The logic of these arguments, set forth in Le Soir in an article
on the New World, appealed strongly to Jefferson Ryder as he sat
in front of the Cafe de la Paix, sipping a sugared Vermouth. It
was five o'clock, the magic hour of the aperitif, when the glutton
taxes his wits to deceive his stomach and work up an appetite for
renewed gorging. The little tables were all occupied with the
usual before-dinner crowd. There were a good many foreigners,
mostly English and Americans and a few Frenchmen, obviously from
the provinces, with only a sprinkling of real Parisians.

Jefferson's acquaintance with the French language was none too
profound, and he had to guess at half the words in the article,
but he understood enough to follow the writer's arguments. Yes, it
was quite true, he thought, the American idea of life was all
wrong. What was the sense of slaving all one's life, piling up a
mass of money one cannot possibly spend, when there is only one
life to live? How much saner the man who is content with enough
and enjoys life while he is able to. These Frenchmen, and indeed
all the Continental nations, had solved the problem. The gaiety of
their cities, and this exuberant joy of life they communicated to all
about them, were sufficient proofs of it.

Fascinated by the gay scene around him Jefferson laid the
newspaper aside. To the young American, fresh from prosaic money-
mad New York, the City of Pleasure presented indeed a novel and
beautiful spectacle. How different, he mused, from his own city
with its one fashionable thoroughfare--Fifth Avenue--monotonously
lined for miles with hideous brownstone residences, and showing
little real animation except during the Saturday afternoon parade