tural, full-flavored article, lively with French taste and talent,
and for a people instinct with a truer Gallic spirit, perhaps, than that
of Paris itself. It is antique and colonial, but age and the sea-voyage
have preserved more distinctly the native _bouquet_ of the wine after
all grosser flavors have wasted away. The spectacle within the theatre
on a fine night is brilliant, recherche and French. From side-scene to
dome, and from gallery after gallery to the gay parquette, glitters the
bright, shining audience. There are loungers, American and French, blase
and roue, who in the intervals drink brandy and whisky, or anisette,
maraschino, curcoa or some other fiery French cordial. The French
loungers are gesticulatory, and shoulders, arms, fingers, eyes and
eyebrows help out the tongue's rapid utterance; but they are never rude
or boisterous. There are belles, pretty French belles, with just a tint
of deceitless rouge for fashion's sake, and tinkling, crisp, low French
voices modulated to chime with the music and not disharmonize it; nay,
rather add to the sweetness of its concord.

And there is the Creole dandy, the small master of the revels. There is
nothing perfumed in the latest box of bonbons from Paris so exquisite,
sparkling, racy, French and happy in its own sweet conceit as he is. He
has hands and feet a Kentucky girl might envy for their shapely delicacy
and dainty size, cased in the neatest kid and prunella. His hair is
negligent in the elegantest grace of the perruquier's art, his dress
fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and simplicity, yet a
simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and attractive. He has the true
French persiflage, founded on happy content, not the blank indifference
of the Englishman's disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness,
and yet his vanity is French and victorious. In the atmosphere of
breathing music and faint perfume he looks around the glancing boxes,
and knows he has but to throw his sultanic handkerchief to have the
handsomest Circassian in the glowing circle of female beauty. But he
does not throw it, for all that. His manner plainly says: "Beautiful
dames, it would do me much of pleasure if I could elope with you all on
the road of iron, but the _bete noir_, the Moral, will not permit.
Behold for which, as an opened box of Louvin's perfumeries, I dispense
my fragrant affection to you all: breathe it and be happy!" Such homage
he receives with gracefu