There are old Parisians who will tell you pompously that the boulevards,
like the political cafes, have ceased to exist, but this means only that
the boulevards no longer gossip of Louis Napoleon, the Return of the
Bourbons, or of General Boulanger, for these highways are always too
busily stirring with present movements not to be forgetful of their
yesterdays. In the shade of the buildings and awnings, the loungers, the
lookers-on in Paris, the audience of the boulevard, sit at little
tables, sipping coffee from long glasses, drinking absinthe or bright-
coloured sirops, and gazing over the heads of throngs afoot at others
borne along through the sunshine of the street in carriages, in cabs, in
glittering automobiles, or high on the tops of omnibuses.

From all the continents the multitudes come to join in that procession:
Americans, tagged with race-cards and intending hilarious disturbances;
puzzled Americans, worn with guide-book plodding; Chinese princes in
silk; queer Antillean dandies of swarthy origin and fortune; ruddy
English, thinking of nothing; pallid English, with upper teeth bared and
eyes hungrily searching for sign-boards of tea-rooms; over-Europeanised
Japanese, unpleasantly immaculate; burnoosed sheiks from the desert, and
red-fezzed Semitic peddlers; Italian nobles in English tweeds; Soudanese
negroes swaggering in frock coats; slim Spaniards, squat Turks,
travellers, idlers, exiles, fugitives, sportsmen--all the tribes and
kinds of men are tributary here to the Parisian stream which, on a fair
day in spring, already overflows the banks with its own much-mingled
waters. Soberly clad burgesses, bearded, amiable, and in no fatal hurry;
well-kept men of the world swirling by in miraculous limousines; legless
cripples flopping on hands and leather pads; thin-whiskered students in
velveteen; walrus-moustached veterans in broadcloth; keen-faced old