The Brunswick times. [volume] (Brunswick, Ga.) 188?-1900, 1897-06-06
HE WAS VICE CONSUL.
NOW HE is A CLERK IN A LAWYERS
OFFICE.


Big Social Drop and How 1t Came About.
Clyde Shropshire Lately Led the Fashion
of Paris--His Burdens Were Heavy, and
He Gladly Laid Them Down.
Clyde Shropshire, recently vice con-
sui of the United States at Paris, now
sits at a small desk in the anteroom of
his brothers. office III Wall street, New
York, adding columns of figures.
Vice consul of the United States,
lawyer, a writer, 1.-the, extremely witty
and sufficiently brave, Clyde Shropshire
succeeded at Paris, by an uninterrupted
series of prodigies, i'll provoking more
envy than pity and i'll leading a life
of luxury, apparently, at least, not
with the aid of the little money that
he earned, but because he was rel
atively to his limited fortune one of the
most stylish men of Paris. Clothes, fur
niture, social relations, all the things
that were his were inconfestably stylish.
But to attain this result a man needs
inexhaustible genius and patience every
minute.
There was not ridiculoNs coat i'm
posed by fashion which CfyA Shrop-
shire knew not how to wear with ire
proachable grace and the exaggerations
of which he did not adopt with joy. In
accordance with the custom already an
cient, which suppresses professional alb
surdities and replaces them by others,
the lawyers office which Clyde Shrop-
shire kept i'll conjunction with his friend
Donald Harper was incumbered with
carpets, ferocious gods, art objects of
Japan and enough barbarous weapons
to organize war in the far east.
Clyde Shropshire rode in the morning
in the Bots dc Boulogne on superb
horse. Where could he have got it? The
| rest Of the time he was wherever fash
ionable man III Paris must be to obey
prejudices that are adored there as were
the gods with heads of birds i'll ancient
Egypt.
He was especially in the places where
one cannot be. He was admitted to sa-
Ions of the Faubourg st. Germain,
where dukes only are received, and if a
celebrated woman gave at her house
party consecrated exclusively to mystic
rious beings living outside of all the
circles of society, Clyde Shropshire was
there as if he had an exceptional title
to be there.
At the receptions of the French acad-
envy he had better place than any of
the state ministers, the diplomats and
the wives of academicians. If dram
Artist, eager to retain his secret, organ
lied a rehearsal with doors shut so
tightly that even the manager of the
Shropshire was there, comfortably in
stalled i'll an orchestra chair by virtue
Of right the more imprescriptible be-
cause it rested on nothing.
Shropshire had carefully eliminated
from his mind all that was not stylish
in it. Politicians, poets, tinanciers, men
of millions, said eve" to him. All ad-
mitted him into their special free ma
sonry If a sovereign passed through
Paris in the strictest incOgnito and re-
ceived nobody, he received Clyde Shrop-
shire. Why? That is as difficult to learn
as the deepest mystery of history. Sure
ly, to visit the salons, our vice consul
would not have waited for vanishing
day. In the dust, i'll the sweepings, he
walked, receiving full i'll the face the
refuse of the galleries, under the stupe-
fed gaze of the bewildered authorities.
1t was especially with regard to Wo=
man that Clyde Shropshire had domes-
ticated his heart and imposed silence
upon it as upon familiar dog. With
out ever allowing himself a fantastic
ideal Or personal taste, he admired
the women whom fashion ordered him
to admire, with the docility of soldier
obeying his chief.
He gave to them jewels, ancient art
objects and other ruinous things. Hav-
ing neither a taste nor an idea for a
sentiment which was his, frightfully
resigned, Clyde Shropshire dragged a
chain, gilt, but heavy. Suddenly he
was delivered. Consul General S. E.
Morss removed him from office
Then fabulous tales of sums borrowed
by him from great number of persons
gained circulation. His brother, r. F.
Shropshire, paid the debts.
My BROTHER said Clyde Shrop-
shire, i'll speaking of the matter recent
ly, is the only person who has suffered
loss of money for my dissipation. 1t is
all in the past now. The realization of
the horror of it came to me only when I
was punished, but there came with the
punishment "a splendid consolation.
II am no longer forced to be stylish.
shall never be stylish again. And l
roll i'll the happiness of living the life
of commonplace office clerk, like a pig
i'll a pen or an angel i'll the stars -
New York Journal