The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI | Page 2

at times, and
dangerous in the extreme. I advise those, therefore, who wish to be well
whilst doing the Continent, to carry, especially in France, as I did, a
large, thick-set bottle of milk, or kumiss, with which to take the wire
edge off one's whistle whilst being yanked through the Louvre.
St. Cloud is seven miles west of the center of Paris and almost ten
miles by rail on the road to Versailles--pronounced Vairsi. St. Cloud
belongs to the canton of Sèvres and the arrondissement of Versailles.
An arrondissement is not anything reprehensible. It is all right. You,
yourself, could belong to an arrondissement if you lived in France.
St. Cloud is on the beautiful hill slope, looking down the valley of the
Seine, with Paris in the distance. It is peaceful and quiet and beautiful.
Everything is peaceful in Paris when there is no revolution on the
carpet. The steam cars run safely and do not make so much noise as
ours do. The steam whistle does not have such a hold on people as it
does here. The adjutant-general at the depot blows a little tin bugle, the
admiral of the train returns the salute, the adjutant-general says
"Allons!" and the train starts off like a somewhat leisurely young man
who is going to the depot to meet his wife's mother.

One does not realize what a Fourth of July racket we live in and
employ in our business till he has been the guest of a monarchy of
Europe, between whose toes the timothy and clover have sprung up to a
great height. And yet it is a pleasing change, and I shall be glad when
we as a republic have passed the blow-hard period, laid aside the
ear-splitting steam whistle, settled down to good, permanent
institutions, and taken on the restful, soothful, Boston air which comes
with time and the quiet self-congratulation that one is born in a Bible
land and with Gospel privileges, and where the right to worship in a
strictly high-church manner is open to all.
The Palace of St. Cloud was once the residence of Napoleon I in
summer-time. He used to go out there for the heated term, and folding
his arms across his stomach, have thought after thought regarding the
future of France. Yet he very likely never had an idea that some day it
would be a thrifty republic, engaged in growing green peas, or pulling a
soiled dove out of the Seine, now and then, to add to the attractions of
her justly celebrated morgue.
Louis XVIII also put up at the Palace in St. Cloud several summers. He
spelled it "palais," which shows that he had very poor early English
advantages, or that he was, as I have always suspected, a native of
Quebec. Charles X also changed the bedding somewhat, and moved in
during his reign. He also added a new iron sink and a place in the barn
for washing buggies. Louis Philippe spent his summers here for a
number of years, and wrote weekly letters to the Paris papers, signed
"Uno," in which he urged the taxpayers to show more veneration for
their royal nibs. Napoleon III occupied the palais in summer during his
lifetime, availing himself finally of the use of Mr. Bright's justly
celebrated disease and dying at the dawn of better institutions for
beautiful but unhappy France.
I visited the palais (pronounced pallay), which was burned by the
Prussians in 1870. The grounds occupy 960 acres, which I offered to
buy and fit up, but probably I did not deal with responsible parties. This
part of France reminds me very much of North Carolina. I mean, of
course, the natural features. Man has done more for France, it seems to

me, than for the Tar Heel State, and the cities of Asheville and Paris are
widely different. The police of Paris rarely get together in front of the
court-house to pitch horseshoes or dwell on the outlook for the goober
crop.
And yet the same blue, ozonic sky, if I may be allowed to coin a word,
the same soft, restful, dolce frumenti air of gentle, genial health, and of
cark destroying, magnetic balm to the congested soul, the inflamed
nerve and the festering brain, are present in Asheville that one finds in
the quiet drives of San Cloo with the successful squirt of the mighty
fountains of Vairsi and the dark and whispering forests of
Fon-taine-bloo.
The palais at San Cloo presents a rather dejected appearance since it
was burned, and the scorched walls are bare, save where here and there
a warped and wilted water pipe festoons the blackened and blistered
wreck of what was once so grand and so gay.
San Cloo has a normal school for the training