United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


It does one good to hear his quiet sarcasms against the whole fin-de-siecle business the "impressionism," the "sensationalism," the vague futilities of every sort, the "great poets" wallowing in the mud of Paris, the "great musicians" making night hideous in German concert-halls, the "great painters" of various countries mixing their colors with as much filth as the police will allow.

Up to the end the engineers were incessantly extending and improving Kantara. In time substantial churches were built alongside Dueidar Road; playing areas were laid out and cinemas erected for the troops; and the Y.M.C.A. built lounges, concert-halls, and tea-rooms. Of these it is not necessary to speak, for they were but the trimmings of the place.

The new art galleries are closed for some days; but the collections and museums of various sorts are daily open, gratis; the theaters redouble their efforts; the concert-halls are in full blast; there are dances nightly, and masked balls in the Folks' Theater; country relatives are entertained; the peasants go about the streets in droves, in a simple and happy frame of mind, wholly unconscious that they are the oddest-looking guys that have come down from the Middle Ages; there is music in all the gardens, singing in the cafes, beer flowing in rivers, and a mighty smell of cheese, that goes up to heaven.

The sale of liquors is enormous, and the work of destruction of body and soul that is going on is fearful. The bar-rooms, beer-gardens, restaurants, clubs, hotels, houses of ill-fame, concert-halls and dance-houses, are doing an enormous trade, and thousands are engaged in the work of poisoning themselves with drink.

Waiters move laboriously about among the legs of the audience, bearing salvers laden with wine, beer, Americans and bottles of water. The audience is rough and ready; hats and caps are worn habitually; pipes are diligently smoked cigars are rare. Women are seldom seen here, except upon the stage, where they sit in a semicircle in a somewhat formal manner, each holding a bouquet in her lap carefully wrapped round with white paper, each wearing flowers in her elaborately coiffé hair and in the folds of her silken skirts, and each with arms and shoulders bare. From time to time these women come forward and sing songs not always strictly adapted to the family circle, perhaps. But the favorite vocalist is a comic man, who emerges from behind the scenes in a grotesquely exaggerated costume an ill-fitting, long, green calico tail-coat, with a huge yellow bandana dangling from a rear pocket; a red cotton umbrella with a brass ring on one end and a glass hook on the other; light blue shapeless trousers; a flaming orange colored vest; a huge standing collar, and in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest class. Here he is very cordially esteemed. The ladies behind him yawn in a furtive manner under cover of their bouquets, but the audience is hilarious over him as he sings about his friend Thomas from the country, who came up to Paris to see the sights and shocked everybody by his dreadful manners. He put his muddy boots on the fauteuils, did mon ami Thomas; he fell in love with a gay woman of the Boulevards whose skin was all plastered up like an old cathedral; he ate oysters with a hair-pin at dinner; he offered his toothpick to his vis-

The new art galleries are closed for some days; but the collections and museums of various sorts are daily open, gratis; the theaters redouble their efforts; the concert-halls are in full blast; there are dances nightly, and masked balls in the Folks' Theater; country relatives are entertained; the peasants go about the streets in droves, in a simple and happy frame of mind, wholly unconscious that they are the oddest-looking guys that have come down from the Middle Ages; there is music in all the gardens, singing in the cafes, beer flowing in rivers, and a mighty smell of cheese, that goes up to heaven.

The songs that suit modern drawing-rooms and concert-halls, as a rule, are those that are full of sham sentiment a real, strong, throbbing HEART pulsing through a song is too terribly exciting for lackadaisical society. Listen!"

It furnishes and maintains its own museums, parks, art galleries, libraries, concert-halls, roads, bridges, markets, slaughterhouses, fire-engines, lighthouses, pilots, ferries, surf-boats, steam-tugs, life-boats, cemeteries, public baths, washhouses, pounds, harbours, piers, wharves, hospitals, dispensaries, gas-works, water-works, tramways, telegraph-cables, allotments, cow-meadows, artisans' dwellings, schools, churches, and reading-rooms.

When he wrote the scene, Christophe had thought of nothing but his own joy: he had never given a thought to the manner of its performance: and it had certainly never occurred to him that it might be produced on the stage. He meant it to be sung at a concert at such time as the concert-halls should be open to him.

Then she busily lighted the little hall-lamp with his matches, and hurried down, taking the matches, to the kitchen. After a few moments George followed her; he was obliged to follow her. She had removed her coat; it lay on the sole chair. The hat and blouse which she wore seemed very vivid in the kitchen vestiges of past glorious episodes in concert-halls and hansoms.