eak of the World War with a beloved family
party in the joyous old Common. There is none like it in the world,
uniting the urban to the rural with such surpassing grace as perpetually
to convey a double sensation of pleasure; primal in its simplicity,
superb in its setting; in the variety and brilliancy of the life which,
upon sunny afternoons, takes possession of it and makes it a cross
between a parade and a paradise.

There was a time when, rather far away for foot travel, the Bois might
be considered a driving park for the rich. It fairly blazed with the
ostentatious splendor of the Second Empire; the shoddy Duke with his
shady retinue, in gilded coach-and-four; the world-famous courtesan,
bedizened with costly jewels and quite as well known as the Empress; the
favorites of the Tuileries, the Comedie Francaise, the Opera, the Jardin
Mabille, forming an unceasing and dazzling line of many-sided frivolity
from the Port de Ville to the Port St. Cloud, circling round La
Bagatelle and ranging about the Cafe Cascade, a human tiara of diamonds,
a moving bouquet of laces and rubies, of silks and satins and emeralds
and sapphires. Those were the days when the Due de Morny, half if not
full brother of the Emperor, ruled as king of the Bourse, and Cora
Pearl, a clever and not at all good-looking Irish girl gone wrong,
reigned as Queen of the Demimonde.

All this went by the board years ago. Everywhere, more or less,
electricity has obliterated distinctions of rank and wealth. It has
circumvented lovers and annihilated romance. The Republic ousted the
bogus nobility. The subways and the tram cars connect the Bois de
Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes so closely that the poorest may make
himself at home in either or both.

The automobile, too, oddly enough, is proving a very leveller. The
crowd recognizes nobody amid the hurly-burly of coupes, pony-carts,
and taxicabs, each trying to pass the other. The conglomeration of
personalities effaces the identity alike of the statesman and the
artist, the savant and the cyprian. No six-inch rules hedge the shade of
the trees and limit the glory of the grass. The _ouvrier_ can bring his
brood and his basket and have his picnic where he pleases. The pastry
cook and his chere amie, the coiffeur and his grisette can spoon by the
lake-side as long as the moonlight lasts, and longer if they list, with
never a gendarme to say them nay, or a rude voice out of the depths
hoarsely to declaim,