Paris Nights, and Other Impressions of Places and People

A little boy, aged about eight, with nearly all his front teeth gone, came down early for breakfast this morning while I was having mine. He asked me where the waiters were, and...

Even if I did not share the general incurious apathy towards the mysterious people, I should not blame that apathy, for it is so widespread that there must be some human explana...

Monte Carlo--the initiated call it merely “Monte”--has often been described, in fiction and out of it, but the frank confession of a ruined gambler is a rare thing; partly becau...

“By the hazard of birth,” I should reply, “or by the equally great hazard of marriage. With us, when you happen to have the same father and mother, or even the same uncle, or wh...

A whisky that night with the father! In the course of the whisky you contrive to let him gather that you, too, keep an eye on the share-market, and that you have travelled a gre...

Most assuredly the modest, medium, average home founded by Mr. Smith has not been in the slightest degree affected either by the increase of luxury and leisure, or by any allege...

Interval I I go to the refreshment _foyer_ to see life. And now I can perceive that quite a crowd of people has been hidden somewhere in the nooks of the tremendous theatre. The...

When I returned to England I came across a terrific establishment. As it may be more or less novel to you I will attempt to describe it, though the really right words for descri...

Just to show how strange, mysterious, and romantic life is, I will relate to you in a faithful narrative a few of my experiences the other day--it was a common Saturday. Some pe...

Occasionally a bore would complacently present himself for sufferance. Among these the chief was certainly the man whose existence was an endless shuttle-work between the variou...

The next village is Barbizon, the most renowned place in all the Fontainebleau region; a name full of romantic associations. It is utterly vulgarised, like Stratford-on-Avon. “L...

Your excellency, attended by his gentlemen-in-waiting (who apparently never eat, never want to eat), in the intervals of the ceremonious collation will gaze with interest at the...

Geographical considerations made it impossible for me to be present at the performance of _La Traviata_, which opened the Covent Garden season. I solaced myself by going to hear...

The first invitation I ever received into a purely Parisian interior might have been copied out of a novel by Paul Bourget. Its lure was thus phrased: “_Un peu de musique et d’a...

The Variétés has another _rôle_ and justification. It is what the French call a women’s theatre. When I asked a well-known actress why the _entr’-actes_ at the Variétés were so...

He arrives at the terminus with only one companion; the rest, with nods, have vanished away at one street corner or another. Gradually he is sorting himself out. Both he and his...

Suddenly, as you pass through a doorway, great irregular vistas of a subterranean chamber discover themselves to you, limitless. You perceive that this wondrous restaurant ramif...

Marlow was at his best in the pentameter, but Ford usually got his thrill in a chipped line of about three words--three words which, while they mean nothing, mean everything. Al...

The fact that strikes the traveller beyond all other facts of the new London is the immensity of the penalty which the Metropolis is now paying for its size. Tubes, electrified...

We went, down a long narrow passage. There they were in their beds, the children, in a small bedroom divided into two by a low screen of ribbed glass, the boy on one side and th...

And yet the sublime institution of the club is not a bit anæmic. Within a quarter of a mile is the monumental proof that the institution has been rejuvenated and ensanguined and...

Out into the street, and though we had been up for an hour and a half, we were now for the first time in the light of day! Mist! It would probably be called “pearly” by some nov...