Tenderloin, and its Rialto made so brilliant at night by thousands
of elaborate electric signs, New York still had the subdued air of
a provincial town, compared with the exuberant gaiety, the
multiple attractions, the beauties, natural and artificial, of
cosmopolitan Paris.

The boulevards were crowded, as usual at that hour, and the
crush of both vehicles and pedestrians was so great as to
permit of only a snail-like progress. The clumsy three-horse
omnibuses--Madeleine-Bastille--crowded inside and out with
passengers and with their neatly uniformed drivers and conductors,
so different in appearance and manner from our own slovenly
street-car rowdies, were endeavouring to breast a perfect sea of
_fiacres_ which, like a swarm of mosquitoes, appeared to be trying
to go in every direction at once, their drivers vociferating
torrents of vituperous abuse on every man, woman or beast
unfortunate enough to get in their way. As a dispenser of
unspeakable profanity, the Paris _cocher_ has no equal. He is
unique, no one can approach him. He also enjoys the reputation of
being the worst driver in the world. If there is any possible way
in which he can run down a pedestrian or crash into another
vehicle he will do it, probably for the only reason that it gives
him another opportunity to display his choice stock of picturesque
expletives.

But it was a lively, good-natured crowd and the fashionably gowned
women and the well-dressed men, the fakirs hoarsely crying their
catch-penny devices, the noble boulevards lined as far as the eye
could reach with trees in full foliage, the magnificent Opera
House with its gilded dome glistening in the warm sunshine of a