what he was feeling like by the sobbing of
his instrument. But he stood up every now and then and yelled "Hoch!" or
"Hiccough!"--or whatever it was--along with the others.

On the big floor in front of the Hungarians the dance goes on. Most of
the time the dances are endless waltzes and polkas shared in by the
nondescript frequenters of the place, while the tourist visitors sit
behind a railing and watch. To look at, the dancing is about as
interesting, nothing more or less, than the round dances at a Canadian
picnic on the first of July.

Every now and then, to liven things up, comes the can-can. In theory
this is a wild dance, breaking out from sheer ebullience of spirit, and
shared in by a bevy of merry girls carried away by gaiety and joy of
living. In reality the can-can is performed by eight or ten old
nags,--ex-Oriental dancers, I should think,--at eighty cents a night.
But they are deserving women, and work hard--like all the rest of the
brigade in the factory of Parisian gaiety.

After the Moulin Rouge or the Bal Tabarin or such, comes, of course, a
visit to one of the night cafes of the Montmartre district. Their names
in themselves are supposed to indicate their weird and alluring
character--the Cafe of Heaven, the Cafe of Nothingness, and,--how
dreadful--the Cafe of Hell. "Montmartre," says one of the latest English
writers on Paris, "is the scene of all that is wild, mad, and
extravagant. Nothing is too grotesque, too terrible, too eccentric for
the Montmartre mind." Fiddlesticks! What he means is that nothing is too
damn silly for people to pay to go to see.

Take, for example, the notorious Cafe of Hell. The portals are low and
gloomy. You enter in the dark. A pass-word is given--"Stranger, who
cometh here?"--"More food for worms." You sit and eat among coffins and
shrouds. There are muffled figures shuffling around to represent monks
in cowls, saints, demons, and apostles. The "Angel Gabriel" watches at
the door. "Father Time" moves among the eaters. The waiters are dressed
as undertakers. There are skulls and cross-bones in the walls. The light
is that of dim tapers. And so on.

And yet I suppose some of the foreign visitors to the Cafe of Hell think
that this is a truly French home scene, and discuss the queer
characteristics of the French people suggested by it.

I got to know a family in Paris that worked in one of these Montmartre
night cafes--quiet, decent people they were, with a little home