tful people of
whom I have heard so much.' The disappointment has been complete. Never
one have I seen."

I could not but feel how all too true were the remarks of this
intelligent visitor, remembering how quick the society of London is to
welcome a new celebrity or original character, how a place is at once
made for him at every hospitable board, a permanent one to which he is
expected to return; and how no Continental entertainment is considered
complete without some bright particular star to shine in the firmament.

"Lion-hunting," I hear my reader say with a sneer. That may be, but it
makes society worth the candle, which it rarely is over here. I realized
what I had often vaguely felt before, that the Bohemia the English lady
was looking for was not to be found in this country, more's the pity. Not
that the elements are lacking. Far from it, (for even more than in
London should we be able to combine such a society), but perhaps from a
misconception of the true idea of such a society, due probably to Henry
Murger's dreary book _Scenes de la vie de Boheme_ which is chargeable
with the fact that a circle of this kind evokes in the mind of most
Americans visions of a scrubby, poorly-fed and less-washed community, a
world they would hardly dare ask to their tables for fear of some
embarrassing unconventionality of conduct or dress.

Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in Murger or Paul de Kock, at
their worst, the hero is still a gentleman, and even when he borrows a
friend's coat, it is to go to a great house and among people of rank.
Besides, we are becoming too cosmopolitan, and wander too constantly over
this little globe, not to have learned that the Bohemia of 1830 is as
completely a thing of the past as a _grisette_ or a glyphisodon. It
disappeared with Gavarni and the authors who described it. Although we
have kept the word, its meaning has gradually changed until it has come
to mean something difficult to define, a will-o'-the-wisp, which one
tries vainly to grasp. With each decade it has put on a new form and
changed its centre, the one definite fact being that it combines the
better elements of several social layers.

Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, at one of Madeleine
Lemaire's informal evenings in her studio. There you may find the Prince
de Ligne, chatting with Rejane or Coquelin; or Henri d'Orleans, just back
from an expedition into Africa. A little further on, Saint-S