All the American is taught is to be in a perpetual hurry and to make money no matter how.

In this mad daily race for wealth, he bolts his food, not stopping to masticate it properly, and consequently suffers all his life from dyspepsia.

So he rushes from the cradle to the grave, and what's the good, since he must one day die like all the rest?
And what, asks the foreigner, has the American hustler accomplished that his slower-going Continental brother has not done as well?
Are finer cities to be found in America than in Europe, do Americans paint more beautiful pictures, or write more learned or more entertaining books, has America made greater progress in science?
Is it not a fact that the greatest inventors and scientists of our time--Marconi, who gave to the world wireless telegraphy, Professor Curie, who discovered radium, Pasteur, who found a cure for rabies, Santos-Dumont, who has almost succeeded in navigating the air, Professor Roentgen who discovered the X-ray--are not all these immortals Europeans?
And those two greatest mechanical inventions of our day, the automobile and the submarine boat, were they not first introduced and perfected in France before we in America woke up to appreciate their use?
Is it, therefore, not possible to take life easily and still achieve?
The logic of these arguments, set forth in _Le Soir_ in an article on the New World, appealed strongly to Jefferson Ryder as he sat in front of the Cafe de la Paix, sipping a sugared Vermouth.

It was five o'clock, the magic hour of the _aperitif_, when the glutton taxes his wits to deceive his stomach and work up an appetite for renewed gorging.

The little tables were all occupied with the usual before-dinner crowd.