Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1914-02-22

noticed the contrasting attitude OF pros
porous American tourists returning to the
land Of their birth: Good old Liberty.
they yawn; good old Washington" AS
if bright son should say: Father, have
you a ten-doilar bill that IL not work
ing?"
Surely, it does not occur to Americans
to hunt fats or lodgings in the Rue Wash
ington, Paris. Yet knew one American
not tourist. or expatrfate, but torch
bearer, earnestly seeking to make his for
tune-who had a subtle intuition of Its
possibilities in European prestige, and
he had the intuition, itself inseparable
from oelicate patriotic sentiment, we
ought not let the procedure eclipse the
substance, but count it all to him for
Washington. Then he rented a ground
floor in the Rue Washington.
y II
1t was enough. The great name gave
subtle prestige even to a dancing master.
First to be attracted were the humble
actresses and ballerinas, French, Italian,
Spanish, struggling in Paris, and the
great name gave them confidence. and
brought them luck. Then the French
dancing masters came to learn the Bos-
ton. And the influence was working. OF
course, the young American had tact ele-
gance, and the sacred fire, but it Is sig
nificant that after he had taught two
generations Of the very cream of Paris
society, including grand dukes and Span
ish royalty, the millionaire building that
crowned his career received, as his part
ing benediction, the name of Washington
Palace
Since those days the corner of the Rue
Washington and the Avenue of the
Champs Elysees has become famous.
Here were run up the first new-style,
forid, rocco Paris apartment houses de-
manded by the very rich and very mod
ern. Santos-Dumont had the ovations of
Paris from his rounded corner balcony.
Rodman Wanamaker lived beneath on
the noble floor with pots of oleanders
on his balcony. until he bought a house
Marquis de Dion. Miss Della Gurnee, Mrs.
Ingraham and others passed, or still live
in it.
On the other corner James Gordon Ben
Antonio Terry, after marrying Sybil San
derson. And SO the Bradbys, Corbins,
Paynes and Bryces. But it is not a ia
nous street. only the corner. The same
middle-class French have chung to the
same flats since 1879, mutely determined
to live under the protection of a great
name that stands for civic purity, free
from guilty ambition. Were there rioting
In Paris, not a window Of the Rue Wash
ington would be broken!
They have the same reverence for our
Washington's birthday banquets. The
mass of Americans In Paris consider
them q bore. zone is obliged to show
ones self!' I'VE must give an example,
and Mustn't allow the banquets to be
captured by unrepresentative Americana
Such are the expressions. Perhaps We
do not altogether mean them.
But when a Frenchman is invited to a
George Washington banquet he takes a
bath. has his hair cut, oiled, curled and
perfumed, buys a new dress suit, kisses
his wife, weeps over his children and goes
down into Paris with heart full of gen.
erous and solemn thoughts. Lafayette
and Rochambeau, the fall of the Bastille,
the revolution. like Saturn, devouring her
children mingle with coalized kings, re-
publican generals. a bewildered people,
and-Napoleon Bonaparte. l confess, he
gets round to Bonaparte.
But he confesses, Washington was
different. II q Frenchman Is allowed to
speak at one Of these banquets he Is
sure to loosen up innocently with all
the naive truisms which he learned as
a republican schoo]boy
"At the hour when the republic
aeonized in France, and a grand genius
Welded to the gui1tiest Of ambitions
Washington, one Of the noblest, high
est and most luminous figures Of the
world, gently went out, mourned by a