and mediaeval, this Bordeaux, with high, mysterious walls along the
street's over which hang dusty branches of trees or vines sneaking
mischievously out of bounds. A woe-begone trolley creaks through the
narrow streets and heart-broken cabmen mourning over the mistakes
of misspent lives, larrup disconsolate horses over stony streets
as they creak and jog and wheeze ahead of the invisible crows
that seem always to be hovering above ready to batten upon their
rightful provender. For an hour in the morning before our train left
for Paris we chartered one of the ramshackle cabs of the town and
took in Bordeaux. It was vastly unlike either Emporia or Wichita,
or anything in Kansas, or anything in America; or so far as that
goes, to Henry and me, it was unlike anything else in the wide and
beautiful world. "All this needs," said Henry, as he lolled back
upon the moth-eaten cushions of the hack that banged its iron rims
on the cobbles beneath us, and sent the thrill of it into our teeth,
"all this needs is Mary Pickford and a player organ to be a good
film!" The only thing we saw that made us homesick was the group
of firemen in front of the engine house playing checkers or chess
or something. But the town had an historic interest for us as the
home of the Girondists of the French Revolution; so we looked up
their monument and did proper reverence to them. They were moderate
idealists who rose during the first year of the revolution; we
thought them much like the Bull Moosers. So we did what homage we
could to the Girondists who were run over by the revolutionary band
wagon and sent to the guillotine during the Terror. For we knew;
indeed into the rolly-poly necks of Henry and me, in our own
politics, the knife had bitten many times. So we stood before what
seemed to be the proper monument with sympathetic eyes and uncovered
heads for a second before we took the train for Paris.