For even as a Parisian loves his Paris,
and as a New Yorker loves his London, so do I love my Chicago.
III
PARIS
It was a fortunate thing, after all, that I went to London first, and
had my first great astonishment there. It broke Paris to me gently.
For a month I have been in this city of limited republicanism; this
extraordinary example of outward beauty and inward uncleanness; this
bewildering cosmopolis of cheap luxuries and expensive necessities;
this curious city of contradictions, where you might eat your
breakfast from the streets--they are so clean--but where you must
close your eyes to the spectacles of the curbstones; this beautiful,
whited sepulchre, where exists the unwritten law, "Commit any offence
you will, provided you submerge it in poetry and flowers"; this
exponent of outward observances, where a gentleman will deliberately
push you into the street if he wishes to pass you in a crowd, but
where his action is condoned by his inexpressible manner of raising
his hat to you, and the heartfelt sincerity of his apology; where one
man will run a mile to restore a lost franc, but if you ask him to
change a gold piece he will steal five; where your eyes are ravished
with the beauty, and the greenness, and the smoothness and apparent
ease of living of all its inhabitants; where your mind is filled with
the pictures, the music, the art, the general atmosphere of culture
and wit; where the cooking is so good but so elusive, and where the
shops are so bewitching that you have spent your last dollar without
thinking, and you are obliged to cable for a new letter of credit from
home before you know it--this is Paris.
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