Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1898 — THE REAL PARIS. [ARTICLE]

THE REAL PARIS.

Afl American Student Penetrate* Behind the Gar Surface of Ite Ufa Not long ago an observant young American student in Paris wrote privately to the “Listener,” other tilings that he did not Paris. The “Listener,” a little surprised at this, asked him why. His response to the question may interest some young people who are thinking of going there. “It is the most wonderful, most beautiful city in the world," he says, “and the most terrible. All other cities I have seen, even Chicago and New York, are mere villages to it as far as noise and life are concerned, and its beauty is so lavish! If I called Berlin a Borne, it was with the thought of Rome under the conquerors, who made an Augustus possible; Paris is the Rome after that; its immortality unconcealed, its glory of the past and Its egotism of the present expressed in its magnificent monuments. * * * Paris is the great city of pleasure, from cellar to dome, and in it is a museum of pleasures as varied as humanity. Everything is there, and nothing ts concealed. The sight one sees eating, as I did, during two months, on the sidewalks of the boulevards; the cripples, the vendors, the filthy old hags, the men selling filthy pictures, songs and literature, and trash of all kinds, the musicians, the low comedians who cut capers before the cases, and a thousand other creatures who do anything for a petit sou, * * »* Ido not speak only of the Quarter Latin, where I lived months, or the Quarter Montmartre, but of Paris in general. I have never seen such abandon as I have seen at the famous Bullier or Boule Miche. It was hard to come from the Louvre, the Victory, Milo, and the thousand marvels there, ahd meet immediately disgusting sights on the boulevard, or promenade of an afternoon in the Champs Elysee, and see even here, in this beautiful park, cases chantants absolutely worthless, and their ugly, unclean posters. Paris to me is absolutely permeated with Imjnorallty, and unhealthy to the core. It is living itself to death. Above all this there Is a delightful circle of people; but even here the line between the ‘convenable’ and th ‘inconvenable’ is not marked as we mark it. The children sing songs and say things that are absolutely forbidden among us.

“The strange thing about Paris is that there is no quarter, or one or two quarters, of filth, like Green street, a few districts off Washington street in Boston, the Bowery, New York; South Clark and State streets, Chicago. The city is too well lighted and eared for, and too tremendously wealthy. * * * and yet in spite of its wealth one sees misery and poverty everywhere, except in the district of Passy and the Arc de Triomphe. It is what Victor Hugo wrote about, what the writers of to-day Still harp upon, and what Zola puts naked before one; perhaps Zola lies and exaggerates, but he knows what he Is lying about. He would not otherwise have the audacity to say all he says. 1 walked one night, about 2 a. m., from the district near the gate St Lazare to the Latin Quarter, a distance of perhaps three miles, along Rue Lafayette and the Boulevards des Itallens, Sebastopol and St. Michael. The cases were almost all closed or closing, and the streets quiet, for Paris, but not deserted—simply falling asleep after having resisted nearly twenty-four hours. It was then I saw poverty and wretchedness. The gay world was gone, leaving on the benches of the boulevards, six or ten in a block, the home-less-men, women, children of all ages from babes in arms to unwashed, illclad old people. They sat sleeping, two to six on a bench, and some few, finding the sidewalks more comfortable, stretched themselves there. I do not believe any of them were drunk. I have seen our American cities and other European cities, Berlin and others, at the same hour, and noticed the wrfetched there, but never such an army as here. It Is not simply because these unfortunates do not live in quarters to themselves as in our cities, but that their ‘egouts’ cover Paris like a network and overflow. It is they that multiply the number of suicides, and keep constantly full the morgue—which is, by the way, a place of popular resort! On Sunday It Is crowded with curious, jesting people, looking at the frozen bodies lying on slabs behind the glass partition.'’—Boston Transcript.