a, "As one Bohemian to another," you may make up your mind that
that man means an assault upon the other man's pocket-book, and that if
the assault is successful the damages will never be repaired. That man
is not a Bohemian; he is a beat. Your true Bohemian always calls himself
by some euphemistic name. He is always a gentleman at odds with fortune,
who rolled in wealth yesterday and will to-morrow, but who at present is
willing to do any work that he is sure will make him immortal, and that
he thinks may get him the price of a supper. And very often he lends
more largely than he borrows.

Now the crowd which the old gentleman saw in the saloon--and he saw
George Arnold, Fitz-James O'Brien, and perhaps N. P. Shepard--was a
crowd of Bohemians rather by its own christening than by any ordinary
application of the word. They were all young men of ability, recognized
in their profession. Of those who have died, two at least have honor and
literary consideration to-day; of those who lived, some have obtained
celebrity, and all a reasonable measure of success. Muerger's Bohemians
would have called them Philistines. But they have started a tradition
that will survive from generation unto generation; a tradition of
delusion so long as the glamour of poetry, romance, and adventure hang
around the mysteriously attractive personality of a Bohemian. Ever since
then New York has had, and always will have, the posing Bohemian and his
worshippers.

Ten or fifteen years ago the "French Quarter" got its literary
introduction to New York, and the fact was revealed that it was the
resort of real Bohemians--young men who actually lived by their wit and
their wits, and who talked brilliantly over fifty-cent table-d'hote
dinners. This was the signal for the would-be Bohemian to emerge from
his dainty flat or his oak-panelled studio in Washington Square, hasten
down to Bleecker or Houston Street, there to eat chicken badly _braise_,
fried chuck-steak, and soggy spaghetti, and to drink thin blue wine and
chicory-coffee that he might listen to the feast of witticism and flow
of soul that he expected to find at the next table. If he found it at
all, he lost it at once. If he made the acquaintance of the young men at
the next table, he found them to be young men of his own sort--agreeable
young boys just from Columbia and Harvard, who were painting
impressionless pictures for the love of Art for Art's sake, and living
very comfortably on their p