In a previous chapter I have cited certain glaring examples of mendacity that occurred during the Holland period; but none of them deserves to rank, in point of barefaced and unscrupulous perversion of facts, with Abbott’s _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, published in _Harper’s Magazine_ years before Dr. Holland became the leading figure in American letters, which he was during the seventies. Nor should we lose sight of the fact that the present literary age has given birth to no end of stories and novels and descriptive articles which are disgracefully mendacious in color, fact, and sentiment. But if you, my dear reader, would like to see a descriptive article which is absolutely matchless in point of mendacity and asinine incompetency, turn to the June _Scribner’s_ of 1875--the very middle of the Holland age--and read what a certain Mr. Rhodes has to say about the Latin Quarter of Paris. I suppose the whole world does not contain a corner that offers so much that is picturesque, fascinating, interesting--in short, so well worth writing about--as the Quartier Latin in the French capital. At the time this article was printed there were dozens of clever young men--Bohemians, poets, and humorists of the class that used to gather in Pfaff’s of a Saturday night to make merry with the “tenner” received the day before for a _Ledger_ poem entitled “Going Home to Mother” or “Be Prepared; Bow to the Will Divine.” I doubt if we have to-day young men better equipped for the task of describing the student life of Paris than were those who dwelt in our own Bohemia in 1875. But the conductors of _Scribner’s Monthly_ passed them by and intrusted the work to this Albert Rhodes, concerning whom history is silent, but who seems to have been more incompetent and more unworthy of his great opportunity than any human being on the face of the earth. What shall we say of a man who quotes one of the best things in the _Scènes de la Vie de Bohême_ and then blandly remarks that he does not see anything funny in it? That is precisely what Mr. Rhodes does. He prints the program of the soirée given by Rodolphe and Marcel, and then observes, with the solemnity of a Central Park pelican: “There is nothing very humorous in this, as will be observed, and yet it may be regarded as one of the best specimens of Murger’s _genre_.” Well, I can inform Mr. Rhodes, and also the simple-minded folk who believed in him because he wrote for the magazines, that if that chapter of the _Vie de Bohême_ is not funny, there is nothing funny in the world. It begins with the “opening of the salons and entry and promenade of the witty authors of the _Mountain in Labor_, a comedy rejected by the Odéon Théâtre,” and closes with the significant warning that “persons attempting to read or recite poetry will be cast into outer darkness.”