Year: 1873

Iwatterson's letter to the Courier-Journal.I


This is Paris. 1t is Paris and early
morning. There are pretty bare-headed
shop-girls fitting hither and yon, and
looking for all the world like the figures
which appear on china vases.


The woman who has the best turned
ankle in England, and you might go
even higher still without impairing the
perspective, assured me only fort
night ago that the French girls are
singularly wanting in statuesque attrac-
tions, and pointed with pride to a clump
of British vestals, each one of whom
she assured me realized Hogarths line
of beauty so perfectly that the tape that
measured Powers Greek Slave or the
Medici Venus would serve them all as
well. 1t may be so. The English girls
are a strapping set, beginning with the
pink-faced lady and going down to the
yellow-haired harlot. But when it
comes down to the matter of counte-
nance their claims upon ones admira-
tion are exceedingly indirect. The girls
of Paris, on the other hand, conceal
whatever deficiencies of figure they may
have inherited by costumes the most
tasteful and naive, looking out at you
in a sweet, bewitching way as if they
meant to have you believe that if Paris
is heaven they are its angels. The En-
lish girls, high or low, remind you of
the bayfield, and the cow-lot. There is
in them and about them an offensive
materialism redolent of the mould above
the rose. The French girls are ethere-
allied. They call up visions of dance
and Provincinal song, of moonlight and
banks of yiolets, and are redolent of the
rose above the mould. An English girl
will smirk before a looking-glass until
the very quicksilver giggles and grows
dim, and come away drab for all her
fnery. A French girl has only to clap
on a fig leaf and bit of ribbon to ap-
pear dressed in the hight of the fashion.


Forgive hesefamiliarities. tits Paris,
and one must needs feel a little sinful
If it be the wickedest city in christen-
dom, which take leave to deny, it is in
every respect the least disgusting in its
wickedness. If it be the most artificial,
it is the most brilliant and delightful.
The most beautiful woman that I ever
saw, and the woman who dressed most
exqrlisitely, was cen little careless of
herself; perhaps she paid so much at
tention to her clothes that she had no
time left for her person at all events,
beneath the array of silks and laces and
linens, she was a dirty baggage. That
is Paris. 1t is clean and gay to look up
on but it now and then smells, and is
the worse for the lack of little more
cold water. A city of fountains, it is
not a city of mops and brooms. Yetone
grows used to its dirt and its Odors,
which, it must be owned, are chiefly hu-
man. Indeed, in spite of their frivolity
and their filth, the French are more hon
est and pleasing than the English, IN
whose very bluntness and brusquerie
there are the elements of duplicity. The
French are too transparent to deceive.
Their swindles are small and comical.
There is something fantasticin their lar
cenies and their lying, which one is dis
posed to discount in favor of the next
bottle Of claret.


This claret tastes nowhere SO we'll as
in Paris. Drink it as you will, it is not
the same fluid you made wry faces at Just
across the channel. But it goes best with
the .fletS and the trufaes, of which,
thanks to the pigs of Perrigord, there
are still abundance.


They say the gaiety of the empire is
gone. They say that Paris is somber in
its republican dress. I confess I don't
see it. The last time was here the en-
pire was in its prime. Money was plen-
tifuI. The court disported itself in a
palace, which is indeed in ruins now.
The column Vendome stood where at
present you see only an inclosure of rude
planks. The Bois de Boulogne had lost
none of its trees. With these excep-
tions, however, Paris seems to me as gilt
tering' and as reckless as ever it was 1t
may be a little easier to cross the street
in front of the Grand hotel But it is
summer, the dull season, and hundreds
of thousands of people are out of town.
As it is, coming here from London, the
place dazzles one with its splendor, and
you are not moved to shed any tears over
the dead empire. That Paris owes it
many of its fineries is true. But Paris
was Paris before Napoleon, aud Paris is
Paris still. In the daytime, in the
nighttime, it is the same; the same
fondness for light and noise, the same
fondness for shade and flowers, the same
fondness for the open air. In the
Champs Elysees, along the boulevards
there is nothing but eating and drink
ing. The empire is gone. &" VIUe la
republique I" Yesterday it was Theirs,
to-day it is Mcmahon, tomorrow it may
be Gambetta. A little while ago, the
waters of the Seine were tinged with
blood. There are only wine-stains now.
The German is away. The debt isnearly
paid. Houp-lai A man must live, and,
in order to live, he must not repine. So
the French are jolly. They have learned
by crying what it is to laugh; and they
are laughing and singing and making
love, as though there was never an in
vasion or a commune. Happy, light
hearted people They viii show the
shah a thing or two not dreamt of in the
pages of Canopus or limited even among
the fables Of Pilpay.


SELF RELIANCE. is a time in
every mans education when he arrives
at the conviction that envy is ignorance;
that imitation is suicide; that he must
take himself for better or worse, as his
portion; that though the wide universe
is full of good, no kernel Of nourishing
corn can come to him but through his
toll bestowed on that plot of ground
which is given to him to till. The
power which resides in him is new in