vards
bordered with palm and eucalyptus spread their sunny lines in all
directions, being baptized _Promenade des Anglais_ or _Boulevard
Victoria_, in artful flattery. The narrow mountain roads were widened,
casinos and theatres built and carnival _fetes_ organized, the cities
offering "cups" for yacht- or horse-races, and giving grounds for tennis
and golf clubs. Clever Southern people! The money returned to them a
hundredfold, and they lived to see their wild coast become the chosen
residence of the wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, and the rocky
hillsides blossom into terrace above terrace of villa gardens, where palm
and rose and geranium vie with the olive and the mimosa to shade the
white villas from the sun. To-day, no little town on the coast is
without its English chapel, British club, tennis ground, and golf links.
On a fair day at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the prevailing
conversation is in English, and the handsome, well-dressed sons of Albion
lounge along beside their astonishing womankind as thoroughly at home as
on Bond Street.

Those wonderful English women are the source of unending marvel and
amusement to the French. They can never understand them, and small
wonder, for with the exception of the small "set" that surrounds the
Prince of Wales, who are dressed in the Parisian fashion, all English
women seem to be overwhelmed with regret at not being born men, and to
have spent their time and ingenuity since, in trying to make up for
nature's mistake. Every masculine garment is twisted by them to fit the
female figure; their conversation, like that of their brothers, is about
horses and dogs; their hats and gloves are the same as the men's; and
when with their fine, large feet in stout shoes they start off, with that
particular swinging gait that makes the skirt seem superfluous, for a
stroll of twenty miles or so, Englishwomen do seem to the uninitiated to
have succeeded in their ambition of obliterating the difference between
the sexes.

It is of an evening, however, when concealment is no longer possible,
that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon standing declared in
all her plainness. Strong is the contrast here, where they are placed
side by side with all that Europe holds of elegant, and well-dressed
Frenchwomen, whether of the "world" or the "half-world," are invariably
marvels of fitness and freshness, the simplest materials being converted
by their skilful touch into toilett