There was constant amusement, too, watching the crowd, with its many original and curious types.  There were serious college professors, with gold-rimmed spectacles, buxom nounous in their uniform cloaks and long ribbon streamers, nicely dressed children romping merrily but not noisily, more queer-looking students in shabby frock coats, tight at the waist, trousers too short, and comical hats, stylishly dressed women displaying the latest fashions, brilliantly uniformed army officers strutting proudly, dangling their swords—­an attractive and interesting crowd, so different, thought the two Americans, from the cheap, evil-smelling, ill-mannered mob of aliens that invades their own Central Park the days when there is music, making it a nuisance instead of a pleasure.  Here everyone belonged apparently to the better class; the women and children were richly and fashionably dressed, the officers looked smart in their multi-coloured uniforms, and, no matter how one might laugh at the students, there was an atmosphere of good-breeding and refinement everywhere which Shirley was not accustomed to see in public places at home.  A sprinkling of workmen and people of the poorer class were to be seen here and there, but they were in the decided minority.  Shirley, herself a daughter of the Revolution, was a staunch supporter of the immortal principles of Democracy and of the equality of man before the law.  But all other talk of equality was the greatest sophistry and charlatanism.  There could be no real equality so long as some people were cultured and refined and others were uneducated and vulgar.  Shirley believed in an aristocracy of brains and soap.  She insisted that no clean person, no matter how good a democrat, should be expected to sit close in public places to persons who were not on speaking terms with the bath-tub.  In America this foolish theory of a democracy, which insists on throwing all classes, the clean and the unclean, promiscuously together, was positively revolting, making travelling in the public vehicles almost impossible, and it was not much better in the public parks.  In France—­also a Republic—­ where they likewise paraded conspicuously the clap-trap “Egalite, Fraternite,” they managed these things far better.  The French lower classes knew their place.  They did not ape the dress, nor frequent the resorts of those above them in the social scale.  The distinction between the classes was plainly and properly marked, yet this was not antagonistic to the ideal of true democracy; it had not prevented the son of a peasant from becoming President of the French Republic.  Each district in Paris had its own amusement, its own theatres, its own parks.  It was not a question of capital refusing to fraternize with labour, but the very natural desire of persons of refinement to mingle with clean people rather than to rub elbows with the Great Unwashed.

“Isn’t it delightful here?” said Shirley.  “I could stay here forever, couldn’t you?”