Does all New York come to the nearest subway station when it wants to have a family fight? It is a long time since I have been in it, so my memory may have failed, but I don’t recall any such arrangement. But Paris – why I’ve seen more battling in the subway than in the war. Every time I’ve been to Paris they had to call in a policeman to settle a subway scrap. And the police are so pretty. They carry swords, have a uniform that looks like a soldier’s, pink, fat cheeks, and blond moustache and beard trimmed close. They may not all have these features, but that’s the type. They’re fearfully polite; all they do is remonstrate in gentle tones. If the people didn’t respect authority, the “sergents de ville,” as they are called, would suffer considerable personal damage.
The Notre Dame positively casts a spell over you. There are some 34 bridges over the Seine in Paris. Notre Dame is near the river and can be seen from many of the bridges. At dusk or dark it works a charm that the most prosaic person possible can’t fail to perceive. By that I mean Frank Phillips.
He and I walked some miles last night, and struck some queer places. I saw a dome which I thought was the Pantheon and which I wanted to locate and know. So we set out in the general direction of the thing. We went through some crazy, crooked, crowded streets – a sort of slum. Bats flew all around – queer thing it seems in a city. We found another dome – St. Paul’s church cussed, retraced our steps, crossed the river, walked much, and finally in the blackness of 9:45 in Paris came suddenly upon the imposing, awesome Pantheon huge in the night. We waited about 5 minutes till some one passed and we asked to be sure.
It is a good plan to see Paris in the dark first, because you get an indelible impression of wonders that, by day, are marred by the sordid banal influences which crowd close around all these French places.
The even tenor of our way continues undisturbed. I find it is a long time between pay-days. I have been here just a month today, and pay-day is the only event worth recording.
The war, of course, goes on and the Statue of Liberty is still some thirty-five hundred miles distant. But cheer up, don’t let it affect your health. As some one said today: “Well if it isn’t, at least it’ll be a year nearer the end.” There you have it.
Next post August 18.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 