I took my departure in the early summer of that fateful year and left all things booming--not a sign or trace that there had ever been aught but boundless happiness and prosperity.

It is hard, the saying has it, to keep a squirrel on the ground, and surely Paris is the squirrel among cities.

The season just ended had been, everybody declared, uncommonly successful from the standpoints alike of the hotels and cafes, the shop folk and their patrons, not to mention the purely pleasure-seeking throng.

People seemed loaded with money and giddy to spend it.
The headwaiter at Voisin's told me this: "Mr.Barnes, of New York, ordered a dinner, carte blanche, for twelve.
"'Now,' says he, 'garcon, have everything bang up, and here's seventy-five francs for a starter.' "The dinner was bang up.

Everybody hilarious.