In
Berlin, the American colony is largely made up of music students
and in Vienna of physicians; but in the other places many folks
of many minds and many callings constitute the groups. Some few
have left their country for their country's good and some have
expatriated themselves because, as they explain in bursts of
confidence, living is cheaper in France than it is in America. I
suppose it is, too, if one can only become reconciled to doing
without most of the comforts which make life worth while in America
or anywhere else. Included among this class are many rather unhappy
old ladies who somehow impress you as having been shunted off to
foreign parts because there were no places for them in the homes
of their children and their grandchildren. So now they are spending
their last years among strangers, trying with a desperate eagerness
to be interested in people and things for which they really care
not a fig, with no home except a cheerless pension.
Also there are certain folk--products, in the main, of the Eastern
seaboard--who, from having originally lived in America and spent
most of their time abroad, have now progressed to the point where
they now live mostly abroad and visit America fleetingly once in
a blue moon. As a rule these persons know a good deal about Europe
and very little about the country that gave them birth.
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