THE LATIN QUARTER OF TO-DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2504, 19 March 1902, Page 66

THE LATIN QUARTER OF TO-DAY.

(Condensed fiom Hirper's Weekly, Xew Y>k.) Will you make a little journey with me through the Latin quarter of to-day? We [ fchall see how these young men work, as well as play. If we dance with them for an. houi at the -Bal Bullier, we Aall also accompany them to the schools and fetudiosj and if we loiter under tJie Atur&

that shine down into the Luxembourg gardens, «\ ith I know not (vhat Mimi Pinson, we :hall go, too. into one ol those darkly serious clubs svhere veiy young men diseu~& very seiious piobleins of sociology and politics and religion. And when we come away and crcs the liver into the flutter of a brighter Paris, we shall have gained, peihaps, a little in wisdom and ."••oiiie thing in gaiety. First of all, then, let u« cleaily understand that the Latin quarter is a place for study. It is a city of colleges and schools, where every possible subject may be studied, where the last word in every science and every art may be acquired. The burghers of this city are not schoolboys. They are nob as you and I were when we wore away our freshness at Piincetown; they are not like the cribbed and cabined young fellows of Oxford >r Cambridge. They have emerged from that period. They are no longer lycean«- — !es potaches, as the good slang goe^ — for they have assumed the toga. Like the student of the universities of Germany ?nd Italy, they aic men who have come to perfect themselves in the knowledge of a chosen profession — be it law or medicine, literature, engineering, art, or any one of a score of special fields of learning. Every year they come up from the cities and hamlets and green country-places of (France in • their thousands.

In addition to the French students, there aie, of course, many hundreds of foreigners wno enter these open doois — for he who will may study here. The Jew from Galicia may take a course in the Talmud, if he will ; the Chinese may study their own language ; the Calvinist may instruct himself in Protestant theology. * And all thi« is free, with the exception of a few s-light tolls too insignifieiuit to mention — at most 6dol a year for certain recondite courses. So the young men gather from Greece and Italy, from Roumanian lands, from the Orient, from all Europe, England, and the America 1 -. Once they have entered themselves as students they are rightful buighers of the Latin quarter. The students form a state within a state. They have a photographic " card of identity, ' which is an " open sesame "' in all Parit and in all Fiance. By showing this card the student may enter all the subsidised theatres free, and the otheis at halfprice ; this card vouches for his credit at his butcher's or his baker's or his- tailor's, and entitles him to a tolerably big reduction on the price-current; it gives him a half-rate on tho State railways — in fact, it gives him almost the " freedom of the city." When Monsieus le President or Monsieur le Ministre de la Guerre gives bis icception, you and I. who are by no mean? insignificant ptrsons, will liave to nobble all sorts of officials to get cards, but the good student goe Q in as though he were an ambassador. The door? of the salon swing wide to liim. He is a privileged person, indeed. Your Roumanian. Scot, Greek. Englishman, or smiling black fiom Hayti becomes forthwith a burgher of the Latin quarter ; he is of it ; he patters the slang of the stxidents, and wears the neckties of the Boul' Mich ; but few of Lhe Americans who enter themselves as students in the book« of the schools ever enter the real life of the quarter. They walk around the edge of it. taking snapshots with Americanmade cameras. They do not live in garrets under the «.tai«. They live in the boardinghouses of die Rue Leopold-Robprt. Some of them : ide boldly in cabs. — think of it!