Looking out upon the sidewalk, all the world is passing by—Guadeloupe negroes with white servants at their heels; artillerymen with dangling sabres; cocottes, Englishmen, zouaves; washerwomen and their daughters carrying skirts suspended from the tops of poles; old men with goggles and young men with canes and great show of cuffs; multitudes of distinguished-looking people, Français à l'outrance; people with beaked noses and olive complexions; clerks and shop-girls, gamins and bonnes; policemen of inferior stature, who though armed with swords, look incapable of dealing with desperate men; laborers in blouses and old ladies in caps.
Sitting once in front of the Café de la Paix at five o'clock in the afternoon, and looking through a line of promenaders such as that, I counted two hundred 'busses, private carriages and hacks, most (or many at least) of whose occupants were presumably bent on pleasure, to sixteen carts and other vehicles devoted exclusively to business—eight of which, by the way, were hand-carts. Oh the gay and happy town! I thought. Where the turn-outs bear such a proportion to the drays, no wonder cafés thrive, exquisite drinks are served, and a corky people, who have a happy faculty, as illustrated by the late war, of coming up the quicker the farther they are pressed down, find the thing enjoyable.
A café-front indeed is better than an omnibus-top for studying Paris, and the café itself is a club for everybody. People go to it to gossip and regale themselves, play games, talk politics, read the newspapers, write letters, transact business it may be, sit, think, dream, and rest themselves. To the Anglo-Saxon the life that is led in it seems a good deal like walking about in a botanical garden during the day and sleeping in an observatory at night—a decidedly artificial existence; but so long as we must drink or be amused at all, we shall do well to study the ways of the French. They alone know how to eat and drink properly and amuse themselves in a rational way.
Gilman C. Fisher.
FOG.
Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
Behind thy pearly veil's
Opaque, mysterious woof?
Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long
Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads,
Nigh me I still can mark
Cool fields of beaded grass.
No more; for on the rim of the globed world
I seem to stand and stare at nothingness.
But songs of unseen birds
And tranquil roll of waves
Bring sweet assurance of continuous life
Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams,
Of tissue subtler still
Than the wreathed fog, arise,