Officers in light blue, in mauve and maroon--mincing butterflies, who
look as if an hour's march in the sun would send them to the hospital,
ogle them from the sidewalk. Along with them are many young bloods out
of uniform, barbered and powdered like chorus men made up for their
work. You will see few young men in Europe with whom the notion of
general conscription and the horrors of war can be associated with less
regret.

Streams of more frugal nymphs, without victorias but with the same
rakish air, push along with the sidewalk crowd, hats pinned like a wafer
over one ear, coiffures drawn trimly up from powdered necks. Waiters
scurry about; the café tables, crowded in these days with politicians,
amateur diplomats, spies, ammunition agents, Heaven knows what, push out
on the sidewalk. The people on the sidewalk are crowded into the
street, motors honk, hoofs clatter, the air is filled with automobile
smoke, the smoke carries the smell of cigarettes and coffee and women's
perfumes--it is "Bucarest joyeux!"

Some French music-hall singer--when I came through it was Miss Nita-Jo--
will tell you all about it at one of the open-air theatres in the
evening. All about the people you bump into in this sunset promenade--

"Des gens d'la haute, des petits crevés, Des snobs, des sportsmans, des
coquets, Les noctambules, les vieux noceurs, Les grandes cocottes--oui!
tous en choeur..."--all about Capsa's, which, though but a little pastry
shop and tea-room, is as seriously regarded in Bucarest as Delmonico's
or the Blackstone, which is, of course, with dreadful seriousness (to
see one of the gilded youths of Bucarest enter Capsa's at five-thirty,
solemnly devour a large chocolate eclair, and as solemnly stalk out