During the summer I was in the hands of two artists, Miss Anna Klumpke, who painted my portrait, and Paul Bartlett, who molded my head in clay.  To shorten the operation, sometimes I sat for both at the same time.  Although neither was fully satisfied with the results of their labors, we had many pleasant hours together, discussing their art, their early trials, and artists in general.  Each had good places in the Salon, and honorable mention that year.  It is sad to see so many American girls and boys, who have no genius for painting or sculpture, spending their days in garrets, in solitude and poverty, with the vain hope of earning distinction.  Women of all classes are awaking to the necessity of self-support, but few are willing to do the ordinary useful work for which they are fitted.  In the Salon that year six thousand pictures were offered, and only two thousand accepted, and many of these were “skyed.”

It was lovely on our balcony at night to watch the little boats, with their lights, sailing up and down the Seine, especially the day of the great annual fete,—­the 14th of July,—­when the whole city was magnificently illuminated.  We drove about the city on several occasions at midnight, to see the life—­men, women, and children enjoying the cool breezes, and the restaurants all crowded with people.

Sunday in Paris is charming—­it is the day for the masses of the people.  All the galleries of art, the libraries, concert halls, and gardens are open to them.  All are dressed in their best, out driving, walking, and having picnics in the various parks and gardens; husbands, wives, and children laughing and talking happily together.  The seats in the streets and parks are all filled with the laboring masses.  The benches all over Paris—­along the curbstones in every street and highway—­show the care given to the comfort of the people.  You will see mothers and nurses with their babies and children resting on these benches, laboring men eating their lunches and sleeping there at noon, the organ grinders and monkeys, too, taking their comfort.  In France you see men and women everywhere together; in England the men generally stagger about alone, caring more for their pipes and beer than their mothers, wives, and sisters.  Social life, among the poor especially, is far more natural and harmonious in France than in England, because women mix more freely in business and amusements.

Coming directly from Paris to London, one is forcibly struck with the gloom of the latter city, especially at night.  Paris with its electric lights is brilliant everywhere, while London, with its meager gas jets here and there struggling with the darkness, is as gloomy and desolate as Dore’s pictures of Dante’s Inferno.  On Sunday, when the shops are closed, the silence and solitude of the streets, the general smoky blackness of the buildings and the atmosphere give one a melancholy impression of the great center of civilization.  Now that it has been discovered that smoke can be utilized and the atmosphere cleared, it is astonishing that the authorities do not avail themselves of the discovery, and thus bring light and joy and sunshine into that city, and then clean the soot of centuries from their blackened buildings.