Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 by Various
page 42 of 237 (17%)
page 42 of 237 (17%)
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quietly away from the sight of their acquaintances when their tickets
are other than at least second. Our Bohemian was once presented with a second-class ticket to London. As he scrambled in upon the unwonted luxury of cushioned seats, he saw familiar faces blushing furiously. "The first time we ever travelled second-class in our lives," murmured Materfamilias. "I too," responded the cheeky Bohemian. Another difference between Dean Bohemianism and Continental is characteristic of the whole race whose land this is. Whereas artists in France, Italy, and Germany are of gregarious habit and gather for their summers in rural inns, where they form a community by themselves, the Dean artist sets up his own vine and fig-tree and has a temporary home, if ever so small and mean. The farm-houses and cottages of the Dean are filled with lodgers, all dining at separate tables and living as aloof from each other as the true Briton always lives. There are advantages in this aloofness, but it certainly lacks the _camaraderie_, the jolly good-fellowship, of those picturesque _auberges_ and _osterie_ where twenty or thirty of one calling are gathered together under one roof, meeting daily at table, where artistic criticism is pungent and free, artistic assistance ungrudging, tales of artistic experience and adventure racy, the atmosphere stimulative to the spreading out of every artistic theory possible to the sane and insane mind. In one of these Continental _auberges_ rough boards a foot in width ran in one unbroken line round the four sides of the _salle-à-manger_. These boards were perhaps hazily intended for seats, but their real office was to hold all the artistic rubbish--smashed color-tubes, broken |
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