upposed any man could. I have seen some very pretty things, and shall
perhaps talk them over this winter, by your fireside. You see, my face
is not altogether set against Paris. I have had all kinds of plans and
visions, but your letter has blown most of them away. 'L'appetit vient
en mangeant,' says the French proverb, and I find that the more I see
of the world the more I want to see. Now that I am in the shafts, why
shouldn't I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of the
far East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue:
Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca. I spent a week last month in the
company of a returned missionary, who told me I ought to be ashamed to
be loafing about Europe when there are such big things to be seen out
there. I do want to explore, but I think I would rather explore over in
the Rue de l'Universite. Do you ever hear from that pretty lady? If you
can get her to promise she will be at home the next time I call, I will
go back to Paris straight. I am more than ever in the state of mind I
told you about that evening; I want a first-class wife. I have kept an
eye on all the pretty girls I have come across this summer, but none of
them came up to my notion, or anywhere near it. I should have enjoyed
all this a thousand times more if I had had the lady just mentioned
by my side. The nearest approach to her was a Unitarian minister from
Boston, who very soon demanded a separation, for incompatibility of
temper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of 'art for
art'--whatever that is: all of which greatly afflicted me, for he
was really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I met an
Englishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemed
to promise well--a very bright man, who writes in the London papers
and knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram. We knocked about for a week
together, but he very soon gave me up in disgust. I was too virtuous by
half; I was too stern a moralist. He told me, in a friendly way, that I
was cursed with a conscience; that I judged things like a Methodist and
talked about them like an old lady. This was rather bewildering. Which
of my two critics was I to believe? I didn't worry about it and very
soon made up my mind they were both idiots. But there is one thing in
which no one will ever have the impudence to pretend I am wrong, that
is, in being your faithful friend,

"C. N."

CHAPTER VI

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