"Singular," he said; "no concerted walking or driving. No understanding
as to any time for it; no understanding as to any place for it. Not the
slightest social organization for out-door life; how much there must
be"--(with a backward thought towards Rosy's debut)--"in-doors--
somewhere!"
He deplored the absolute non-existence of the institution known as the
cafe--all the more, in view of the long months of waiting that must
intervene before he should be able to gain membership in some club. The
cafe, that crowning gem in the coronet of civilization--the name was
everywhere, the thing nowhere. Nothing offered save a few large places of
general and promiscuous resort, which, under one ameliorative title or
another, dispensed prompt refreshment amid furnishings of the most
reverberant vulgarity.
"It's impossible!" he said in one of these places one day to one of his
artists, a new-comer from Milan. "Either you stand here in front of this
counter facing all that superfluous glassware, and that cheap young man
with the dreadful hair, and the reflections of all those hideous daubs
behind you, or else you retire to one of those cubby-holes along the side
there and make the disposal of a bottle of light beer seem a disreputable
orgy or a dark conspiracy, or a combination of both."
"Not one word against the pictures," replied the other. "How else here do
I live?"
"No journals," pursued Truesdale; "no demi-tasse, no clientele, no
leisure.
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