All great race meetings look very much alike. There are always the long grandstand with human beings showing from the lowest steps to the sky-line; the green track, and the miles of carriages and coaches encamped on the other side; the crowd of well-dressed people in the enclosure, and the thin-legged horses cloaked mysteriously in blankets and stalking around the paddock; the massive crush around the betting-booths, that sweeps slowly in eddies and currents like a great body of water; and the rush which answers the starting-bell. The two most distinctive features of the Grand Prix are the numbers of beautifully dressed women who mix quietly with the men around the booths at which the mutuals are sold, and the fact that every one speaks English, either because that is his native tongue, or because, if he be a Frenchman, he finds so many English terms in his racing vocabulary that it is easier for him to talk entirely in that tongue than to change from French to English three or four times in each sentence. But the most curious, and in a way the most interesting feature of the Grand Prix day, is the queer accompaniment to which the races are run. It never ceases or slackens, or lowers its sharp monotone. It comes from the machines which stamp the tickets bought in the mutual pools. If you can imagine a hundred ticket-collectors on an elevated railroad station all chopping tickets at the same time, and continuing at this uninterruptedly for five hours, you can obtain an idea of the sound of this accompaniment. It is not a question of cancelling a five-cent railroad ticket with these little instruments. It is the same to them whether they clip for the girl who wagers a louis on the favorite for a place, and who stands to win two francs, or for the English plunger who has shoved twenty thousand francs under the wire, and who has only the little yellow and red ticket which one of the machines has so nonchalantly punched to show for his money. People may neglect the horses for luncheon, or press over the rail to see them rush past, or gather to watch the President of the Republic enter to a solemn fanfare of trumpets between lines of soldiers, but there are always a few left to feed these little machines, and their clicking goes on through the whole of the hot, dusty day, like the clipping of the shears of Atropos. [Illustration: THE RESTAURANT AMONG THE TREES]