children
romping merrily but not noisily, more queer-looking students in
shabby frock coats, tight at the waist, trousers too short, and
comical hats, stylishly dressed women displaying the latest
fashions, brilliantly uniformed army officers strutting proudly,
dangling their swords--an attractive and interesting crowd, so
different, thought the two Americans, from the cheap, evil-smelling,
ill-mannered mob of aliens that invades their own Central Park the
days when there is music, making it a nuisance instead of a pleasure.
Here everyone belonged apparently to the better class; the women
and children were richly and fashionably dressed, the officers
looked smart in their multi-coloured uniforms, and, no matter how
one might laugh at the students, there was an atmosphere of
good-breeding and refinement everywhere which Shirley was not
accustomed to see in public places at home. A sprinkling of
workmen and people of the poorer class were to be seen here and
there, but they were in the decided minority. Shirley, herself a
daughter of the Revolution, was a staunch supporter of the
immortal principles of Democracy and of the equality of man before
the law. But all other talk of equality was the greatest sophistry
and charlatanism. There could be no real equality so long as some
people were cultured and refined and others were uneducated and
vulgar. Shirley believed in an aristocracy of brains and soap. She
insisted that no clean person, no matter how good a democrat,
should be expected to sit close in public places to persons who
were not on speaking terms with the bath-tub. In America this
foolish theory of a democracy, which insists on throwing all
classes, the clean and the unclean, promiscuously together, was
positively revolting, making travelling in the public vehicles
almost impossible, and it was not much better in the public parks.
In France--also a Republic--where they likewise paraded conspicuously
the clap-trap "Egalite, Fraternite," they managed these things far
better. The French lower classes knew their place. They did not
ape the dress, nor frequent the resorts of those above them in the
social scale. The distinction between the classes was plainly and
properly marked, yet this was not antagonistic to the ideal of
true democracy; it had not prevented the son of a peasant from
becoming President of the French Republic. Each district in Paris
had its own amusement, its own theatres, its own parks. It was not