About Paris by Richard Harding Davis

Paris is the only city in the world which the visitor from the outside positively refuses to take seriously. He may have come to Paris with an earnest purpose to study art, or to investigate the intricacies of French law, or the historical changes of the city; or, if it be a woman, she may have come to choose a trousseau; but no matter how serious his purpose may be, there is always some one part of each day when the visitor rests from his labors and smiles indulgently and does as the Parisians do. Whether the city or the visitor is responsible for this, whether Paris adopts the visitor, or the visitor adapts himself to his surroundings, it is impossible to say. But there is certainly no other capital of the world in which the stranger so soon takes on the local color, in which he becomes so soon acclimated, and which brings to light in him so many new and unsuspected capacities for enjoyment and adventure.

Americans go to London for social triumph or to float railroad shares, to Rome for art's sake, and to Berlin to study music and to economize; but they go to Paris to enjoy themselves. And there are no young men of any nation who enter into the accomplishment of this so heartily and so completely as does the young American. It is hardly possible for the English youth to appreciate Paris perfectly, because he has been brought up to believe that "one Englishman can thrash three Frenchmen," and because he holds a nation that talks such an absurd language in some contempt; hence he is frequently while there irritable and rude, and jostles men at the public dances, and in other ways asserts his dignity.