. The real Latin quarter . nteresting and representative sight of stu-dent life than between the hours of four andfive on Friday afternoon, when the military-band plays in the Luxembourg is the afternoon when Bohemia is onparade. Then every one flocks here to seeones friends—and a sort of weekly receptionfor the Quarter is held. The walks aboutthe band-stand are thronged with studentsand girls, and hundreds of chairs are filledwith an audience of the older people—shop-keepers and their families, old women inwhite lace caps, and gray-haired old men,many in straight-brimmed high hat
. The real Latin quarter . nteresting and representative sight of stu-dent life than between the hours of four andfive on Friday afternoon, when the military-band plays in the Luxembourg is the afternoon when Bohemia is onparade. Then every one flocks here to seeones friends—and a sort of weekly receptionfor the Quarter is held. The walks aboutthe band-stand are thronged with studentsand girls, and hundreds of chairs are filledwith an audience of the older people—shop-keepers and their families, old women inwhite lace caps, and gray-haired old men,many in straight-brimmed high hats of amode of twenty years past. Here they sitand listen to the music under the coolshadow of the trees, whose rich foliageforms an arbor overhead—a roof of greenleaves, through which the sunbeams streamand in which the fat, gray pigeons find aparadise. There is a booth near-by where waffles, cooked on a small oven in the rear, are sold. In front are a dozen or more tables for ices and drinkables. Every table and 152. y chair is taken within hearing distance ofthe band. When these musicians of thearmy of France arrive, marching in twosfrom their barracks to the stand, it is al-ways the signal for that genuine enthusi-asm among the waiting crowd which onesees between the French and their soldiers. If you chance to sit among the groups atthe little tables, and watch the passingthrong in front of you, you will see somequeer types, many of them seldom enevidence except on these Friday afternoonsin the Luxembourg. Buried, no doubt, insome garret hermitage or studio, theyemerge thus weekly to greet silently thepassing world. A tall poet stalks slowly by, reading in-tently, as he walks, a well-worn volume ofverses—his faded straw hat shading thetip of his long nose. Following him, a boyof twenty, delicately featured, with thatpurity of expression one sees in the facesof the good—the result of a life, perhaps,given to his ideal in art. He wears his hairlong and curling over h
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectartists, bookyear1901
