n
balconies along either side of it. The sun sets at one end of the
street at different times during the day and we all lean out on the
balconies to look. On the house, one below mine, on the other side of
our street, is a square sign that says:

ALFRED DE MUSSET

EST MORT DANS CETTE MAISON

A great many beautiful ladies with the fashionable red shade of hair
still call there, as they used to do when the proper color was black
and it was worn in a chignon and the Second Empire had but just begun.
While they wait they stretch out in their carriages and gaze up at the
balconies until they see me, and as I wear a gold and pink silk wrapper
and not much else, they concentrate all their attention on the wrapper
and forget to drop a sigh for the poet. There are two young people on
the sixth floor opposite, who come out on the balcony after dinner and
hold on to each other and he tells her all about the work of the day.
Below there is a woman who sews nothing but black dresses, and who does
that all day and all night by the light of a lamp. And below the
concierge stands all day in a lace cap and black gown and blue, and
looks up the street and down the street like the woman in front of
Hockley's. BUT on the floor opposite mine there is a beautiful lady in
a pink and white wrapper with long black hair and sleepy black eyes.
She does not take any interest in my pink wrapper, but contents herself
with passing cabs and stray dogs and women with loaves of bread and
bottles in their hands who occasionally stray into our street. At six
she appears in another gown and little slippers and a butterfly for a
hat and says "Good-by" to the old concierge and trips off to dinner.
Lots of love to all.

DICK.

PARIS, May 11th, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

I am still somewhat tentative as regards my opinion of the place, what
it will bring me in the way of material I cannot tell. So far, "Paris
Decadent" would be a good title for anything I should write of it. It
is not that I have seen only the worst side of it but that that seems
to be so much the most prominent. They worship the hideous Eiffel
Tower and they are a useless, flippant people who never sleep and yet
do nothing while awake. To-morrow I am going to a pretty inn
surrounded by vines and trees to see a prize fight with all the silly
young French men and their young friends in black and white who ape the
English manners and customs even to "la box." To night at the