mnly the _chahut_ and the
_grand ecart_ and _le port d'armes_ and every evolution in that
unpleasant dance. How it brought it all back to me the other day when I
found in _The Gypsy_--the direct but belated offspring of _The Savoy_--a
poem to _Nini-patte-en-l'air_. And does anybody now know or care who
Nini-patte-en-l'air was? Or who _La Goulue_ and the rest? Would anybody
now go a step to see the _Quadrille_ were any graceless acrobats left to
dance it? These things belonged to the lightest of light fashions that
passed with the Nineties, and the _Moulin Rouge_ itself could burn down
to the ground a few months ago and hardly a voice be heard in lament or
reminiscence. Upon such rapidly shifting sands did the young would-be
revolutionaries of London build their House of Decadence.

The entertainment worth the exchange of the pure May night for a
smoke-laden, stuffy interior was in none of these places. Where we
looked for it--and found it--was in the little _cafe_ or _cabaret_--the
_cabaret artistique_ as it was then known in Paris--with a flair for the
genius the world is so long in discovering, where the young poet read
his verses, the young musician interpreted his music, the young artist
showed his work in any manner the chance was given him to, to say
nothing of the posters he sometimes designed for it and decorated Paris
with: theatre and performance and advertisement impossible in any other
town or any other atmosphere. London is too clumsy. Berlin is too
ponderous, New York has not the right material home-grown, and the
spirit of the original dies in the self-conscious imitation. Even in
Paris a Baedeker star is its death-blow, the private guide's attention
spells immediate ruin, nor can it survive more legitimate honours at
home when they come. Like most good things it has its times and its
seasons, and it was in the Nineties it gave forth its finest blossoms.
We knew it was a pleasure to be snatched this year, for next who could
say where it might be, and we set out to snatch it with the same
diligence we had devoted one spring to eating dinners and another to
playing in the suburbs, though we could make no pretence in a week to
exhaust it.

Night after night we dined, we drank our coffee at the nearest _cafe_,
we scrambled to the top of the big omnibus with the three white horses,
now as dead as the performance it was taking us to, we journeyed across
Paris to see or to hear the work of the young genius on t