File:The real Latin quarter (1901) (14769835761).jpg

Identifier: reallatinquarter00smi (find matches)
Title: The real Latin quarter
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Smith, Frank Berkeley, 1869-
Subjects: Artists
Publisher: New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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lf a dozen or morewagons, serving as a yearly abode for theseshiftless people; illumined at night by theglare of smoking oil torches. There is,moreover, a dingy tent with a half-drawnred curtain that hides the fortune-tellingbeauty; and a traveling shooting-gallery,so short that the muzzle of ones rifle nearlyrests upon the painted lady with the sheet-iron breastbone, centered by a pinhead ofa bulls-eye which never rings. There isoften a small carousel, too, which is notonly patronized by the children, but oftenby a crowd of students—boys and girls,who literally turn the merry-go-round intoa circus, and who for the time are cheeredto feats of bareback riding by the enthusi-astic bystanders. These little Quarter fetes are far differentfrom the great fete de Neuilly across theSeine, which begins at the Porte Maillot,and continues in a long, glittering avenueof side-shows, with mammoth carousels,bizarre in looking-glass panels and goldenfigures. Within the circle of all this throne-175
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like gorgeousness, a horse-power organshakes the very ground with its clarionblasts, while pink and white wooden pigs,their tails tied up in bows of colored rib-bons, heave and swoop round and round,their backs loaded with screaming girls andshouting men. It was near this very same Port Maillot,in a colossal theater, built originally for therepresentation of one of the Kiralfy ballets,that a fellow student and myself went overfrom the Quarter one night to supe in aspectacular and melodramatic pantomime,entitled Afrique a Paris. We were in-vited by the sole proprietor and manager ofthe show—an old circus-man, and one of theshrewdest, most companionable, and intel-ligent of men, who had traveled the worldover. He spoke no language but his ownunadulterated American. This, with hisdominant personality, served him whereverfortune carried him! So, accepting his invitation to play al-ternately the dying soldier and the pursu-ing cannibal under the scorching rays of atropical limelight, and

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