The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1898-06-05
Frenchmen and Frenchmen.

The experience Of Mr.. GEORGE G. Cor
HAM, Jr., during a ~sojourn in o little hotel
on the left bank of the Seine was re-
lated by him in an interesting letter to
The SUN a day or W ago. Mr.. GoRHAM
and his wife found themselves In one of
the almost purely French hostelries which
abound In Paris and exhibit conditions
very different from those encountered in the
establishments ordinarily frequented by
American travellers for pleasure or bust
ness, within a radius of eight hundred or q
thousand metres from the Place de rOpera.
It was probably quite as far removed from
the influence of the other sort of c%osmopoli-
tanism which aesthetic sympathies have
engendered in the region that was once
Bohemia. 1t was at the Paris neither of
the tourist nor of the student of art or
science, but the Paris of what many people
regard as the typical Frenchman.
The American and his wife were cour-
teously treated as long as it was supposed
that they were English. When their ma
tionality became known to their neighbors
at the dinner table there was q continual
outpouring upon them of cheap wit and in
solent side remarks. and scarcely yelled in
decency it all being intended to annoy the
GoRHAMs and to express an extreme of
dislike for this country and its citizens.
The chattering beings at the table d'hote
were restrained neither by the politeness
due to strangers nor by the respect due to
w~omanhood. The Frenchwomen chimed
in with the Frenchmen at the Hotel Jacob.
Our fellow citizen and his wife appear
to have dined day after day in the
storm centre of a small yhirlwind of ex-
cited utterances and frantic gesticulations
and cowardly insults. The lady's imper-
feet acquaintance with the language rem
dered her immune; and her husbands tenn
permanent and obviously superior physique
enabled him to maintain the attitude of
digniied amusement so often seen in the
case of a self,possessed American gentle
man when amid the Bandar Log.
While Mr.. GoRHAM must have perceived
very soon that he had been unfortu-
nate in his choice of a hotel, with
Yankee persistency he stuck it out for
seven weeks. The report which he brings
home of French sentiment concerning
America and the Americans, however,
ought not to be accepted as conclusive con-
corning the whole nation. The Bandar Log
are not only on the left bank of the Seine.
but oil the right bank also and everywhere
In Paris and in France; but they do not
constitute the entire population of that
charming city and that noble country.
The type of Frenchman which the GoR.
HAMS encountered Is not the typical
Frenchman; although In minds inclined to
be hostile to his nation, and especially at
times of international unpleasantness, he
invariably comes to the front as such. He
Is then pictured as much more simian
than he really Is; as was the case with the
prevalent English conception of the French.
man during the Napoleonio war. BONA.
PARTE himself was to the Imagination OF
the average Briton nothing better than q
nere monkey.
France Is not IN island. but in one 70.
spect 1t Is the most insular of nations. A
main popularity of the great mass of the
French people. who have no direct pecunl,
airy interest In courtesy to foreigners, ia
entire indifference to the world outside
their W borders, and therefore absolute
neutrality 80 far as concerns the concep
tion or manifestation of friendly senti
ments, or the reverse, toward the people Of
other countries. Americans among the
rest. The same thing is true in a de
gree Of the majority of people in every
nation In the world, but nowhere else IL
1t so marked as in France. American,
are apt to overestimate the interest which
the great mass of Fren0hmen feel il
America and its affairs. This is due partly
to the general attitude of politeness ant
courtesy which is natural and habitua
with the French, excepting always tn,
BandRr Log. A very thin veneer it may be
but 1t is a very desirable one; and it great,
promotes the pleasure of intercourse Will
them. Anything thicker than this venee
is likely to be due to individual disposition
on the part of the Frenchman, or to indl
vidual qualities on the part of the Ameri
can, who is the fortunate subject of NOR,
pronounced friendliness than the Brazilian
let us say. or the Canadian ~excites.
II IL q mistake to set up In mind any on
type of man as the typical Frenchman AM
Ayet gre&Tsr mistake TO establish the mon