Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/10

Rh their city into due accordance with her present circumstances, and have destroyed as much as they dared of her noble picturesqueness and ancient ways. They have tacked on to her venerable palaces and graceful towers, stucco mansions and straight hideous streets, and staring walls covered with advertisements, and barren boulevards studded with toy trees that are cropped as soon as they presume to grow a leaf, and have striven all they know to fit her for her fortunes, as her inn-keepers, when they take an antique palace, hasten to fit up a smoking-room, and, making a paradise of gas jets and liqueurs, write over it "Il Bar Americano."

It is considered very clever to adapt oneself to one's fortunes; and if so, the rulers of Floralia are very clever indeed; only the stucco and the straight streets and the frightful boulevards cost money, and Floralia has no money and a very heavy and terrible debt; and whether it be really worth while to deface a most beautiful and artistic city, and ruin your nobles and gentry, and grind down your artizans. B 2