The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-13

men. He Is unquestionably one of the most picturesque figures In Paris, but his picturesqueness is spoiled in some degree by the evident fact that he is conscious of 1t. He is a poet. but he Is very much more of poseur.
 Bruant began by singing his own songs in the cafe chantant in the Champs Elysees, and celebrating In them the life of Montmartre, and the Place de la Republilue. and of the Bas- tile. He has done for the Parisian bul- ly what Albert Chevallier has done for the coster of Whitechapel, and Edward Harrigan for the east side of New York, but with the important differ ence that the Frenchman claims to be one of the classes of whom he writes, and the audacity with which he robs stray visitors to his cafe would seem to justify his claims. There Is no ques- ton as to the strength in his poems, nor that he gives you the spirit of the places which he describes, and that he sees whatever Is dramatic and charac- teristic in them. But the utter heart lessness with which he writes of the wickedness of his friends the Maquer- eaux rings false, and sounds like an affectation. One of the best specimens of his verse Is the one in which he tells of the Bois do Boulogne at night, when the woods, he says, cloak all manner of evil things, and when, in- stead of the rustling of the leaves, you hear the groans of the homeless toss tr, fhnir claan inAar thu ql<v and calls for help suddenly hushed, and the angry cries of thieves who have fallen out over their spells and fight among themselves; or the hurried footsteps of a belated old gentleman hastening home, and followed silently in the shadow of the trees by men who fall upon and rob him after the fashion in- Others of his poems are like the most realistic paragraphs of L'Assommoir' and Mana put into verse.
 Bruant himself Is a young man, and an extremely handsome one. He wears his yellow hair separated in the middle and combed smoothly back over his ears, and dresses at all times in brown
 
 boots, and a red shirt and broad som brero. He has had the compliment paid him of the most sincere imita- tion, for young man made up to look exactly like him now sings his songs in the cafes, even the characteristically modest ones in which Bruant slaps his chest and exclaims at the end of each verse: "And I? I am Bruant." The real Bruant sings every night in his own cafe, but as his understudy at the Ambassadeur's is frequently mistaken for him, he may be said to have &C., complished the rather difficult task of being in two places at once.
 Bruant's cafe is little shop barred | and black without and guarded by commissionnaire dressed to represent | a policeman. If you desire to enter, this man raps on the door, and Bruant, when he is quite ready. pushes back a little panel, and scrutinizes the visitor through the grated opening. If he ap- proves of you he unbars the door, with much dangling of chains and rasping of locks, and you enter a tiny shop, filled with three long tables, and hung with all that is absurd and fantastic in dec oration from Cheret's bill-posters to unframed oil-paintings, and from beer mugs to plaster death-masks. There is l a different salutation for every one who enters this cafe, in which all those al- l ready in the place join in chorus Harper's.