_"Ah me, how quick the days are flitting!
I mind me of a time that's gone,
When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting
In this same place--but not alone--
A fair young form was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to hear me,
There's no one now to share my cup."_

The writer of these lines a cynic! Nonsense. When will the world learn to
discriminate?



V


It is impossible to speak of Paris without giving a foremost place in the
memorial retrospect to the Bois de Boulogne, the Parisian's Coney Island.
I recall that I passed the final Sunday of my last Parisian sojourn just
before the outbreak of the World War with a beloved family party in the
joyous old Common. There is none like it in the world, uniting the urban
to the rural with such surpassing grace as perpetually to convey a double
sensation of pleasure; primal in its simplicity, superb in its setting; in
the variety and brilliancy of the life which, upon sunny afternoons, takes
possession of it and makes it a cross between a parade and a paradise.

There was a time when, rather far away for foot travel, the Bois might
be considered a driving park for the rich. It fairly blazed with the