The age-herald., 1900-05-21
IDLE HOURS IN PARIS
How to Do" the Gay City-To Hurry
 is Wicked

H. J. P, in London Sketch
 In Paris, to be in hurry about anything is immoral It is foreign to the habits of the French nation, and scrapes the gliding off the frame of Lutetia and leaves the pie ture cold Mo- take Paris gently, and you go away with memories of brightness and light: but any attempt at forced marches by night and day only leaves general im- pression that Grille q Egout danced at the morgue, that half a dozen moist corpses dragged out of the Seine were on view on slabs at the Moulin Rouge, and that the body of Napolean I. was inferred at Max inns in the Rue Rayale. There is no city so easily seen as Paris, and in addition to being seen, to be so thoroughly appreciated as Paris, if the tourist goes about it in the right way. Now, to begin with, and I am giving honest advice-let anyone who con- templates a tour outside the exhibition spend a fortnight of leisure reading hours with Victor Hugo and Eugene Sue, to bet ter grasp the older side of Paris; and of Zola, Dumas the younger or Marcel Pre- vost, to understand Paris in its modern days.
 Last summer took holiday, and de- cided to spend 1t in Paris At that mo- ment l had, with trival exceptions, spent fifteen years of my. life almost entirely in the Gay City," but, on the same prin- ciple that no man who has lived in Lon don has ever seen the interior of Vest minister Abbey so, pour afnsi dire, I had put off till the morrow that which might have seen that day. And what holiday it was, taken leisurely!
 Get to bed early, and be out and abount at 4:3O o'clock in the morning, and down at the Halles Centrales. In no capital in the wide, wide world such sight be seen The electric lights illumine the whole place, and on all sides is heard the rumble
 of cars, bringing in the tons on tons of vegetables to feed the ventre de Paris. The proprietors of restaurants are fight ing like tigers to buy at the lowest possi- ble figure, and all over the place are the poorer folk waiting till such time as the walters in the night cafes bring down the refuse of the rich mans taule which al- lows them in the rHarche de Poichinelle'' to buy that which some be-diamonded beauty has disdainfully touched-a chick -en.~-a peach, half-plucked bunch of grapes, and so forth. And while all around the blazfngly lighted manrroquets disgorge those sinister individuals of the night whose hand is ever on their revolver pock- ct, there come the laughter, music, and song of the wealthy roysterers in evening dress. No one has seen ParIs who has not seen the Quarter des Halles between the lights.
 Supposing that some reader of the Sketch took my advice, and cut the day short in order to trespass on the night, I would ad- wise him to take his early morning break fast on the Hill of Montmartre. There he will see Paris with the rising of the sun under conditions that he will never forget As the "Angelus'' is tolled out and the mists are disspated, there is unraveled be- fore him spectacle that no photograph could ever convey. It is the most superb sight that Paris reserves. and if you go into the old churchyard with its quaint old cemetery that gazed down on Paris when it was Lutetia and before the Norman Conquest" you will better appreciate the noisy and glaring marvels of modern sci- ence on the Champ de Mars
 To come back to the sterner realities of a walk round Paris, I will, so far as I can crowd few facts into small space that could be conveniently cut out and put into a pocketbook. Set aside a whole morning to see the Louvre Galleries and the after noon for the Luxembourg. Take a cab and drive to the Cafe Armenonville in the Bois de Boulogne, and after the asperitif go on to the St. Cloud and dine in the open air at the Pavilion Bleue. Then take a boat down the river and get out at the Exhibi- ton, in time for the illuminated fountains And then-well if you have been out since about o'clock in the morning, it is per- haps time to go home, and l will go on playing guide next week.