entary on nature and life. Here come the
moths, in endless procession, to bask in the light of the flame. Such
conversation as one may hear would not warrant a commendation of the
scene upon intellectual grounds. It seems plain that schemers
would choose more sequestered quarters to arrange their plans, that
politicians would not gather here in company to discuss anything save
formalities, where the sharp-eared may hear, and it would scarcely be
justified on the score of thirst, for the majority of those who frequent
these more gorgeous places have no craving for liquor. Nevertheless,
the fact that here men gather, here chatter, here love to pass and rub
elbows, must be explained upon some grounds. It must be that a strange
bundle of passions and vague desires give rise to such a curious social
institution or it would not be.

Drouet, for one, was lured as much by his longing for pleasure as by his
desire to shine among his betters. The many friends he met here dropped
in because they craved, without, perhaps, consciously analysing it, the
company, the glow, the atmosphere which they found. One might take it,
after all, as an augur of the better social order, for the things which
they satisfied here, though sensory, were not evil. No evil could come
out of the contemplation of an expensively decorated chamber. The
worst effect of such a thing would be, perhaps, to stir up in the
material-minded an ambition to arrange their lives upon a similarly
splendid basis. In the last analysis, that would scarcely be called the
fault of the decorations, but rather of the innate trend of the mind.
That such a scene might stir the less expensively dressed to emulate the
more expensively dressed could scarcely be laid at the door of anything
save the false ambition of the minds of those so affected. Remove the
element so thoroughly and solely complained of--liquor--and there would
not be one to gainsay the qualities of beauty and enthusiasm which would
remain. The pleased eye with which our modern restaurants of fashion are
looked upon is proof of this assertion.

Yet, here is the fact of the lighted chamber, the dressy, greedy
company, the small, self-interested palaver, the disorganized, aimless,
wandering mental action which it represents--the love of light and show
and finery which, to one outside, under the serene light of the eternal
stars, must seem a strange and shiny thing. Under the stars and sweeping
night winds, what a la