Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/84

 well-trained and inexpressive visage. But here I differ from him. A man loses nothing by outward grace, and there is no reason on earth why he should rejoice in the fact that he cannot bow.

The motor craze has superseded the cycle craze. The bourgeois bicycles so much that the youth of fashion needs something to distinguish him on the road from his inferior brother. So somebody came to his rescue with the motor-car. Go to Paris if you would realise what a perilous thing the crossing of a street may be. In such a neighbourhood as the Place Pereire it is almost mortal. I imagine it as a machine invented by the upper classes to replace the guillotine, and run down the miserable foot-passengers to avenge the beheadings of a century ago. Whenever I return home, and discover that I have lost a purse, a book, a packet according to my invariable habit, I am so thankful to feel that I am still alive, in spite of the automobile which charges through the streets in such a dreadful way, that I balance loss and gain, and count myself still a winner in the game of life by every new day to my account. In London you are everywhere enveloped in a sense of public protection. The cab drivers know how to drive, a feature of their trade they are most imperfectly aware of in Paris. The policeman is there when he is wanted, and, thanks to him, the nervous passer-by is valiant and unafraid. But in Paris