The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-10-19
PARIS AT DAYeREAx.
A Travellers Peculiar Sensations While
Taking an Early Walk.

| r<hIS ~ or< oft@N'~-
A Travellers Peculiar Sensations While
Taking an Early Walk.
You cannot say you have seen the
streets of Paris until you have walked
them at sunrise: every one has seen
them at night. but he must watch
them change from night to day before
he can claim to have seen them at their
best. l walked under the arches of the
Rue de Rivoli one morning when 1t
was so dark that they looked like the
cloisters of some great monastery. and
it was impossible to believe that the
empty length of the Rue Cambon had
but an hour before been blocked by
the blazing front of the Olympia, and
before that with rows of carriages
in front of the two Columbins. There
were few belated cabs hugging the
sidewalk, with their drivers asleep on
the boxes, and couple of gendarmes
slouching together across the Place de
la Concorde made the only sound OF
life in the whole city. The Seine lay
as motionless as water in a bath-tub,
and the towers of Notre Dame rising
out of the mist at one end, and the
round bulk of the Trocadero bounding
1T at the other, seemed to limit the
river to what one could see of its silent
surface from the bridge of the deputies
The Eiffel tower, the great skeleton of
the departed exposition. disappeared
and reformed itself again as drifting
clouds of mist swept through it and
cut its great ugly length into fragments
hung in mid-air. AS the light grew in
strength the facades of the government
buildings grew in outline, as though
one were focusing them through an
opera glass. and the pillars of the Ma
deleine took form and substance; then
the whole great square showed itself,
empty and deserted. The darkness
had hidden nothing more terrible than
the clean asphalt and the motionless
statues of the cities of France.
a solitary fiacre passed me slowly
with no one on the box. but with the
coachman sitting back in his cab. He
was returning to the ables, evidently,
and had on his way given seat to a
girl from the street, whom he was now
entertaining with genial courtesy.
He had one leg thrown over the other,
and one arm passed back along the top
of the seat. and with the other he
waved to the great buildings as
they sprang up into life as the day
grew. The girl beside him was smiling
sun showed how tired and pale she
was. and Knocked at the paint around
her sleepy eyes. The horse stumbled
at every sixth step. and then woke
again, while the whip rocked and rolled
Enthusiastically in its socket like
drunken man. From up the avenue of
the Champs Elysees came the first of
the heavy market-wagons, with the
driver asleep on the bench. and his Ian
tern burning duly in the early light.
Back of him lay the deserted stretch of
the avenue. strange and unfamiliar in
its emptiness-save for the great arch
that rose against the dawn, and seemed,
from its elevation on the very top of
the horizon to serve as a gateway into
the skies beyond. The air in the
Champs Elysees was heavy with per-
fume of flowers and OF green plants,
and the leaves dripped damp and cool
with the dew. Hundreds OF birds sang
and chattered as though they knew the
solitude was theirs but for only one
more brief hour, and that they then
must give way to the little children,
and later to crowds of idle men and
women. 1t seemed impossible that but
a few hours before DUclerc had filed
these silent cool woods with her voice
-Duclerc, with her shoulder-straps
to her elbows. and her white
powdered arms tossing in the eOlored
lights of the serpentine dance. The
long gaudy Autographs on the bill
boards and the arches of colored lamps
stood out of the silence and fresh
beauty of the hour like the relics of
some feast which should have been
cleared away before the dawn. and the
theatres themselves looked like
temples to a heather idol in some pri-
meval wood. And as passed out from
under the cool trees to the silent ave-
nues | felt as though L had caught Paris
mapping. and when she was off her
guard, and good and fresh and sweet,
and had discovered a hidden trait in
her many-sided character, a moment
IF which she would be ashamed
an hour or two later, as cynics are
OF their secret acts of char
tv.-Richard Hardin Davis, in Harper's