The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1915-07-11
PARKS AND BOULEVARDS REFLECT STRESS OF WAR TIMES
Heavy Burden the Land Is Bearing
Betrayed in Numbers of Wounded
That Line Benches

black apron with scorn.
LET me try and ! will give you my
hoop and perhaps % SOU
But just as the sauSagciike baby has
been transferred to the little muslin
clad arms an outraged English nurse
who doesn't understand the ways of
democratic France breaks into these
commercial relations and the little
black apron il left another victim of
the moratorium.
The nursemaids and old gentlemen
who have had the Bois de Buuloenc
all to themselves for the past nine
months arr grumblinglv having to
make room for the thrungs of parI-
slams who are once more crowdlng the
walks and o%hstruCting the venues
To those Of us who knew the Hois
of last August the irritat,ons Of the
nursemaids seem reasonable enough.
In those early days of the war
there were neither automobiles nor
elbowing dressed up bourgeois to mar
the green stiffness Of the Bots de
Boulogne. There were only the
sheep pastured at Longcharps and
the beeves at the Tir aux Pigeons.
and occasionally one saw Gabrielle
d'Annunzio with his thirty dogs In
the Alice des Accacias. We ate the
sheep, and the beoves were sent I.
the army, n d'Annunzio and his
levriers went to the countrv whore
| the poet wrote sonnets to France and
to War.
Then one was quiet alone he
meath the locust trees and the chest
nuts and one began to think that
after all the beauty Of the Bots was
not entirely the smart linousines no.
the well dressed women nor the ex-
travagant equipages of the dem.
mondaires. Gross error that, for all
this Is precisely what does make NJ
not the beauty, but the chic Of n.
Bots. and 1t is its chic that enchantS
one eve more than its u%ndeniablr
LONELINESS.
Just as in various f%ashlonabl.
streets at home drays and heaVg
wagons have not the right to pass. So
I think there must be some subtl
law that prevents people who are Too
obviously unhappy from coming g.
the Bots de Boulogne. II is as
there were "A sign posted at the port,
Dauphine that prohibited tho a.
trance of the sad and ugly things o.
life.
Perhaps some soldiers with ugl,
mounts come here as to the othcr
parks of Paris, but I have never see
them. Here are rather the inter
estinely w~ounded-the officer with hi.
arm in n black silk sling and thu
zouave limpinE heavily on a stick
II h unsightly things of life az
there one does not notice them: the
are perhaps absorbed by the clegant
the rich, the beautiful. Everythin.
In the Bots is a little better than else
where, the women are better dressed
the common taXis have more varnisF
on them and the news one hears iron
the front is always more glorious.
In watching the stream Of automu-
biles whirl along the Avenue des Ac-
cacias war seems for a moment far
AWAY and unreal. Then behind one
one hears the voices Of two women f.
black: Mine fell at Arras" am
Mine was killed aux Epargcs; Nor
sieur lie Commandant wrote me a let
ter himself. he said he had never seen
IA finer courage"
Or one catches the scrap Of a cor
versation as an old man with re-
eyes and n decoration at his button
hole tells a friend: al of his com
rades told him 1t was impossible. h
captain said II was pure madness, 6,
bien; he wouldn't listen to any Of
them and the rest is lost I'm
the laughter OF n little girl Juggling a.
the leach of her spaniel.
There are as many black wells IN
tho Rpil c npA Ge4a IN tho AVIAN.