved forward and the man
got down. Then moving to the side
where he could still see the woman's
face, he ran along the side of the
omnibus with his m%ournful eyes fixed
on her, faster and faster. until the
omnibus whirled around a. corner and
left him behind. In this there was
nothing of the French instinct for fir
tation, but the profound stirring of the
deeps of human sympathy between
two persons who met, passed, and
would meet no more. Another time an
American girl betrayed her nation in
her accent on an omnibus roof. and a
bronzed and burly old man at her side
began to hum:
Get out de way, old Dan Tuckaire.
Come too late to get your suppaire.
The girl laughed. The old man. en-
couraged, began to tell how, when a
young man, he was a marine and had
come to our country with the Due d'Au-
m IL than ~