The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1922-11-18

| Promised a small monthly remit
tance from his father, the future war
premier of France established him
self in what is now the Greenwich
Village section of New York and be-
gan to practice medicine. His field
was the large French population then
living around Washington Square,
and while he succeeded indiffetently
well in obtaining patients, his col
lections fell hopelessly below his
| needs.
Wrote For the Temps.
This prompted him to communicate
with the Paris Temps, for which he
subsequently wrote series of bril-
liant letters describing conditions in
American. This correspondence boil
stored up his income to a certain ex-
tent, but the remittances from home
had stopped in the meantime, hence
he still was in the mashes Of pow
erty.
Forced to strike out on a different
tack, he obtained position in Ii
brary, where he remained for two
years, the happient ones of his life,
he said not long ago. Libraries were
not used much in those days, and the
young Frenchman had ample time
to seclude himself among the looks,
reading the best philosophers and
historians while he perfected his
English.
"There my mind acquired what it
lacked, and my intellect completed
its formation" he wrote years after
ward. .
In the evenings the young student
would invariably be founp at Praff's,
famous old German restaurant in
Lower Broadway, where in the early
sixties met the little group Of celeb
rites presided over by Henry Clapp.
The days of Fritz James O'Brien,
Walt Whitman, George Arnold and
Charles Dawson Stanley at Pfaff's
were gone, but there still was an at
mosphere Of romance about the place
that attracted a younger generation
of intellectuals, and to this coterie
Georges Clemenceau was introduced.
A few months before he had writ
ten to the Temps that "Americans
had no general ideas and no good
Coffee" But now all this was chang
ed. The chef at Pfaff's was the most
marvellous cook extant, he wrote, and
the coffee brewed there was sublime.
Ideas, too, he found aplenty. He
grew to love New York, and even ap-
piled for citizenship papers.
Once he was tempted to do a lit
tie travelling in the New World. He
went to the middle west and journey
ed as far south as Richmond, Va,
but did not penetrate farther into
Dixie. The state of the country, he
said, just recovering from defeat in
the Civil War, was SO deplorabie that
it filled him with sadness.
Upon his return from the south he
was introduced to Miss Aiken, who
had just started school for girls
at Stamford, Conn. She offered him
a position as professor Of French
which was too tempting to refuse,
and for more than year he was abb
sorbed in what he found to be de-
lightful occupation.
1t was here that his brilliant schol-
arship was of the greatest benefit,
for in addition to teaching conver-
sation French, he did prodigious
amount of work for the school, CIV
ing lectures on literary history, both
French and English, and translating
several works of John Stuart Mill in
to French.
In connection with his work, he
did some more travelling, going fire.
quently to Washington, where be was
often seen in the legislative halls,
silent observer Of government in the
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