FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88  
89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   >>   >|  
on of those who delight in the dance. The waiting girls of these cafes are usually ladies of remarkable beauty and refinement, whose elegant dresses, graceful manners and rare accomplishment in conversation and address, are well in keeping with the charming brilliancy of the hall, and the merryand refined company around them. It is astonishing how cheap these splendid accommodations of the cafe, almost princely in their style, can be rendered. A person may enter a cafe early in the evening, sit down with his friends and acquaintances, order a glass of wine or beer and enjoy the best music and the pleasures of the most refined society for an hour or two, and when he leaves, his purse is only from three to eight cents the poorer for it. A gentleman may take a lady to the cafe _five_ evenings in a week, for between thirty cents and a dollar. He may spent twice as much or even ten or fifty times as much, if he washes to spend his time in a building whose very window sashes and external ornamentations glitter with gold; but such a lavish expenditure of money is not _required_ to be comfortable and happy. These cafes are very orderly houses. It is not fashionable to consume a glass of wine or beer in less than half an hour, and many drink the whole evening at one glass. No one can get drunk at this rate, and any one who would drink fast and should become wild, he would not be tolerated in the cafe, as no lady would remain in his society. There are some fast drinking-houses even in Paris, and more in some sections of Germany, but even those sent few or no drunk men upon the streets. A fellow that would stagger upon the pavement would be conducted to the station house at once. I did not see a single drunk person in Paris in half a month's stay, and only several in the rest of my tour through Europe. It is an encouraging sign of the times, that the cafe is being introduced in America. May it soon take the place of our gambling-halls and drinking-hells. See what Macaulay says of the Cafe, as he is quoted by Webster in his Unabridged Dictionary under the word Coffee-house. Champs Elysees, Champs Elysees, (pron. Shangs-ai-le-zai), a term equivalent to "The Elysian Fields" of the Greeks, is perhaps the most charming place in the world. It is a paradise in reality, as its names implies; and during the summer evenings, when its many thousand gas jets blaze in globes of various colors, and the magnificent illuminations of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88  
89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Champs

 

society

 

Elysees

 

person

 

evening

 

refined

 
charming
 

evenings

 

drinking

 

houses


fellow
 

sections

 

Germany

 

remain

 

tolerated

 

station

 

conducted

 

streets

 
stagger
 

pavement


single

 
gambling
 

Greeks

 

paradise

 

reality

 
Fields
 

Elysian

 
equivalent
 

implies

 

globes


colors

 

magnificent

 

illuminations

 

summer

 

thousand

 

Shangs

 

America

 
introduced
 

Europe

 

encouraging


Dictionary
 
Unabridged
 

Coffee

 
Webster
 
Macaulay
 
quoted
 

glitter

 

accommodations

 

princely

 

splendid