"See Naples and die," say the Italians. "See Paris and live," say the French. Old friends, who have been over and back, have been of late telling me that Paris, having woefully suffered, is nowise the Paris it was, and as the provisional offspring of four years of desolating war I can well believe them. But a year or two of peace, and the city will rise again, as after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, which laid upon it a sufficiently blighting hand. In spite of fickle fortune and its many ups and downs it is, and will ever remain, "Paris, the Changeless."

I never saw the town so much itself as just before the beginning of the world war. I took my departure in the early summer of that fateful year and left all things booming--not a sign or trace that there had ever been aught but boundless happiness and prosperity. It is hard, the saying has it, to keep a squirrel on the ground, and surely Paris is the squirrel among cities. The season just ended had been, everybody declared, uncommonly successful from the standpoints alike of the hotels and cafÉs, the shop folk and their patrons, not to mention the purely pleasure-seeking throng. People seemed loaded with money and giddy to spend it.

The headwaiter at Voisin's told me this: "Mr. Barnes, of New York, ordered a dinner, carte blanche, for twelve.

"'Now,' says he, 'garÇon, have everything bang up, and here's seventy-five francs for a starter.'

"The dinner was bang up. Everybody hilarious. Mr. Barnes immensely pleased. When he came to pay his bill, which was a corker, he made no objection.

"'GarÇon,' says he, 'if I ask you a question will you tell me the truth?'

"'Oui, monsieur; certainement.'

"Well, how much was the largest tip you ever received?"

"Seventy-five francs, monsieur."

"'Very well; here are 100 francs.'

"Then, after a pause for the waiter to digest his joy and express a proper sense of gratitude and wonder, Mr. Barnes came to time with: 'Do you remember who was the idiot that paid you the seventy-five francs?'

"'Oh, yes, monsieur. It was you.'"