ary. Thus France has an unjust reputation for
vice, and England an equally unjust reputation for virtue.

I had always, I confess, been brought up to think of Paris as a sort of
Sodom and Gomorrah in one. Good Americans might go to Paris, according
to the American theory of a future state; but, certainly I had thought,
no good Englishman ever went there--except, maybe, on behalf of the
Vigilance Society. Well, it may sound an odd thing to say, but what
impressed me most of all was the absolute innocence of the place.

I mean this quite seriously. For surely one important condition of
innocence is unconsciousness of doing wrong. The poor despised
Parisian may be a very wicked and depraved person, but certainly he
goes about with an absolute unconsciousness of it upon his gay and
kindly countenance.

"Seeing the world" usually means seeing everything in it that most
decent people won't look at; but when you come to look at these
terrible things and places, what do you find? Why, absolute
disappointment!

Have you ever read that most amusing book, "Baedeker on Paris"?

I know nothing more delightful than the notes to the Montmartre and
Latin Quarters. The places to which you, as a smug Briton, may or may
not take a lady! The scale of wickedness allowed to the waxwork
British lady is most charmingly graduated. I had read that the cafe
where we were sitting was one of the most terrible places in
Paris,--the Cafe d'Harcourt, where the students of the Latin Quarter
take their nice little domestic mistresses to supper. But Baedeker was
dreadfully Pecksniffian about these poor innocent etudiantes, many of
whom love their lovers much more truly than many a British wife loves
her husband, and are much better loved in return. If you doubt it,
dare to pay attention to one of these young ladies, and you will
probably have to fight a duel for it. In fact, these romantic
relations are much more careful of honour than conventional ones; for
love, and not merely law, keeps guard.

I looked around me. Where were those terrible things I had read of?
Where was this hell which I had reasonably expected would gape leagues
of sulphur and blue flame beneath the little marble table? I mentally
resolved to bring an action against Baedeker for false information.
For what did I see? Simply pairs and groups of young men and women
chattering amiably in front of their "bocks" or their "Americains."
Here and there a student would