mune, which laid
upon it a sufficiently blighting hand. In spite of fickle fortune
and its many ups and downs it is, and will ever remain, "Paris, the
Changeless."

I never saw the town so much itself as just before the beginning of the
world war. I took my departure in the early summer of that fateful year
and left all things booming--not a sign or trace that there had ever
been aught but boundless happiness and prosperity. It is hard, the
saying has it, to keep a squirrel on the ground, and surely Paris is
the squirrel among cities. The season just ended had been, everybody
declared, uncommonly successful from the standpoints alike of the hotels
and cafes, the shop folk and their patrons, not to mention the purely
pleasure-seeking throng. People seemed loaded with money and giddy to
spend it.

The headwaiter at Voisin's told me this: "Mr. Barnes, of New York,
ordered a dinner, carte blanche, for twelve.

"'Now,' says he, 'garcon, have everything bang up, and here's
seventy-five francs for a starter.'

"The dinner was bang up. Everybody hilarious. Mr. Barnes immensely
pleased. When he came to pay his bill, which was a corker, he made no
objection.

"'Garcon,' says he, 'if I ask you a question will you tell me the
truth?'

"'_Oui, monsieur; certainement._'

"Well, how much was the largest tip you ever received?"

"Seventy-five francs, monsieur."

"'Very well; here are 100 francs.'

"Then, after a pause for the waiter to digest his joy and express a
proper sense of gratitude and wonder, Mr. Barnes came to time with: 'Do
you remember who was the idiot that paid you the seventy-five francs?'

"'Oh, yes, monsieur. It was you.'"

IV

It has occurred to me that of late years--I mean the years immediately
before 1914--Paris has been rather more bent upon adapting itself to
human and moral as well as scientific progress. There has certainly
been less debauchery visible to the naked eye. I was assured that
the patronage had so fallen away from the Moulin Rouge that they were
planning to turn it into a decent theater. Nor during my sojourn did
anybody in my hearing so much as mention the Dead Rat. I doubt whether
it is still in existence.

The last time I was in Maxim's--quite a dozen years ago now--a young
woman sat next to me whose story could be read in her face. She was a
pretty thing not five and twenty, still blooming, with iron-gray
hair. It had turned in a night, I was told. She had recently come