the great men of letters had been such bears as Chopin there would never have been the salon, and the story of Parisian life would be the poorer. And, after all, it is an excellent discipline. Men acquire the art of listening as well as that of talking, and it is a virtue of national importance to teach people not to be dull. For if you are dull you have no possible place in a salon. Your hostess has no desire to crowd her rooms with inanimate or bored figure-heads. You come on a distinct treaty, the conditions of which are accepted by your appearance,—to amuse and be amused. If you speak, either you must have something to say, or you must say whatever you wish to utter well.
Since the Faubourg has been sulking, and the aristocracy is no longer a power in the land, the aristocratic salon has dwindled into a tradition. The young men are so desperately taken up with sport, with automobiles, that they have not the leisure their elders had for the arts and graces of life. The rosse literature has spoiled the traditions of the Faubourg for us. The French aristocracy has come to mean Gyp and Lavedan for us, and a course of those writers may be warranted to drive any intelligent reader into the society of washerwomen and tramps as a pleasing change. The absence from all these heraldic pages, in which everybody is more or less titled, of such a thing as
