We are going to take the Cemetery at Père la Chaise for to-morrow's excursion; and the rest of the day I must devote to letters home, as the packet day is close at hand.
Yours,
weld.
Letter 29.
Paris.
Dear Charley:—
This morning, as we were taking a very comfortable breakfast at the coffee-room of our hotel, and as I was reading Galignani's daily paper, I found a person at the next table addressing me, in nasal twang, "Stranger, is this fellow Galignani a reliable chap?" I assured him that he passed for an authority. Laying down his paper on the table, he pathetically described the tramp which the programme for the sight-seeing of yesterday's paper had given him, and declared his inability to keep up with the instructions for that day. Finding that he was a character, I carried on the conversation; and he talked most edifyingly to all in the room, as he spoke loud enough to be heard at the very end. I inquired if he had been to London. His reply was, "I reckon I have; why, I come on purpose to see the Crystial Palace." "Well, sir," I said, "and how did you like it?" "O, that exhibition is some!" "And pray, sir, what did you think of the Greek Slave?" "There, now, stranger, I takes it that where she were raised cotton was dreadful scarce." This, was too much and too good; and I think it is by far the best thing I have heard about the exhibition. How the boys managed to keep quiet, I know not; but they did as well as could be expected. The room was thoroughly awake, and I resigned our countryman to other hands.
After breakfast, we rode to the Cemetery of Père la Chaise. This spot has for centuries been celebrated for its beauty; and, for a period of more than one hundred years, the Jesuits had a country residence here. They had it early in the sixteenth century, or, perhaps, at the close of the fifteenth. Louis XIV. made his confessor, Père la Chaise, the superior of the society; and in 1705 it was the head-quarters of Jesuitism in France.