Traveller.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 410, 17 March 1904, Page 2

Traveller.

BE all remember Mark - 'description of - the ■:■;"-irguideV- \ 'and some may have read Guy do I 'Maupaesaat's amusing articles, published years ago, Far be it from me to Bpeak too lightly of a Je&d man: but I have often wondered if the brain-smash-up that drove poor Guy de Maupassant to SB grave was not due to his love of lietjy and unobtrusively following the bgKsh 'personally conducted' tourists round. He revelled in these excursions; and took all the risks. ) The provided and accredited guide sees his 'moutons' carefully stacked into the* moving cattle-shed that is euphemistic-, c a!ly describedby "these "touting companies as a 'brake.' They peer.out on each side, and the Parisian smilesi'.a-t them as [he takes his coffee. You might" imagine ! from the way r tbey 'huddle tbemselverto" gether that war was declared, and that at any moment troops would: fire on them. All the time they read guide books, in order to know what they .were , passing by. .The brake stops, and the , guide leads them into;" some; church.;: He tells them thei history of the church; and i gives very interesting reminiscences dating some centuries back^' Sometimes he i mixes up one ehurch with another; but he ) nevex^i»k6B.,the\ ; himi self.'He knows that the men do not care ; a button whether It is St., I Netre Dame, and that -the only ohef If haa ... to fear isi thei young jady from the»vicar- , age, who wants to know if 'it was here that Mane Antoinette worshipped*; ojrif ' 'Aoelard and Heloise; ever > there.' He i answers all questions without' the slightest heaitatioß, touching at? the \ same time off the beauty of Grecian architecture, and letting down lightly the Boman, The galleries iu the Luxembourg, where pidturee are shown which [ the men don't mind lookingat,thei wiwrien j wouldn't look at i! the men were there, t but which the younger members of both I sexes should not look.-at That is one of j hm difficulties; but. hia life: ia full of difficulties, and he generally manages to " get through* The gem of the whole run round is, however;;: the Morgue] i? t something about that place thatisfawful i and: ghastly. You paeß before a : huge frame full of the; photographs of the nn- * known dead that, have' lain on its slabs. £ Some of them, are handsome men, and well 3 dressed, with an ugly cut in the face; j some are young; but most of them are 3 old and worn out: and you can underI stand that' they are not the' victims of 3 violence or accident. If all of them could I tell their story, what a story there would |. be for Eugene Sue; if only one spoke, I whata fortune for a"young writer! But r the guide' has taken < his party Into tUe I public.chamber, and they are all shudj daring and shivering before the mysteries . that the Seine has given up. T wonder I how many-of .them know of the vaults r below, where the temperature is below zero, and where ccrpses, frozen hard as a ' stone, and with a white froßt on their } hair, wait for years until the never sleepk ing police draw them out of their trucks, I and bring the Buspected criminal to 'confront* them 1, ' '"" - •

Some years ago, a considerable part of my time was spent on the well-known steps, The first time I went there I suddenly found my bat gone, and saw it flying past the cloet, and falling into'the dense crowd at least thirty yards away. I naturally was inclined to loose my temper: bat a friendly stranger,]; speaking in pure English, said to me, "Taat's all 1 right. Wait a minute' and sure enough the hat was passed back through the crowd, and put back on my head as mysteriously as it had gone. How it is done I never could understand. You will see a dczen hats flying in all directions and high in the air, but they come back to their c wners with the speed of the telegraph. That is, if you take things good naturally. And the man who gave me this good advice explained to me other things. I used to wonder why serious men were engaged in making fire-balloons by screwing the four corners of a newspaper together, setting alight to them, and then watching them go up to the roof. 'This, it seems, is done when mining shares are low, and these improvised balloons are Bent up to propitiate the God of Fortune. At that tiise tha kindly intervening friend drove do wn to t • e Bou 1 se in his carriage, and was as largely interest 3d as most of the brokers in the mining market of South Africa.

1 On a chilly night last autumn I met the aaa .'again, "but completely changed* It was easy to see that things were going none too well with him. < I offered him a drink at Poucsets, which he readily accepted. He had, he told me, gone nnder in the South African slump of two years ago, and was ruined. : ,;i ; K I asked him what he was doing, and he was candid enough to say ' Anything.' Confidently, he told me that he was principally gaining his living by acting as a guide Jor the English and .Americans. Then he started to give the 'whole show away,' to up? a vulgarism, although there was not much to give away—to those who see Paris day by day. ,• 'Yousee,' he said, 'we get money all along the line so long as we can find a simpleton. We ask him for 20 francs for a night's run round ; but we never dream of taking him into any cafe, or, in fact, into any place,where we have not made/ arrangements beforehand as to the commission we are to have on all he spends, In many places it. runs to as high as 50 per cent. We give a sign to the waiter, who brings, up a bill in which the price charged is ridiculous, and then kick up a row, and get five francs or so knocked off. This convinces him that he is in honest hands—poor fool! No matter where he goes, or what he does, he is exploited the whole time.: You do'well, in the cafes round the theatres at about one in the morning. You point out some woman as Mme. So and So, of the Gymnase or the Vaudeville. The woman could not spell the name of either one or the other; but you manage to secure an introduction for him, and he believes it all, and spends his money like water, and is happy for years after in the knowledge that he has seen and spoken to Clemence de Pibrac, La Belle Otero, Liane de Pougy, and so forth. The American is, a worse fool than the young' Englishman.-. Every day: you; see accounts in the papers of having been robbed, and so forth. Well, I will tell you how the trick is done by the English guides. They. see each morning the list o! the American arrivals published in the ' New York Herald.' There is, for instance, ' Mr. Brown, of Boston, is staying at the Hotel Continental.' To begin with they find out if he has money,' and if he has money passed over to the'swell divis'.on'—wh<»f, in England, I believe, are called the • Boys.' They at once hnnt up all the information they can find in the banks and libraries where Boston papers, are filed about the whole affairs of the town. They get the names of: the Mayor, the questions that are agitating public opinion, and then go round and Bend up their card. They mention to' the astonished man a dozen names that he must know, and persist in inviting him and his family to lunch, which is alwayß paid for with a thousand franc note. Ten'days later the simple American wonders if his banking account is struck by lightning.* I