Evening star., 1902-01-11
Am ERICAN COLONY
At the French Capital Increases
Slowly.
some RESIDENTS NEVER KNOWN
Yet Numerous Clubs Exist to En-
courage Acquaintance.
NUMBER SMALL, BUT CHOICE
Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.

Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.
PARIS, December 81, 1901.
Americans living in Paris have been
astonished to hear that one so usually we'll
informed as Senator Chauncey NJ. Depew
estimates their number at 100000 souls
Official figures do not show such a popu-
lous colony. Indeed the last census barely
does US justice. 1t says that there were at
the time of it's taking 1856 Americans in
Paris, and it was only after we had begun
hunting up the rest of them that we learned
how close to 1900 the deficiency must be.
At the foreigners bureau of the prefect
of police. to which all aliens more than six
months in Paris are supposed to report
their changes of domicie, they will tell
you that there are 3,627 Americans ''resi-
dent in Paris. The difference between
this figure and the 7,1s6 of the census must
be made up Of (a) true residents who have
shirked registration, and Cb) the quasi-per-
manent boarders of pensions and board
| ing hotels caught by the census takers.
| What proportion of the floating American
| population of the hotelS-tourists and busi-
| ness men on flying trips-the census may
! have included Is not known, but the fact
! that the Americans in Paris of the opera
quarter were put down in it at 7I9 would
indicate that a good many Of them had
been found.
ony of late years has been in the way of
American business men-or, rather, their
families. Yet even here the increase has
been astoundingly exaggerated, and moth
ing in proportion to the leaps and bounds
which have characterized the American
colony of London.
| The barrier has been the barrier Of Ian
guage. Few American clerks or employees
| have come to Paris The newcomers are
| regularly the agents or representatives of
| American establishments; and the coming
| Of these has not been in proportion to the
! coming of the establishments themselves.
Thus, before their consolidation, the repre-
| sentatiyes of four great American bicycle
| companies were respectively a Hollander, a
| Frenchman, an Englishman and German.
Nearly all the typewriter manufacturers
| with one notable exception) are represented
| by Europeans. The American chamber of
| commerce of Paris numbers, at the present
moment, IA American members, not all Of
them resident in Paris. Being a highly
representative and enterprising body, it
naturally has attracted the newcomers; and
| the fact that 1t flourishes today when eight
years ago it found difficulty III getting to-
gether membership, may be taken as a
gauge for the new immigration.
What Residence Means.
By Americans living in Paris Is properly
meant those who are stationary: OF these
| it was said as early as 1867 by a Partisan
student of these matters: 1.-THE resident
| diplomatic and consular corps, Of bankers,
| of artists and art students and Of families
| come for the education of their children" :"
| Taken In a large and generous sense, this
| latter element still forms the firm base of
| the colony. Absentee property owners,
| widows, as-good- -as-widows, ladies with lit
| tie children, with half-grown sons and
| daughters. with full-grown daughters 0he
| sons get away, dreaming old maids, stout
| old ladies given to the delights of the
| table, misunderstood ladies, ladies who can
| not get on with their husbands at home,
| who have had social disappointments at
\ home, who find 1t too expensive to live at
| home, they come to Paris for a year and
| remain on half a lifetime. Whether or not
| accompanied by the men of their family
| (and oftenest not), they are those who have
| tasted the lotus of the colony, its freedom
| from social responsibility, it's freedom
/ from thought and effort, the dream-life of
digestion between happily composed meals,
which is it's charm and fetter, and the f1ut-
! tering interest of the Kaleidoscope life of
Paris. literary, artistic, theatrical, political
| phantasmagoria that fiatters the effortless,
| scothes the self-accuser and extends full
pardon to all failure
How it comes that "art student" girls-i.
| e., students of drawing and painting-are
| so universally thin, plain and poor in
physique, while the girls with voices are
SO generally of pleasing plumpness, pretti-
| ness and buoyant health, is one Of the
| mysteries of the colony that never has been
| cleared up. Certain 1t Is, however, that
| just as the girl students of painting are
| content to lead their own lives in the Latin
| quarter. so the music student girls have
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