On regular occasions this Colony asserts itself, but only on those occasions when there is a chance of its advertising itself at the expense of the country it has renounced. When this chance comes the Colonists suddenly remember their former home; they rush into print, or they make speeches in public places, or buy wreaths for some dead celebrity. Or when it so happens that no one of prominence has died for some time, and there seems to be no other way of getting themselves noticed, the American Colony rises in its strength and remembers Lafayette, and decorates his grave. Once every month or so they march out into the country and lay a wreath on his tomb, and so for the moment gain a certain vogue with the Parisians, which is all that they ask. They do not perform this ceremony because Lafayette fought in America, but because he was a Frenchman fighting in America, and they are playing now to the French galleries and not to the American bleaching-boards. There are a few descendants of Lafayette who are deserving of our sincere sympathy. For these gentlemen are brought into the suburbs many times a year in the rain and storm to watch different American Colonists place a wreath on the tomb of their distinguished ancestor, and make speeches about a man who left his country only to fight for the independence of another country, and not to live in it after it was free. Some day the descendants of Lafayette and the secretaries of the American embassy will rise up and rebel, and refuse to lend themselves longer to the uses of these gentlemen. They will suggest that there are other graves in Paris. There is, for instance, the grave of Paul Jones, who possibly did as much for America on the sea as Lafayette did on shore. If he had only been a Frenchman, with a few descendants of title still living who would consent to act as chief mourners on occasion, his spirit might hope to be occasionally remembered with a wreath or two; but as it is, he is not to be considered with the French marquis, who must, we can well imagine, turn uneasily beneath the wreaths these self-advertising patriots lay upon his grave. The American Colony is not wicked, but it would like to be thought so, which is much worse. Among some of the men it is a pose to be considered the friend of this or that particular married woman, and each of them, instead of paying the woman the slight tribute of treating her in public as though they were the merest acquaintances, which is the least the man can do, rather forces himself upon her horizon, and is always in evidence, not obnoxiously, but unobtrusively, like a pet cat or a butler, but still with sufficient pertinacity to let you know that he is there.