The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1901-04-15

pride of nationalitsr froIffA the house top.
The ''creameries' in the side streets
are filed with Americans at the hour
of the petit dejeuner' which. opens the
day. In the only good cafe nearby, the
walters, when you give your order, are
apt to murmur an absent minded al
ril' This ncSghbOrhood has its merry
side, but it could tell some sad tales,
too. For if most of our young country
men over here are sufficiently provided
with the means of living, there are, of
course, SOME who fight daily bat
tie with poverty and its attendant pri-
walton and humiliation. Often these
are young men and women who have
recklessly come over the water at
tracted by the glitter Of Paris life. and
hoping to make a living by. teaching
English while they pursue their studies
Generally these ideas prove absolutely
unfounded and the unfortunate dream
ers drag out more or less of a martyr
dom till good sense SENDS them home
again-or till misery, cold and hunger
kill them.
Women seem to have more of the
foolish courage for these risky expert
ments than men. At this moment
there are not few bright American
girls half starving in Paris garrets OF
the quarter, unable TO find any. teach
ing to do and either. too welded to
their studies or too ashamed of fac
ing the questions of" their friends TO
return to their distant homes, con-
fessed failures. Very often these girls
manage by a thousand wOman'S arts to
conceal their poverty from the bulk OF
their associates. They dress with
quiet neatness and pass for having
some small private means. and nobody
ever suspects that they live on half a
pint of milk a day with tiny roll OF
bread and a raw egg To assure them
selves of this miserable insufficiency
of food they have to get d little SEWN
fn In, ar 10 M.
the before breakfast hours. Sometimes
these resources fail. One day a girl
does not appear at the art class or
literary lectures she has been follow
ing; her friends find that she has had
to pawn her things one by one till now
she has nothing left in the world. Then
they make collection perhaps, and
send her home, for the colony is very
generous to its poorer members. Some
times nobody finds out the truth till
it is too late. Some three months ago
an American student girl committed
suicide in her room, unable TO bear any
longer the black misery and hopeless
ness she had been struggling against
for more than a year She had always
shown brave face to the world, and
of all her daily associates not a single
one had any idea that she was ever in
need of a meal Yet il was proved
at the inquest that for months she had
lived on bread and milk. and that for
tuTee QdyS DeLO1e heF QedIn she Hatt
eaten absolutely nothing.
1t must not, of course, be supposed
that most of the women students or
even any notable proportion Of them
live under these hard conditions The
great majority while not rich are at
least comfortably situated. They have
charming little rooms to study and
frolic in In the summer they are e.ble
to take tours with bicycle and sketch
book in Normandy or Brittany, or four
or. five of them club together to hire
cottage somewhere near the wooded
glades of Fontainebleau in the artist
colony that has made the forest IA
nous in water color or oil wherever
pictures are seen. When winter comes
they have the recourse of the theatres
and the opera and the-cOuntless literary
artistic and musical reunions which
make Paris so delightful to people of
cultivated taste. All these pleasures
are within reach of almost every purse
nowhere else in the world can the high
est class of intellectual pastime be had
at so little cost. Hundreds of women
who are now filling important places
in the busy life of America, either as
artists, writer's or hard-headed business
women, look back or their two or
three years of student life in Paris as
the brightest and in some ways most
profitable period OF their. career.