Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1906-01-27

of late years, but there are moments
when all her old brilliancy comes
back, when the air is again full of
the intoxicating effervescence of life
when the we'll remembered convic-
ton comes over one that in Paris
the main object of every mans and
every woman's existence is to make
love, to amuse and to be amused.
Terrible things have happened it is
| true: blood has run like rain through
the streets, and great works have
been created, great books are written
and Art has here her workshop and
her temple, her craftsmen aed her
high-priests. The Parisians have a
right to take themselves seriously.
but we can hot, we graver, grlmmer
men of a rougher race. Do what
they will we can never quite be
lieve that genius can really hew and
toll all day and laugh all night; we
can never get rid of the idea that
there must be some vast delusion
about Paris, some great stage trick.
But there is another side to it. More
than any city in the world, Paris has
a dual nature. Lake Janus, she has
two faces; like Endymion,, half her
life is spent with the gods, half with
the powers of darkness. She has her
sweet May mornings but she has
her hideous nights when the north
wind blows and the streets are of
glass. She has her life of art an9
beauty and taste and delight but she
has her fevers of blood and fury, her
awful reactions of raw brutality, her
hidden sores of strange crime. % all
cities Paris is the most refined, the
most progressive in the highest way,
the most delicately sensitive; Of all
cities, too, when the spasm is on her
she is the most medieval in her vio-
leEce, her lust for blood, her horrible
| "inhumanity 70 man"
There is no doubt that much Of
the gaity and open manifestations of
v.ce IN Paris IS due. not to inherent,
native desire and love for the evil
but rather to the morbidity and Curl
osity of the foreign traveller.
Many visitors expect and look for
certain more Or less SHADY" resorts
and it is true that the owners of
these resorts are looking for the
stranger-no matter who the stranger
may be or what he desires. The
day after our arrival in Paris. We
received 'pneumatique", sort of
special delivery card with a polite
Invitation to Mr.. and Mrs. Hill to
take supper after twelve that night
at a place, epitomized in Baedeker,
mixed company" presume tho
registers of all the hotels are watched
for the names of new arrivals Well.
all these things represent not the
real Paris, but the Paris which pre-
sents itself to the hasty and perhaps
careless traveller. After talking
with those who know the other side
of Partisan life, YOU become con-
vinced that open vice is not Paris,
any more than the Bowery is New
York. So much for moralizing, SO
much for my effort to restrain fir ON
superficial judgment.
What did we see in PARIS? Most
people, / think, visit the Louvre first
of all. You cannot see the Louvre,
you must visit it and revisit it and
live in it's atmosphere and when you
60 away, say that you has seen
some of the treasures Of the Louvre |
Some idea of the extent of the gal
leries and museums is obtained when
you know that just to walk through
without stopping to see pictures and
other works of art, takes two hours.
1t is the greatest art treasury in the
world. | shall not particularize very
much. Of course We saw the Venus
de Milo and the Victory of Samo-
thracs. They stand alone in their re-
spective pieces and they need no
commentary. You wonder if the
theory Of evolution does explain
everything in life after you have
seen these old sculptures and are