boarded dancing floor. This is the Jardin Mabille, Mabille is himself at the door, with his keen, Oriental face, taking the money. It is a summer garden, and the music and dancing are under the stars. Well, Mabille has in his employ several young women, with hard, leering faces, and several young men, with shiny hats, who mingle around in the crowd as though they had paid to come in. When the music commences (generally the music of the harmonious Offenbach) these young men and women rush upon the boarded floor and dance peculiar dances -the "Can-can," Can-can," among others—not much worse than I have seen it on the New York stage. Our Paris-American Congress, assembled in a circle, believes that it sees the ladies of Paris at a common evening entertainment. I could never see the Jardin Mabille except to be disgusted with it, and why our American friends should visit it I cannot imagine, except that Mabille is said to be a very bad place, and they attend expecting that something outrageous will certainly happen. I do not imagine that it occurs to one out of ten of our observing countrymen that Mabille is simply an institution kept by a Frenchman for English and Americans to visit. During the first season the American frequents Mabille. If he prolongs his stay, and becomes a colonist, he takes this garden at its value and never visits it at all.

An instructive exhibition to those of our countrymen who are curious about the manners and customs of the nation will be found over in the Latin Quarter, in the dancing hall near the Luxembourg. There is a low entrance, guarded by gensdarmes. A circular sun of blazing red light points the way. If you are curious and pause a moment, you will see in the light the figure of a soldier in bronze on a pedestal, in the attitude of command, his hand pointing to some imaginary foe. This bronze figure represents the famous Marshal Ney, and on this spot, where you may stand and hear the fiddling and the dancing, Marshal Ney was shot by French soldiers under Louis XVIII. for having commanded French soldiers under Napoleon. This dancing hall on Sunday evening, when the clerks are in abundance, or on Thursday evening, when the students come in numbers, is

not without its attractions to the observing American mind. The romp and noise and clatter, the buzz and hum of loud conversation, song and repartee, smoking and drinking, continue until the music strikes up and the multitude dissolves into a mass of dancing humanity. As to the dancing, I cannot say more than that it is very wild and clumsy, and I have heard my American brethren condemn it in strong terms. There are other dancing halls in outside sections, and one especially on the Rue St. Honoré, much frequented by our countrymen, almost opposite where Robespierre lived.

You can understand, perhaps, how the average American abroad, his observations limited to the Luxembourg and Mabille, will have original notions as to the morals of France. The French are like the Chinese. They do not accept the foreigner. They have made Paris the most beautiful city in the world, because they are artists by nature, and could not have made an ugly city had they tried. Whether you see Paris in detail as you go roaming along the boulevards, or see it by day from the top of the Arch of Triumph, or by night from the heights of Montmartre, you are impressed with its marvelous beauty. This Paris was made by Frenchmen for Frenchmen. But there is no excess of welcome. A Frenchman will never ask how you like his city. Of course you like it, and know and feel and are glad to admit that for beauty and taste and all the resources of civilization there is nothing in the world like Paris. But that American instinct for commendation which leads the Yankee to call every post village a "city" and every alderman a "celebrated" man is not found among the French. There is no welcome in the French character toward the foreigner, none of the going into society which greets the foreigner in America. The American colony is regarded very much by Paris in general as New York would regard a German colony in Hoboken or a colony of Poles near the Bowery. The average Frenchman when he thinks of America is apt to confound the United States with Brazil and Paraguay-to think of it all as one country, inhabited by an extravagant, expensive, and in some respects, a wild people, who, strange to say, are white.

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Nor is this surprising when one considers the character of the representatives of our country who come to Paris. There is, of course, the class accustomed to foreign life; studious men, who seek the Latin Quarter; business men, who keep in trading circles; the American gentleman, with his "European habit " upon him, who knows Paris and avoids his fellow countrymen, and lives down in the narrow streets toward the Palais Royal. But every summer there comes the shoal of sight-seers from England and America. The English traveler is a type in him

self. You see him in the comedies, in the satirical papers; the children play with a toy made like an Englishman. He is described as a man with one eyeglass, a small billycock hat, a plaided coat and striped trousers, a brown hanging beard, an opera glass swung over his shoulder, and the inseparable umbrella. This is the Englishman as French fancy paints him. So he was to our fathers. But the typical American changes with every season.

There was the hegira of "war Americans during the Rebellion, when there were a Southern and a Northern colony, who used to frown on each other as they passed along the

boulevards. The French police had their hands full to prevent these Montagus and Capulets from doing more than bite their thumbs at one another. I remember a comic print of the time, entitled "North and South Americans Discuss Politics." The scene was an omnibus on a boulevard, filled with passengers. Seated on the top at one end was a Northerner with a pistol drawn, firing at a Southerner at the other end, who had a pistol drawn also, the alarmed passengers striving, in every attitude,

to avoid the shots. French feeling was much with the South, upon whose supporters the Emperor was wont to smile his gloomy, inscrutable smile. After the cotton loan was sold and money ran short, our erring countrymen found Paris a hard place, and were reduced to many shifts. But with the war came the shoddy lords. During the closing years of the war this class ran over Paris, and amazed the frugal French mind by extravagance and want of culture. This was the harvest time of the cooks, and the concierges, and waiters, and more especially the dealers in pictures and imitation jewelry. The shoddy lords

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were followed by the petroleum aristocracy-an astonishing class, who generally came in groups, under a competent courier, who spoke all languages and robbed his clients. Then came the Tammany hegira. First we had Mr. Sweeny and some of the chiefs, who came to study Paris, so that they might gain hints for beautifying New York. The example became contagious, and all the Americus boys, wearing diamond pins and gaudy scarfs, drove around in carriages and drank champagne before breakfast, and smoked amazing cigars, and gave the waiters a napoleon for drink-money, and spent their time in riot and folly. As most of these astonishing young men were known as colonels, or generals, or judges, or senators in Albany, and as in their interviews with Frenchmen they took no pains to diminish their importance at home, Frenchmen began to have their own ideas as to the ruling classes of our dear native land. But this happy hegira came to an end. The men with their diamonds are gone. They no

longer boast of their consequence in New York.

To those having artistic or literary tastes, Paris has immense attractions. If you come here a stranger and under auspicious stars, and gain entrance into the art zone or the literary zone, you are blessed among wayfarers, and Paris comes to you as you would never see it were you to tramp the boulevards twenty years. The American colonist, thoroughly seasoned in Paris, with his European habit full upon him,

He does not hold

is in the main a pleasant person. He has acquired the best qualities of the French. He does not hold you at arm's length and give you his views. His home animosities about politics and so on are deadened, and in their stead you see a genuine,