Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1886 — The Parisian and the American. [ARTICLE]

The Parisian and the American.

I asked an American lady who had lived long in Paris what her experience had been, and she answered that she liked Paris, but she did not know whether she liked the French or not. “I think that Paris,” she went on, “is the only city in Europe that an American can live in for years without getting to like the people. You can not live ten years in Florence without liking the Italians, or ten years in Dresden or Munich, without liking the Germans. But you can live in Paris nearly all your life without liking the French'—indeed, without knowing them any better than you did when you first came.” In this last clause lies the secret of this opinion, I think. Long as the American may remain in Paris, he remains a stranger; except in very rare instances, like the farmer in Leech’s sketch, he “gets no forrarder.” llie Parisian does not take the American or any other stranger into his home—although he tries very hard and as best he knows how to make the American feel at home in the cases and restaurants and hotels of Paris. And in this, at least, the Parisian is not altogether unsuccessful. —Brander Matthews’ Paris Letter.