ntly smoked--cigars are rare. Women are seldom seen here,
except upon the stage, where they sit in a semicircle in a somewhat
formal manner, each holding a bouquet in her lap carefully wrapped
round with white paper, each wearing flowers in her elaborately coiffe
hair and in the folds of her silken skirts, and each with arms and
shoulders bare. From time to time these women come forward and
_sing_--songs not always strictly adapted to the family circle,
perhaps. But the favorite vocalist is a comic man, who emerges from
behind the scenes in a grotesquely exaggerated costume--an
ill-fitting, long, green calico tail-coat, with a huge yellow bandana
dangling from a rear pocket; a red cotton umbrella with a brass ring
on one end and a glass hook on the other; light blue shapeless
trousers; a flaming orange--colored vest; a huge standing collar, and
in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic
singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he
is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest
class. Here he is very cordially esteemed. The ladies behind him yawn
in a furtive manner under cover of their bouquets, but the audience is
hilarious over him as he sings about his friend Thomas from the
country, who came up to Paris to see the sights and shocked everybody
by his dreadful manners. He put his muddy boots on the fauteuils, did
mon ami Thomas; he fell in love with a gay woman of the Boulevards
whose skin was all plastered up like an old cathedral; he ate oysters
with a hair-pin at dinner; he offered his toothpick to his vis-a-vis,
and altogether conducted himself in such a manner that one was forced
to say to him (_chorus_), Ah, my friend Thomas! at Paris that's hardly
done. Ah, mon ami Thomas! at Paris that is not done at all. The
audience is in ecstasies of delight at this ill-bred conduct on the
part of the cousin from the provinces--secretly conscious as they are,
even though they be blousards, that they are Parisians, and know how
to behave themselves in a polite manner; and the vocalist, recovering
from his last grimace, gives them another dose. He relates that his
friend Thomas wanted to go to the grand opera; so he took him to the
Funambules: the fool swallowed that--il a gobe ca!--and when the tenor
began to sing Thomas roared out, "Tais-toi donc!" and began to bellow
a comic song, whereupon I dragged him out, protesting (_Chorus_), Ah,
mon ami Thomas! a