And another is a big billowy phaeton blooming within and without with white roses and carnations, and holding a beautiful lady with auburn hair and powdered face, and with the lace of her Empire bonnet just falling to the line of her black eyebrows. She is all in white too, with white gloves, and a parasol of nothing but white lace, and she reclines rather than sits in this triumphal car of pure white flowers, like a Cleopatra in her barge, or Venus lying on the white crest of the waves. All the men recognize her, and throw their choicest offerings into her lap; but whenever I saw her she seemed more interested in the crowds along the road-side, who announced her approach with an excited murmur of admiration, and the little children in blouses threw their nosegays at her, and then stood back, abashed at her loveliness, with their hands behind them. She was quite used to being pelted with flowers at one of the theatres, but she seemed to enjoy this tribute very much, and she tossed roses back at the children, and watched them as they carried her flowers to the nurse or the elder sister who was taking care of them, and who looked after the woman with frightened, admiring eyes. V AMERICANS IN PARIS Americans who go to Paris might be divided, for the purposes of this article at least, into two classes--those who use Paris for their own improvement or pleasure, and those who find her too strong for them, and who go down before her and worship her, and whom she either fashions after her own liking, or rides under foot and neglects until they lose heart and disappear forever. Balzac, in the last paragraph of one of his novels, leaves his hero standing on the top of a hill above Paris, shaking his fist at the city below him, and cursing her for a wanton. One might argue that this was a somewhat childish and theatrical point of view for the young man to have taken. He probably found in Paris exactly what he brought there, and it seems hardly fair, because the city was stronger than he, that he should blame her and call her a hard name. Paris is something much better than that, only the young man was probably not looking for anything better. He had taken her frivolous side too seriously, and had not sought for her better side at all. Some one should have told him that Paris makes a most agreeable mistress, but a very hard master.