Matthew Paris

“ The American artist who has taken Paris properly has only kind words to speak of her. He is grateful for what she gave him, but he is not unmindful of his mother-country at home. He may complain when he returns of the mud in our streets, and the height of our seventeen-story buildings, and the ugliness of our elevated roads—and who does not? But if his own art is lasting and there is in his heart much constancy, his work will grow and continue in spite of these things, and will not droop from the lack of atmosphere about him. ”

“ Never had he been so satisfied with the world and with himself. He was a central figure to-day, and never were religious phrases so glibly rolled from his tongue; for, if worked up to something near the fever heat, Matthew could talk easily and well, and after painful preparation had, at times, become eloquent. ”

“ Matthew has always been a good and obedient boy, but he is now leaving the quietude and shelter of a country home to face the varied and testing experiences of life in a great city. We have no fear but he will conduct himself in a manner worthy of his home and of his early training ”

“ Paris alone has the tradition. Once it was Holland, once Florence, and now it’s Paris. Why, in Paris any fellows who club together can get the biggest men to visit them free, gratis, for nothing. Here the big pots prefer the society of the swells.”
“Then why are you not in Paris?” asked Matt, rallying.
“Ah! That’s where my governor is such an idiot. He pretends to think there’s more chance for a man who’s been through the Academy Schools; he gets known to the R.A.’s, and all that. But his real reason is that he’s afraid to trust me in Paris by myself.” ”

“ When the boys got to the hotel, McGlory stumbled into a chair on the veranda.
"Gee, man, but I'm tired!" he exclaimed. "A cowboy is built for riding, and not for this footwork. It sure gets me going. Sit down here for a while, Matt, and let's palaver about New York, and what the chances are for our getting there."
"They're pretty slim, I guess," answered Matt, dropping into a seat at his chum's side, "if we're to wait until Grattan is captured. Tsan Ti says, in his letter, that he won't come on until Grattan is behind the bars, or safely off his trail." ”

“ When a Frenchman arrives in London, he finds a very great change, in philosophy as well as in most other things. In Paris he left the world all full of matter; here he finds absolute vacua. At Paris the universe is seen filled up with ethereal vortices, while here the same [232] space is occupied with the play of the invisible forces of gravitation. In Paris the earth is painted for us longish like an egg, and in London it is oblate like a melon. At Paris the pressure of the moon causes the ebb and flow of tides ”

“ Of being is practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm.'
Another appreciation of the father by the son is interesting. 'He was the first English clergyman who could speak as freely on religious subjects as if he had been a layman.'
Of Matthew himself there needs little to be said. From whom did he inherit his strange temperament? His poetry lacks the warmth of feeling his father would have put into it. His muse is cold, classical, joyless. His criticisms are keen, incisive, [218] often just, more often marred by foolish prejudices, almost brutally expressed. ”

“ On no one class of visitor does Paris lay her spell more heavily than on the American art student. For, no matter where he has studied at home, or under what master, he finds when he reaches Paris so much that is new and beautiful and full of inspiration that he becomes as intolerant as are all recent converts, and so happy in his chosen profession that he looks upon everything else than art with impatience and contempt. ”

“ Where's Carl?"
"I sent him to the police department after those papers the chief was to get for us," replied Matt. "Here's some breakfast for you, Dick. Better get on the outside of it as soon as you can. By the way, haven't you some luggage in Chicago you'll want to get?"
"I sent all my luggage through to Quebec. When I travel, Matt, I always travel light. Mighty nice of you to remember my 'scran,'" Ferral added, as he took the box Matt handed him. ”

“ There are a great number of Americans who are only in Paris for the month, and whom you have seen on the steamer, or passing up the Rue de la Paix, or at the banker's on mail day, and they seize this chance to recognize their countrymen, and grow tremendously excited in hitting each other in the eyes and on the nose, and then pass each other the next day in the Champs Élysées without the movement of an eyelash. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is just this tenacity of belief in one's own work, and just this intolerance of the work of others, that make Paris inspiring. A man cannot help but be in earnest, if he amounts to anything at all, when on every side he hears his work attacked or vaunted to the skies. ”

“ He does not invite the same people with whom he dined two weeks before in New York to dine and breakfast with him again in Paris, nor does he spend every afternoon in a frock-coat watching polo, or in flannels playing lawn-tennis on the Île de Puteaux. He has tennis and polo at home. Nor did he go all the way to Paris to dance in little hot apartments, or to spend the greater part of each day at the race-tracks of Longchamps or Auteuil. The Americans who do these things in Paris are a strange and incomprehensible class. ”

“ The city was at its gayest—that beautiful city, which we can never see again as we have seen it; which we lament, as some fair and radiant creature that has come to an untimely death. Paris the beautiful, Paris the beloved, imperial Paris, with her air of classic splendour, like the mistress of a Caesar, was in these days overshadowed by no threatening thundercloud, forerunner of the tempest and earthquake to come. ”

“ The workman of Paris is a gentleman in the best sense of the word. He feels free, independent, and proud in the consciousness that he is a part of the state. Soldiers were no longer to be seen in the city; they being garrisoned at Versailles and other neighboring cities; still there has never before been such a feeling of profound peace and security in France. Liberty is a great educator. The style, name, and other indications of the empire are passing away, and the republic has put its stamp on Paris. ”

“ This suggestion might appear to be seconded by the fact that this material, which has such a striking family [Pg 209] resemblance, is not scattered thru the body of Matthew’s work, but occurs, part of it before he has reached his junction with Mark and Luke, and the rest of it after he has parted from them. He not only begins and ends alone, but he begins and ends with material of a remarkably similar character. This is not enough, of course, to prove the unity of Matthew’s source for the first and last parts of his single tradition; but it is enough to suggest it. ”

“ I'm doing this because I want to be square. They'd kick me out of the army if I took money for doin' what's right."
"Take this," insisted Matt, "and give it to the mission. You can do that, can't you?"
"Sure." Prebbles pocketed the money. "I'm off, now," he went on, starting away. "I hope you won't have more trouble than you can take care of, but you've got a hard gang against you. Good-by."
"So long, Prebbles."
The clerk vanished, and Matt and McGlory, their nerves tingling with the prospect ahead of them, went back into the hotel, and took chairs near the telephone booth. ”

“ In Paris there are virtually no slums at all. The dangerous classes are there, and there is an army of beggars and wretches as poor and brutal as are to be found at large in any part of the world, but the Parisian criminal has no environment, no setting. He plays the part quite as effectively as does the London or New York criminal, but he has no appropriate scenery or mechanical effects.
If he wishes to commit murder, he is forced to make the best of the well-paved, well-lighted, and cleanly swept avenue. ”

“ The Grampus was moving! The roll of the craft proved that she was on the surface and under way. All was dark in the little steel room, and Matt got up and groped for the switch that turned on the incandescent light. A moment later there was a dazzling glow, and Matt looked at the bulkhead doors. They had been open when he and Dick turned in, and now they were closed!
He started for the door leading to the periscope room. Just as he laid his hand on it, Dick roused up.
"What's the blooming go, mate?" queried Dick, rubbing his eyes. "We seem to be on the move."
"We are," answered Matt grimly. ”

“ American women in Paris. They are the wives of bankers or merchants or the representatives of the firms which have their branches in Paris and London as well as New York. And there are hundreds more of Americans who are in Paris because of its art, the cheapness of its living, and its beauty. I am not speaking of them, and should they read this they will understand.
The American in Paris of whom one longest hesitates to speak is the girl or woman who has married a title. ”

“ The farmer brought the rope, and Matt, with his assistance, tied Tsan Ti's hands and feet. The mandarin yielded passively.
"This will not serve," was all he said; "the time for my dispatch will arrive, in spite of you."
"If you keep on acting in this foolish way, Tsan Ti," answered Matt, "I'll lose all the respect I ever had for you. Face the music, can't you? There's no merit in throwing up your hands and quitting just because you have run into a streak of hard luck." ”

“ But in Paris it's all turns and short corners. It's the most beautiful city in the world." I thought it was interesting to find a man so wrapped up in his chosen work that he could see nothing in the French capital but the angles which made the driving of four horses a matter of some skill. But what interest can you take in those Americans who have been taught something else besides driving, and who yet see only those things in Paris that are of quite as little worth as the sharp turns of the street corners? ”

“ We had other distinguished people in our street, but they were very much alive, and their tablets were colored ones drawn by Chéret, and pasted up all over Paris in endless repetition; and though their celebrity may not live as long as has the poet's, while they are living they seem to enjoy life as fully as he did, and to get out of the present all that the present has to give. ”

“ These boys have, perhaps, an aunt in Kansas City, or a mother in Lynn, Massachusetts, who is saving and pinching to send them fifteen or twenty dollars a week so that they can learn to be great painters, and they have not been in Paris a week before they have changed their entire view of art, and adopted a new method and a new master and a new religion. ”

“ We've got his orders."
"I'd like to have the orders confirmed," said Matt grimly. "I tried to get Townsend over the phone just before I left the hotel, but, as luck would have it, the wire was busy."
"You've been taken all aback, same as though you'd been struck by a white squall," muttered Dick perplexedly. "I don't think that old flatfoot bucko ought to put you in such a taking, Matt."
"It wasn't Sixty alone that took me aback, Dick," answered Matt. "Miss Harris had more to do with that than Sixty had."
"Dit you see der young laty, Matt?" asked Carl, brightening. ”

“ Matt was thoughtful for a space.
"They say that every one has a double," he remarked, with a half laugh, "and it begins to look as though my double had shown up. This double-trouble was something I never expected to run into, but it's come and we'll have to see it through. Townsend didn't give you a hint as to what he wanted me for?"
"Never a hint," answered Dick. "He was mighty close about it."
"Well," decided Matt, "I'll be at that house in Prytania Street on the stroke of twelve, to-night. Let's feel as easy as we can about that letter, and go and get some supper." ”

“ Paris is full of these poor hangers-on, who have allowed her to use them and pat them on the back, and who cannot see that her approbation is not the only reward worth the striving for, but who go on year after year tagging in her train, beseeching her to take some notice of them. They are like the little boys who run beside the coaches and turn somersaults to draw a copper from the passengers on top, and who are finally left far behind, unobserved and forgotten beside the dusty road. ”

“ I know him."
"There's no such person as 'Nutmegs,'" answered the girl tartly. "If you mean my brother, Mark, he's in his laboratory down by the canal."
Perry stared a moment, then gave vent to an amused whistle.
"Laboratory, eh? Well, that's a good one, Susie. Where's the reformed road-agent? Is he in the laboratory joint, too?"
"No, Welcome has gone into town, but I can call Mark if you——"
"No, don't call him, Susie," interrupted Perry. "I've got something to tell you about Matt King. Say, I thought that would make you open your eyes. I reckon you don't think much of Matt King, eh?" ”

“ Matthews wants taste, or has been spoiled by the taste of the town, whom ‘he must live to please, and please to live.’ His talent, though limited, is of a lively and vigorous fibre; capable of a succession of shifts and disguises; he is up to a number of good things—single hits here and there; but by the suddenness and abruptness of his turns, he surprises and shocks oftener than he satisfies. His wit does not move the muscles of the mind, but, like some practical joker, gives one a good rap on the knuckles, or a lively box on the ear. ”