This celebration had developed into a pathetic thing. They selected the poor who needed the money and the dinner, which originally was to cost two pounds a plate, but had been reduced to two shillings, even the Cornish not being above a little unpardonable economy. The whole thing was very English, and just like the lichen which comes on a tree when it is old.
One of the greatest jokes Mr. Knill played upon the populace was to go to London and die in a hospital, so that his body was dissected by the medical students. I was telling this to a crowd of Londoners, saying that it was such a joke that he should have painted as his motto on his tomb:
NIL DESPERANDUM.
“Yes,” they said, “but you see his name was spelled with a ‘K.’”
London is a male, a great, gloomy being, sitting up on his island, rough, unshaven, besmeared with cinders and smut, and glowering across at the courtesan Paris as she graciously smiles back at him with every wile. For Paris is a woman.
In London nobody wants to see you. There is a “get out” sign on the side of every wall, and broken glass on the top. Even the weather frowns on you, making you feel that you are not wanted. But in Paris, the very first man you meet, from the cab driver to the waiter in the café, is very glad to see you and gives you the impression that you are his personal guest. On the north side of the Channel, the Atlantic Ocean roars like an infuriated bull, while on the south side it hurls itself against the coast like an angry woman. In fact, all the male characteristics are those of London—dignity, strength, coarseness, and brute force—but in Paris there is never a trace of these. There is only charm.
Paris never shocks you. There is much low life and there is crime, but it is treated in an artistic way. Every so often they have a wholesale raid to get rid of the undesirables. At a stated time, on a summer evening, suddenly will come marching down all the streets which lead to the tenderloin district hundreds of police, walking four abreast and making a dragnet which sweeps everything before it. Everyone who cannot tell his business, any solitary woman, is caught in its meshes and brought up before the authorities. I was sitting in the Café Américain one night, with a drink before me, when a woman in an evening gown rushed frantically up to my table, saying:
“You are my brother.”
Nothing loath, I took the cue, but asked, “What is it you want to do?”
“Oh, don’t you know what is happening?” she said. “It is the cordon.”