"allez!" The Bois de Boulogne is literally and
absolutely a playground, the playground of the people, and this last
Sunday of mine, not fewer than half a million of Parisians were making
it their own.

Half of these encircled the Longchamps racecourse. The other half were
shared by the boats upon the lagoons and the bosky dells under the
summer sky and the cafes and the restaurants with which the Bois
abounds. Our party, having exhausted the humors of the drive, repaired
to Pre Catalan. Aside from the "two old brides" who are always in
evidence on such occasions, there was a veritable "young couple,"
exceedingly pretty to look at, and delightfully in love! That sort of
thing is not so uncommon in Paris as cynics affect to think.

If it be true, as the witty Frenchman observes, that "gambling is the
recreation of gentlemen and the passion of fools," it is equally true
that love is a game where every player wins if he sticks to it and is
loyal to it. Just as credit is the foundation of business is love both
the asset and the trade-mark of happiness. To see it is to believe it,
and--though a little cash in hand is needful to both--where either is
wanting, look out for sheriffs and scandals.

Pre Catalan, once a pasture for cows with a pretty kiosk for the sale
of milk, has latterly had a tea-room big enough to seat a thousand, not
counting the groves which I have seen grow up about it thickly dotted
with booths and tables, where some thousands more may regale themselves.
That Sunday it was never so glowing with animation and color. As it
makes one happy to see others happy it makes one adore his own land to
witness that which makes other lands great.

I have not loved Paris as a Parisian, but as an American; perhaps it
is a stretch of words to say I love Paris at all. I used to love to go
there and to behold the majesty of France. I have always liked to mark
the startling contrasts of light and shade. I have always known what all
the world now knows, that beneath the gayety of the French there burns
a patriotic and consuming fire, a high sense of public honor; a fine
spirit of self-sacrifice along with the sometimes too aggressive spirit
of freedom. In 1873 I saw them two blocks long and three files deep upon
the Rue St. Honore press up to the Bank of France, old women and old men
with their little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take up
the tribute required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German.