MADAME POULARD

MADAME POULARD, who has retired from the savory kitchen of the Poulard Ainé at Mont Saint-Michel, was in her way as truly an artist as her friends whose sketches covered the walls of the salle-à-manger in the famous inn. To see her preparing an omelette or a stew, or keeping an eye on the chickens revolving over the fire, was to see a woman practicing an art rather than following a trade. In handling and using her utensils she had the grand air which distinguishes the artist from the artisan, the cook whose heart is in her work from the cook bent on earning a living. A charming woman said of the table of a club in an American summer resort, that there was no love in it; the actual needs were generally met, but there was no margin, no suggestion of human interest. You were treated as a boarder to be fed, and not as a human being with taste as well as appetite. Madame Poulard paid her visitors the compliment of treating them as persons to whom cooking as a fine art was a delicate tribute.

Sitting one day in the little openair café across the street from the Poulard Ainé, Madame Poulard coming to the door from time to time and smiling in her gracious way, an Englishman looked up from his after-dinner coffee and remarked that she was a European personage. She had welcomed a host of Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, and Americans to the old town, and they will always think of her as one of its most characteristic features. The little café was one of the most interesting places in Europe; and the few who sat under its roof were as much on the pavement as if they had been at the open-air tables of the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Italiens. Everybody who came into Mont

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Saint-Michel passed through the two narrow arched gates that pierce the wall between the hotel and the café. The street is a small alley, and the town is built along a series of stairways. In the old days the traveler came across the causeway from Pontorson by coach or carriage, was met at the outer gate by emissaries from the Poulard Ainé and the Poulard Jeune, and his luggage carried by hand to his destination. In those days there was fierce rivalry between the two inns, a strife as bitter as that between the Montagues and Capulets; for a family quarrel lay in the background and had grown to epic proportions. To reach the rival hotel it was necessary to conduct the guests past the hospitable doors of the inn "renowned for its omelettes," and very pretty comedy was played every day before the eyes of the sitters in the café. At the precise psychologic moment, Madame Poulard stepped smiling out of her kitchen, with a grace of manner so full of cordiality that the new arrivals followed her queenly gestures instinctively as she waved them into her house, and left the emissaries of the other establishment vainly gnashing their teeth in the empty street. She was a born hostess, and no visitor wished to go farther when she barred the way.

Dark of hair and eye, with a dignified and handsome figure and a manner full of charm, Madame Poulard was born to make strangers feel at home. She spoke French, not only with musical intonation, but so slowly and distinctly that dull ears caught her nice distinctions of sound, and understood. She was not only hostess of the inn, which she made famous throughout Europe, but of the town as well; she was the custodian of its traditions and the guide to its treasures of interest.

And what a town it is! From the yellow sands, which shine league on league when the tide is out, to the great door of the Castle and the spire of the beautiful Abbey Church, it is a matching of splendid architecture with a magnificent site in a setting of inimitable beauty. Battlement and church rise on a huge rock out of a sea full of magic. When the tide runs out, as far as the eye can reach stretches that wonderful shimmering surface alive with the vitality of the sea: beneath is the buried forest of Broceliande; beyond are the shores of Normandy, the spires rising from unseen villages; from that shore in the old days many a pilgrim took his conch and picked his way to the shrine of Saint-Michel.

They still come on festal days, but alas! the shell and staff are no longer borne ; they come by trolley! Climb the long stairs in the shadow of the great pile; enter the portal of the fortress, pass through the noble Hall of Knights, where a little group of gallant men once stood out alone on the coast against Henry V; walk through the beautiful Abbey Church, descend the winding path along the battlements, and one seems to be moving through the Middle Ages, visible in massive wall and tower, and disclosed afresh to the mind by the history and traditions of a place unsurpassed in its picturesque beauty.

But it is of the living, not the dead, that one takes account when Madame Poulard stands in the narrow street. If you lodged in the Maison Vert or the Maison Blanc you had your morning coffee and roll on a little terrace, overhung with vines, looking out on the sands or the sea; but for luncheon and dinner you descended to the house by the inner gate, and there was Madame moving quietly about, concerned with stews, soups, or oysters, as well as with omelettes. She was never hurried or preoccupied. She bore herself with the ease and freedom of a presiding genius, and her deftness was only an external and visible sign of an inward gift and calling.

When the time came to go, no bill was presented; you kept your own score, and neither Madame nor Monsieur was concerned about small matters like afternoon tea. They said Saint-Michel watched over the inn and protected it from dishonest guests.

A fortune awaits the men and women who have the taste and skill to open and conduct attractive, artistic, thoroughly comfortable small hotels or inns in this country. Such hostelries are so few and far between that one can almost count them on his fingers. There are "palatial hotels" everywhere, with palatial prices; but where are the small, quiet, refined houses in which one can draw an easychair up to a low table, with a good reading light, and feel at home? The traveler sits, as a rule, in a great room with composite marble pillars, in a vast leather chair, too heavy to be moved, with a light ten feet above his head. Where are the small hotels, with lovely gardens about them, such as one finds in all parts of England? Where are the hotels with the air of hospitality for the individual rather than for the public en masse; with the personal touch which transforms cooking from the mere production of food to the kindly ministrations of a neglected art? There is an unpretentious hotel in a small western town, kept by a woman who has the instincts of a hostess. It is a very simple house, and the furniture and decorations are commonplace; but it is full of flowers and pervaded by a sense of comfort and an atmosphere of home. A woman not only "runs" it, but pervades it,—a very different matter; and men go a hundred miles out of the way to spend Sunday in its cheerful atmosphere. There is room for inns as well as for hotels in this country; there are hosts of people who long for quiet comfort; for low lights and bright fires in winter; for gardens in summer; for a homelikeness which opulence of furnishing and decoration have almost banished from American hotels.

FOOLS "THE longer I live," said my friend the Professor thoughtfully, "the more I hate a fool."

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Now in most things the Professor and I are pleasantly in accord; but, as he spoke that damning sentence, I knew that the subject, further pursued, would breed alienation between us, and I turned the discourse into other channels. smiled to myself as I felt the resemblance of my instinctive state of mind to the attitude of a mother hen, hustling all her chickens behind her out of the way of the prowling cat, anxious, perturbed, defensive. For it is my excellent fortune to rank not a few of the class obnoxious to the Professor among my cherished friends. They are the salt of the earth to me. I could not relinquish one of them, nor has one of them reformed.

It may be a somewhat delicate matter to determine in just what high folly consists. There are fools and fools, and from the latter I avert my eyes as sadly and speedily as the Professor. But the standards shift so enormously that it is perhaps not going too far to say that every man is a fool to someone and a wise man to someone else. Which lets us all in to the happy band, if we view the matter broadly.

However, for the sake of convenience, that a definition may be approximated, it is always possible to appeal to a shadowy sort of public tribunal which fluctuates like the waves of the sea, but which, again like the sea, remains pretty well limited. With this tribunal I should probably agree in stating that the chief mark of a fool is indifference to results. That is so disconcerting and childish in him! It is a severely logical world — cause and result, cause and result; we should reason our actions well. But the fool cares only about the cause. Glorious, beautiful, soul-filling thing! he rushes at it with arms held wide, seizes it, launches it-whither away? Perhaps it is fortunate for our peace that, for the most

part, a fool throws far, having a mighty impulse in him; so that his cause goes clean over the edge of the decorous world and apparently comes to nothing. But who shall say what alarming results take place among the stars?

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I once knew a joyous, refreshing creature like the sun was the sudden entrance of him who spent himself in translating books which no one wanted to read, in devising schemes to assist a race which declined to be assisted, in pouring his life in the sand.

"Never mind," he would assure me brightly, when I weakly fell so far from the grace of our true understanding as to remonstrate with him. "I can't do anything else, you know, for these things seem important to me. If people don't care for them now, they will; I can always wait."

Another impetuous soul was fain of extravagant hero-worship. I watched his career with an interest which was partly impersonal, but which owed something also to my own ends. For I found that he furnished me a sure test of the measure of greatness. Some of his heroes - the most, alas!- fled from his praises precipitately. They did not understand him; they thought him about to swallow them up; they beat him off with both hands. Now a hero who cannot apprehend love and accept it simply and frankly lacks the true magnanimity; so it appears. In the end, as a matter of fact, the laugh was always on the heroes; for their impulsive admirer had no intention of swallowing up; he would have choked with shame at the thought. It was simply natural for him to love, and, loving, to mention the fact. His love was thrown back in his face twenty times to my certain knowledge, to my burning indignation too; but his heart remained sweet and warm through it all, and he went on loving. Who was the hero here? Who the fool? One may well pause and consider.

Another certain trait of a fool is his zest in living. This is so marked that

the wonder is, considering how keen we all are in the quest for happiness, that we do not at once adopt the motley as a universal garb. I suppose our dignity stands in the way. It would doubtless be going too far to say that all optimists are fools; but there is certainly hardly a fool who is not an optimist. They see the world couleur de rose, these children. If evil exists, it is only a chance to prove the hearts and the hands of men; they have at it courageously. Given a problem before which wise men have pondered and waited long, to determine the safest line of approach: up comes the fool along any line which he happens to occupy at the moment, suddenly running, his head well down, and -pouf! whack! presto! finish! the problem has disappeared. The amazed discomfiture of the wise men at the unwarranted consummation is not the least engaging part of the whole pleasant spectacle.

nature.

One of the fool's most lovable qualities is his entire willingness to appear ridiculous. That takes greatness of To do absurd things in the calm understanding that they are absurd (though probably glimpsing divinity, too, on their cloudy side, which is larger), and then to abide the consequences of laughter and derision excellent fool! he puts to shame the solemn pride of wisdom. The most beloved fool I know turns on himself and laughs at himself with such an abandon of cheerful mirth that one might think his quixotic achievements were undertaken quite for the joke if one had not first seen deeper.

They are all eternally young and glad; of that we may be certain. There was never an "old fool" in the world, though the phrase is common enough. I met a typical member once of the delightful order. His folly I recognized at once, and rejoiced in it and warmed myself at it through the whole of a happy evening. But when I was questioned about

his age, I was suddenly at a loss. I had talked with him as with one of my years;

perhaps now, however, thinking about it, he had seemed a little older. “Forty ?” I hazarded doubtfully. My hostess clapped her hands and laughed in a merry triumph. "Sixty-nine!" she informed me. It is a wonderful thing to hold the secret of freshness thus. Strange! strange! that we are not all fools, when the profit is so great.

TO "THE MAN IN THE MIRROR'

AND yet, my dear Contributor, you don't much more than half know yourself if, as seems to be the case, you have confined your observations to the front view. I suppose we are all of us apt to be of the opinion of the little girl in Punch, who said, "But I am in front." The person whose eyes I meet in the mirror, that is I. His are the qualities which I recognize, his the defects which I try to correct. If I do not wish others to see me exactly as I am, I control my face and think myself sufficiently disguised; and all the time my back may be betraying me.

Certainly, if you depend to any extent on the man in the mirror for self-knowledge, it behooves you to get an all-round view. Otherwise you may be most lamentably mistaken in yourself. Take, for instance, the case of my friend X. He is a delightful fellow, with hosts of friends. With his alert expression, his young eyes, his charming smile, you find it hard to realize that he is well along in the forties, and you feel that he must have drunk of the fountain of youth. You believe him, as he frankly believes himself, to be a generous, sympathetic sort of man, with a sense of humor and with energy enough to seize the opportunity of the moment. But as you get to know him well, you come across some curious contradictions in his character. At times he seems oddly cold-blooded and hard-hearted. You are surprised to find him more obstinate than you had supposed, and most of all surprised at a certain procrastination in

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doing the thing which he has declared to be the altogether desirable thing to do. You set down these peculiarities as strange but momentary vagaries, having nothing to do with his real character. Then some day, perhaps, you may happen to walk down a corridor behind him, with nothing to distract your attention. Heavens! you say to yourself, I did n't know X looked like that. What you see is the back of a very settled, very opiniated middle-aged man. denly you feel that you understand X as you have never understood him before. Those supposed chance vagaries fall into place as an integral part of his character. Hitherto it has always seemed odd that he should be so genuinely unconscious of his own inconsistencies. Now you see that it may well be because he only judges himself by the man in the mirror. He looks in the glass and thinks himself a dashing blade who must be held in with a tight rein, when all the time it would be quite safe to let himself go, since there are enough counteracting influences in his own nature. And so he grows, year by year, a little less worthy of the love which, after all, he is always going to get, as long as he looks at you out of those clear young eyes and greets you with that charming smile.

Women study their backs more than men and they also disguise them more. I remember a very fascinating woman once saying to me, "I would rather my back should look right than my face, for when I am face to face with a person I can take care of myself, but my back is defenseless." Once in a while a man takes a hand-glass to study a disconcerting bald spot, and he may look to see whether his new coat fits, but I doubt whether, as a rule, he can be said to know himself from that point of view. Yet sometimes the result of such a study would be very encouraging, for we all know many persons whose backs are much more prepossessing than their faces younger, more alert, more suggestive of beauty. Try it,

dear Contributor, with the help of, say, three cheval-glasses placed at the proper angles, and you may find that modest self-confidence which you have hitherto acquired by such slow degrees, increasing by leaps and bounds.

THE NEWSPAPER "FAN"

I AM a newspaper "fan." No one knows it except my fellow passengers on the evening suburban train. I do not tell my family, because the paper I buy and read for its moving-picture descriptions of the daily baseball game is blackguarded beyond words, when, in our house, the talk runs on newspapers. Indeed, it is my proudest hypocrisy to join in the manifestations against it after I have played through the latest royal contest between rival twirlers whose existence is, unfortunately, not a part of my respectable and authentic life. And then, with accuracy due to long custom, the flimsy sheet is slipped under the car seat, and I walk from the departing train outwardly stainless.

The world is so made that those of us who live eight hours in offices spend their Saturday afternoons and holidays. in more direct physical sport than watching even real baseball. Thus it is that none of my heroes of the bat are more to me than excited names; picturesque, it is true, and gatherers of further glories through the gaudy sobriquets given them by the baptizers of the Press. Kerrison the Small, Dygert, Lajoie, Stovall, and Flick are my friends. Boulton is among them no longer, for did he not join the Blank City Nationals like a true traitor?

Baseball is the best cement democracy knows. An Italian in a blue shirt with a flowered silk front, who rides on a pass on my train, reads the same paper that I do. One day, at the sixth inning, he stopped, thick forefinger against the page. It marked a place where, for the second time Tox had struck out to a notably slow "box-man." We exchanged speaking glances, shook our heads, and read