Paris Vistas

Problems of war time housekeeping in France did not go back to 1914. The learned political economists who demonstrated to their own satisfaction that a general European war woul...

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, Paris heard the news. The big guns of Mont Valérian and the forts of Ivry roared. The anti-aircraft cannon of the...

For many years the old expression that we can't get rid of, "the Salon," has been a misnomer. There are five Salons, and, as going to see the season's pictures and statues is a...

In the early days of the A. E. F., when I was speaking to American soldiers in the camps, I used to leave a little time for questions at the end of my talk. The boys always had...

Higher than 1883; higher than 1879; higher than 1876; higher than 1802; higher than 1740; higher than 1699; equalling the flood of 1658, the worst in the history of Paris; final...

We may not have been sure of the peace. We were sure of the victory. The soldiers had done their part. Academic newspaper discussion as to when the victory parade would be held...

The family was abroad for the summer, one of those delightful May-first to October thirty-first summers when school is missed at both ends. The itinerary was supposed to be plan...

The best fun of having a home is sharing it with your friends. But you deprive yourself of this fun--in a very large measure, at least--if you make entertaining a burden or a gr...

We spent the first anniversary of our wedding in Egypt. A week later we arrived in Paris. For prospective residents as well as for tourists, June is the best time of the year to...

We started our search for a temporary home at the Observatoire, and good fortune took our footsteps down the Rue d'Assas rather than down the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Had we turn...

"My chief sent me around to ask madame to help. It is a baby case. We came here because the mother said she got a layette at madame's studio. Her name is Mlle. A----; do you rem...

"Poor hat!" said I. "Look at its color. Brand new, you know, and faded like that. It happened on the first sunny day after I bought it. We need to plot a peace so that we can fi...

There are many libraries in Paris. Some of them are so famous that I ought to hesitate to call the Bibliothèque Nationale simply "the library." But I do call it that, not becaus...

"Peace on earth: good-will towards men!" For five years the motto of Christmas had seemed a mockery to us. Our city was the goal of the German armies. They reached it sometimes...

My Scotch-Irish grandfather was a Covenanter. He kept his whisky in a high cupboard under lock and key. If any of his children were around when he took his night-cap, he would a...

How can two young people, with a baby and three hundred dollars in cash, able to count upon a one-year fellowship yielding six hundred dollars, live a year in Paris? The answer...

We were sitting in the restaurant of the Hotel Terminus in Marseilles. Our month-old baby was lying on the cushioned seat between us. The maître d'hôtel told us she was the youn...

The Prince whom Tartarin met in Africa had lived a long time in Tarascon, and knew remarkably well one side of the town. He knew nothing of the other side. This puzzled Tartarin...

My critic points out that after having been so enthusiastic about walks at nightfall and having put myself on record as to the exceptional advantages of seeing Paris in the dark...

In Paris the child of the people is a born artist. He has the instinct from his ancestors. His taste is formed and cultivated by what he sees around him--of the present as well...

Von Kluck and I had a race to see who would reach Paris first. It was close. But I won. Lots of my friends thought then and since that I was foolish to take my children back to...

When you are in Paris without children you can get along in a hotel or a _pension_: and you can probably live as cheaply as, if not more cheaply than, in a home of your own. The...

After the initial days of mobilization, the German advance, the coming of the refugees, and the aeroplane raids, Paris became again astonishingly normal. We got used to the war...

In September, 1910, we went to Constantinople for just one year, as we had gone to Tarsus for one year. But the lure of the East held us. We loved our home up above the Bosphoru...

Big Bertha, or rather her successors, kept up a sporadic bombardment of Paris in April and May. A few shells fell again in June. But the effect of the bombardment, materially an...

The memory of my introduction to Versailles is a confused jumble of stupid governess and more stupid guide-book. When I was sixteen a governess piloted me through endless rooms...

"Feed him," said I. Herbert did not have to tell me that he had no money to give the man to buy a meal. "Couldn't you ask him to dinner if he is all right?"

"Well, it's a fling," said Esther. "You know how it is up at the Hostel. They are so fussy--you would think it was an old ladies' home. Two boys that came over in our ship have...

One night the future King of Siam came to dine with us. I took him into the nursery to see the children. Mimi sat bolt upright in her crib. She eyed the young stranger and frowned.

We left Oxford very suddenly. Six weeks in the Bodleian Library, in spite of canoeing every afternoon, sufficed to go through a collection of contemporary pamphlets about the Gu...

"I had to throw several sous' worth at your window before you got awake this morning, and when they rolled back some of them fell in the gutter. Old Sempé saw me take them, and...

"A young American came to Paris about twenty-five years ago, lived for a time in the Latin Quarter, and then, following the loss of his income, obtained a minor position in the...

Never were Americans in France more perplexed about the state of feeling in the United States than at the beginning of 1917. The sinking of the _Lusitania_ and other _torpillage...

A visitor once asked me how it was possible for Paris to maintain so many cafés, and said how distressing it was to see so many women in them and there was more drinking than in...

In Philadelphia you still find shutters with the rings at the middle of their closing edge. To one of the rings is tied a piece of tape. In my grandfather's house of a Sunday th...

The Paris subway system is the best in the world. We make this boast without fear of contradiction. In London the various lines do not connect, and require a life study to arriv...

The voice came from a wee island of khaki in a solid mass of horizon blue. American soldiers! The first I had seen. The American army was to the French army as were these half d...

From the Boulevard des Capucines to the Avenue de l'Opéra there is a convenient short-cut through the Rue Daunou. Newspaper men and other Americans do not always use the Rue Dau...

H.C. of L. is an abbreviation I see often in American newspapers. From the context it was not hard to guess what it meant. In Paris we call that "preoccupation" (note the euphem...