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diff --git a/379-h/379-h.htm b/379-h/379-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a291133 --- /dev/null +++ b/379-h/379-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7081 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Worldly Ways and Byways</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Worldly Ways and Byways, by Eliot Gregory</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Worldly Ways and Byways, by Eliot Gregory + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Worldly Ways and Byways + + +Author: Eliot Gregory + + + +Release Date: April 5, 2007 [eBook #379] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLDLY WAYS AND BYWAYS*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1899 Charles Scribner’s Sons +edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>Worldly<br /> +Ways<br /> +&<br /> +Byways</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br /> +Eliot Gregory<br /> +(“<i>An Idler</i>”)</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">new +york</span><br /> +<i>Charles Scribner’s Sons</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">mdcccxcix</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Copyright</i>, 1898, +<i>by</i><br /> +<i>Charles Scribner’s Sons</i></p> +<p>To<br /> +<i>E. L. Godkin, Esq</i><sup><i>re</i></sup>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>:</p> +<p>I wish your name to appear on the first page of a volume, the +composition of which was suggested by you.</p> +<p>Gratitude is said to be “the hope of favors to +come;” these lines are written to prove that it may be the +appreciation of kindnesses received.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Heartily yours</i><br /> +<i>Eliot Gregory</i></p> +<h2>A Table of Contents</h2> +<p><i>To the R E A D E R</i></p> +<p>1. Charm</p> +<p>2. The Moth and the Star</p> +<p>3. Contrasted Travelling</p> +<p>4. The Outer and the Inner Woman</p> +<p>5. On Some Gilded Misalliances</p> +<p>6. The Complacency of Mediocrity</p> +<p>7. The Discontent of Talent</p> +<p>8. Slouch</p> +<p>9. Social Suggestion</p> +<p>10. Bohemia</p> +<p>11. Social Exiles</p> +<p>12. “Seven Ages” of Furniture</p> +<p>13. Our Elite and Public Life</p> +<p>14. The Small Summer Hotel</p> +<p>15. A False Start</p> +<p>16. A Holy Land</p> +<p>17. Royalty at Play</p> +<p>18. A Rock Ahead</p> +<p>19. The Grand Prix</p> +<p>20. “The Treadmill”</p> +<p>21. “Like Master Like Man”</p> +<p>22. An English Invasion of the Riviera</p> +<p>23. A Common Weakness</p> +<p>24. Changing Paris</p> +<p>25. Contentment</p> +<p>26. The Climber</p> +<p>27. The Last of the Dandies</p> +<p>28. A Nation on the Wing</p> +<p>29. Husks</p> +<p>30. The Faubourg St. Germain</p> +<p>31. Men’s Manners</p> +<p>32. An Ideal Hostess</p> +<p>33. The Introducer</p> +<p>34. A Question and an Answer</p> +<p>35. Living on Your Friends</p> +<p>36. American Society in Italy</p> +<p>37. The Newport of the Past</p> +<p>38. A Conquest of Europe</p> +<p>39. A Race of Slaves</p> +<p>40. Introspection</p> +<h2>To the Reader</h2> +<p>There existed formerly, in diplomatic circles, a curious +custom, since fallen into disuse, entitled the Pêle +Mêle, contrived doubtless by some distracted Master of +Ceremonies to quell the endless jealousies and quarrels for +precedence between courtiers and diplomatists of contending +pretensions. Under this rule no rank was recognized, each +person being allowed at banquet, fête, or other public +ceremony only such place as he had been ingenious or fortunate +enough to obtain.</p> +<p>Any one wishing to form an idea of the confusion that ensued, +of the intrigues and expedients resorted to, not only in +procuring prominent places, but also in ensuring the integrity of +the Pêle Mêle, should glance over the amusing memoirs +of M. de Ségur.</p> +<p>The aspiring nobles and ambassadors, harassed by this constant +preoccupation, had little time or inclination left for any +serious pursuit, since, to take a moment’s repose or an +hour’s breathing space was to risk falling behind in the +endless and aimless race. Strange as it may appear, the +knowledge that they owed place and preferment more to chance or +intrigue than to any personal merit or inherited right, instead +of lessening the value of the prizes for which all were striving, +seemed only to enhance them in the eyes of the competitors.</p> +<p>Success was the unique standard by which they gauged their +fellows. Those who succeeded revelled in the adulation of +their friends, but when any one failed, the fickle crowd passed +him by to bow at more fortunate feet.</p> +<p>No better picture could be found of the “world” of +to-day, a perpetual Pêle Mêle, where such advantages +only are conceded as we have been sufficiently enterprising to +obtain, and are strong or clever enough to keep—a constant +competition, a daily steeplechase, favorable to daring spirits +and personal initiative but with the defect of keeping frail +humanity ever on the qui vive.</p> +<p>Philosophers tell us, that we should seek happiness only in +the calm of our own minds, not allowing external conditions or +the opinions of others to influence our ways. This lofty +detachment from environment is achieved by very few. +Indeed, the philosophers themselves (who may be said to have +invented the art of “posing”) were generally as vain +as peacocks, profoundly pre-occupied with the verdict of their +contemporaries and their position as regards posterity.</p> +<p>Man is born gregarious and remains all his life a herding +animal. As one keen observer has written, “So great +is man’s horror of being alone that he will seek the +society of those he neither likes nor respects sooner than be +left to his own.” The laws and conventions that +govern men’s intercourse have, therefore, formed a tempting +subject for the writers of all ages. Some have labored +hoping to reform their generation, others have written to offer +solutions for life’s many problems.</p> +<p>Beaumarchais, whose penetrating wit left few subjects +untouched, makes his Figaro put the subject aside with “Je +me presse de rire de tout, de peur d’être +obligè d’en pleurer.”</p> +<p>The author of this little volume pretends to settle no +disputes, aims at inaugurating no reforms. He has lightly +touched on passing topics and jotted down, “to point a +moral or adorn a tale,” some of the more obvious foibles +and inconsistencies of our American ways. If a stray bit of +philosophy has here and there slipped in between the lines, it is +mostly of the laughing “school,” and used more in +banter than in blame.</p> +<p>This much abused “world” is a fairly agreeable +place if you do not take it seriously. Meet it with a +friendly face and it will smile gayly back at you, but do not ask +of it what it cannot give, or attribute to its verdicts more +importance than they deserve.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Eliot +Gregory</span></p> +<p><i>Newport</i>, <i>November first</i>, 1897</p> +<h2>No. 1—Charm</h2> +<p>Women endowed by nature with the indescribable quality we call +“charm” (for want of a better word), are the supreme +development of a perfected race, the last word, as it were, of +civilization; the flower of their kind, crowning centuries of +growing refinement and cultivation. Other women may unite a +thousand brilliant qualities, and attractive attributes, may be +beautiful as Astarté or witty as Madame de Montespan, +those endowed with the power of charm, have in all ages and under +every sky, held undisputed rule over the hearts of their +generation.</p> +<p>When we look at the portraits of the enchantresses whom +history tells us have ruled the world by their charm, and swayed +the destinies of empires at their fancy, we are astonished to +find that they have rarely been beautiful. From Cleopatra +or Mary of Scotland down to Lola Montez, the tell-tale coin or +canvas reveals the same marvellous fact. We wonder how +these women attained such influence over the men of their day, +their husbands or lovers. We would do better to look around +us, or inward, and observe what is passing in our own hearts.</p> +<p>Pause, reader mine, a moment and reflect. Who has held +the first place in your thoughts, filled your soul, and +influenced your life? Was she the most beautiful of your +acquaintances, the radiant vision that dazzled your boyish +eyes? Has she not rather been some gentle, quiet woman whom +you hardly noticed the first time your paths crossed, but who +gradually grew to be a part of your life—to whom you +instinctively turned for consolation in moments of +discouragement, for counsel in your difficulties, and whose +welcome was the bright moment in your day, looked forward to +through long hours of toil and worry?</p> +<p>In the hurly-burly of life we lose sight of so many things our +fathers and mothers clung to, and have drifted so far away from +their gentle customs and simple, home-loving habits, that one +wonders what impression our society would make on a woman of a +century ago, could she by some spell be dropped into the swing of +modern days. The good soul would be apt to find it rather a +far cry from the quiet pleasures of her youth, to “a +ladies’ amateur bicycle race” that formed the +attraction recently at a summer resort.</p> +<p>That we should have come to think it natural and proper for a +young wife and mother to pass her mornings at golf, lunching at +the club-house to “save time,” returning home only +for a hurried change of toilet to start again on a bicycle or for +a round of calls, an occupation that will leave her just the +half-hour necessary to slip into a dinner gown, and then for her +to pass the evening in dancing or at the card-table, shows, when +one takes the time to think of it, how unconsciously we have +changed, and (with all apologies to the gay hostesses and +graceful athletes of to-day) not for the better.</p> +<p>It is just in the subtle quality of charm that the women of +the last ten years have fallen away from their elder +sisters. They have been carried along by a love of sport, +and by the set of fashion’s tide, not stopping to ask +themselves whither they are floating. They do not realize +all the importance of their acts nor the true meaning of their +metamorphosis.</p> +<p>The dear creatures should be content, for they have at last +escaped from the bondage of ages, have broken their chains, and +vaulted over their prison walls. “Lords and +masters” have gradually become very humble and obedient +servants, and the “love, honour, and obey” of the +marriage service might now more logically be spoken by the man; +on the lips of the women of to-day it is but a graceful +“<i>façon de parler</i>,” and holds only those +who choose to be bound.</p> +<p>It is not my intention to rail against the short-comings of +the day. That ungrateful task I leave to sterner moralists, +and hopeful souls who naïvely imagine they can stem the +current of an epoch with the barrier of their eloquence, or sweep +back an ocean of innovations by their logic. I should like, +however, to ask my sisters one question: Are they quite sure that +women gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these +“sporty” young females in short-cut skirts and +mannish shirts and ties, that it is seductive to a lover, or a +husband to see his idol in a violent perspiration, her draggled +hair blowing across a sunburned face, panting up a long hill in +front of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her race? +Shade of gentle William! who said</p> +<blockquote><p><i>A woman moved</i>, <i>is like a fountain +troubled</i>,—<br /> +<i>Muddy</i>, <i>ill-seeming</i>, <i>thick</i>, <i>bereft of +beauty</i>.<br /> +<i>And while it is so</i>, <i>none so dry or thirsty</i><br /> +<i>Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Is the modern girl under the impression that men will be +contented with poor imitations of themselves, to share their +homes and be the mothers of their children? She is throwing +away the substance for the shadow!</p> +<p>The moment women step out from the sanctuary of their homes, +the glamour that girlhood or maternity has thrown around them +cast aside, that moment will they cease to rule mankind. +Women may agitate until they have obtained political recognition, +but will awake from their foolish dream of power, realizing too +late what they have sacrificed to obtain it, that the price has +been very heavy, and the fruit of their struggles bitter on their +lips.</p> +<p>There are few men, I imagine, of my generation to whom the +words “home” and “mother” have not a +penetrating charm, who do not look back with softened heart and +tender thoughts to fireside scenes of evening readings and +twilight talks at a mother’s knee, realizing that the best +in their natures owes its growth to these influences.</p> +<p>I sometimes look about me and wonder what the word +“mother” will mean later, to modern little +boys. It will evoke, I fear, a confused remembrance of some +centaur-like being, half woman, half wheel, or as it did to +neglected little Rawdon Crawley, the vision of a radiant creature +in gauze and jewels, driving away to endless +<i>fêtes</i>—<i>fêtes</i> followed by long +mornings, when he was told not to make any noise, or play too +loudly, “as poor mamma is resting.” What other +memories can the “successful” woman of to-day hope to +leave in the minds of her children? If the child remembers +his mother in this way, will not the man who has known and +perhaps loved her, feel the same sensation of empty futility when +her name is mentioned?</p> +<p>The woman who proposes a game of cards to a youth who comes to +pass an hour in her society, can hardly expect him to carry away +a particularly tender memory of her as he leaves the house. +The girl who has rowed, ridden, or raced at a man’s side +for days, with the object of getting the better of him at some +sport or pastime, cannot reasonably hope to be connected in his +thoughts with ideas more tender or more elevated than +“odds” or “handicaps,” with an +undercurrent of pique if his unsexed companion has +“downed” him successfully.</p> +<p>What man, unless he be singularly dissolute or unfortunate, +but turns his steps, when he can, towards some dainty parlor +where he is sure of finding a smiling, soft-voiced woman, whose +welcome he knows will soothe his irritated nerves and restore the +even balance of his temper, whose charm will work its subtle way +into his troubled spirit? The wife he loves, or the friend +he admires and respects, will do more for him in one such quiet +hour when two minds commune, coming closer to the real man, and +moving him to braver efforts, and nobler aims, than all the +beauties and “sporty” acquaintances of a +lifetime. No matter what a man’s education or taste +is, none are insensible to such an atmosphere or to the grace and +witchery a woman can lend to the simplest surroundings. She +need not be beautiful or brilliant to hold him in lifelong +allegiance, if she but possess this magnetism.</p> +<p>Madame Récamier was a beautiful, but not a brilliant +woman, yet she held men her slaves for years. To know her +was to fall under her charm, and to feel it once was to remain +her adorer for life. She will go down to history as the +type of a fascinating woman. Being asked once by an +acquaintance what spell she worked on mankind that enabled her to +hold them for ever at her feet, she laughingly answered:</p> +<p>“I have always found two words sufficient. When a +visitor comes into my salon, I say, ‘<i>Enfin</i>!’ +and when he gets up to go away, I say, +‘<i>Déjà</i>!’”</p> +<p>“What is this wonderful ‘charm’ he is +writing about?” I hear some sprightly maiden inquire +as she reads these lines. My dear young lady, if you ask +the question, you have judged yourself and been found +wanting. But to satisfy you as far as I can, I will try and +define it—not by telling you what it is; that is beyond my +power—but by negatives, the only way in which subtle +subjects can be approached.</p> +<p>A woman of charm is never flustered and never +<i>distraite</i>. She talks little, and rarely of herself, +remembering that bores are persons who insist on talking about +themselves. She does not break the thread of a conversation +by irrelevant questions or confabulate in an undertone with the +servants. No one of her guests receives more of her +attention than another and none are neglected. She offers +to each one who speaks the homage of her entire attention. +She never makes an effort to be brilliant or entertain with her +wit. She is far too clever for that. Neither does she +volunteer information nor converse about her troubles or her +ailments, nor wander off into details about people you do not +know.</p> +<p>She is all things—to each man she likes, in the best +sense of that phrase, appreciating his qualities, stimulating him +to better things.</p> +<blockquote><p>—<i>for his gayer hours</i><br /> +<i>She has a voice of gladness and a smile and eloquence of +beauty</i>; <i>and she glides</i><br /> +<i>Into his darker musings with a mild and healing sympathy that +steals away</i><br /> +<i>Their sharpness ere he is aware</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>No. 2—The Moth and the Star</h2> +<p>The truth of the saying that “it is always the +unexpected that happens,” receives in this country a +confirmation from an unlooked-for quarter, as does the fact of +human nature being always, discouragingly, the same in spite of +varied surroundings. This sounds like a paradox, but is an +exceedingly simple statement easily proved.</p> +<p>That the great mass of Americans, drawn as they are from such +varied sources, should take any interest in the comings and +goings or social doings of a small set of wealthy and fashionable +people, is certainly an unexpected development. That to +read of the amusements and home life of a clique of people with +whom they have little in common, whose whole education and point +of view are different from their own, and whom they have rarely +seen and never expect to meet, should afford the average citizen +any amusement seems little short of impossible.</p> +<p>One accepts as a natural sequence that abroad (where an +hereditary nobility have ruled for centuries, and accustomed the +people to look up to them as the visible embodiment of all that +is splendid and unattainable in life) such interest should +exist. That the home-coming of an English or French +nobleman to his estates should excite the enthusiasm of hundreds +more or less dependent upon him for their amusement or more +material advantages; that his marriage to an +heiress—meaning to them the re-opening of a long-closed +<i>château</i> and the beginning of a period of prosperity +for the district—should excite his neighbors is not to be +wondered at.</p> +<p>It is well known that whole regions have been made prosperous +by the residence of a court, witness the wealth and trade brought +into Scotland by the Queen’s preference for “the Land +of Cakes,” and the discontent and poverty in Ireland from +absenteeism and persistent avoidance of that country by the +court. But in this land, where every reason for interesting +one class in another seems lacking, that thousands of well-to-do +people (half the time not born in this hemisphere), should +delightedly devour columns of incorrect information about New +York dances and Lenox house-parties, winter cruises, or Newport +coaching parades, strikes the observer as the +“unexpected” in its purest form.</p> +<p>That this interest exists is absolutely certain. During +a trip in the West, some seasons ago, I was dumbfounded to find +that the members of a certain New York set were familiarly spoken +of by their first names, and was assailed with all sorts of eager +questions when it was discovered that I knew them. A +certain young lady, at that time a belle in New York, was +currently called <i>Sally</i>, and a well-known sportsman +<i>Fred</i>, by thousands of people who had never seen either of +them. It seems impossible, does it not? Let us look a +little closer into the reason of this interest, and we shall find +how simple is the apparent paradox.</p> +<p>Perhaps in no country, in all the world, do the immense middle +classes lead such uninteresting lives, and have such limited +resources at their disposal for amusement or the passing of +leisure hours.</p> +<p>Abroad the military bands play constantly in the public parks; +the museums and palaces are always open wherein to pass rainy +Sunday afternoons; every village has its religious +<i>fêtes</i> and local fair, attended with dancing and +games. All these mental relaxations are lacking in our +newer civilization; life is stripped of everything that is not +distinctly practical; the dull round of weekly toil is only +broken by the duller idleness of an American Sunday. +Naturally, these people long for something outside of themselves +and their narrow sphere.</p> +<p>Suddenly there arises a class whose wealth permits them to +break through the iron circle of work and boredom, who do +picturesque and delightful things, which appeal directly to the +imagination; they build a summer residence complete, in six +weeks, with furniture and bric-a-brac, on the top of a roadless +mountain; they sail in fairylike yachts to summer seas, and marry +their daughters to the heirs of ducal houses; they float up the +Nile in dahabeeyah, or pass the “month of flowers” in +far Japan.</p> +<p>It is but human nature to delight in reading of these +things. Here the great mass of the people find (and eagerly +seize on), the element of romance lacking in their lives, +infinitely more enthralling than the doings of any novel’s +heroine. It is real! It is taking place! +and—still deeper reason—in every ambitious American +heart lingers the secret hope that with luck and good management +they too may do those very things, or at least that their +children will enjoy the fortunes they have gained, in just those +ways. The gloom of the monotonous present is brightened, +the patient toiler returns to his desk with something definite +before him—an objective point—towards which he can +struggle; he knows that this is no impossible dream. Dozens +have succeeded and prove to him what energy and enterprise can +accomplish.</p> +<p>Do not laugh at this suggestion; it is far truer than you +imagine. Many a weary woman has turned from such reading to +her narrow duties, feeling that life is not all work, and with +renewed hope in the possibilities of the future.</p> +<p>Doubtless a certain amount of purely idle curiosity is mingled +with the other feelings. I remember quite well showing our +city sights to a bored party of Western friends, and failing +entirely to amuse them, when, happening to mention as we drove up +town, “there goes Mr. Blank,” (naming a prominent +leader of cotillions), my guests nearly fell over each other and +out of the carriage in their eagerness to see the gentleman of +whom they had read so much, and who was, in those days, a power +in his way, and several times after they expressed the greatest +satisfaction at having seen him.</p> +<p>I have found, with rare exceptions, and the experience has +been rather widely gathered all over the country, that this +interest—or call it what you will—has been entirely +without spite or bitterness, rather the delight of a child in a +fairy story. For people are rarely envious of things far +removed from their grasp. You will find that a woman who is +bitter because her neighbor has a girl “help” or a +more comfortable cottage, rarely feels envy towards the owners of +opera-boxes or yachts. Such heart-burnings (let us hope +they are few) are among a class born in the shadow of great +wealth, and bred up with tastes that they can neither relinquish +nor satisfy. The large majority of people show only a +good-natured inclination to chaff, none of the “class +feeling” which certain papers and certain politicians try +to excite. Outside of the large cities with their +foreign-bred, semi-anarchistic populations, the tone is perfectly +friendly; for the simple reason that it never entered into the +head of any American to imagine that there <i>was</i> any class +difference. To him his rich neighbors are simply his lucky +neighbors, almost his relations, who, starting from a common +stock, have been able to “get there” sooner than he +has done. So he wishes them luck on the voyage in which he +expects to join them as soon as he has had time to make a +fortune.</p> +<p>So long as the world exists, or at least until we have +reformed it and adopted Mr. Bellamy’s delightful scheme of +existence as described in “Looking Backward,” great +fortunes will be made, and painful contrasts be seen, especially +in cities, and it would seem to be the duty of the press to +soften—certainly not to sharpen—the edge of +discontent. As long as human nature is human nature, and +the poor care to read of the doings of the more fortunate, by all +means give them the reading they enjoy and demand, but let it be +written in a kindly spirit so that it may be a cultivation as +well as a recreation. Treat this perfectly natural and +honest taste honestly and naturally, for, after all, it is</p> +<blockquote><p><i>The desire of the moth for the star</i>,<br /> +<i>Of the night for the morrow</i>.<br /> +<i>The devotion to something afar</i><br /> +<i>From the sphere of our sorrow</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>No. 3—Contrasted Travelling</h2> +<p>When our parents went to Europe fifty years ago, it was the +event of a lifetime—a tour lovingly mapped out in advance +with advice from travelled friends. Passports were +procured, books read, wills made, and finally, prayers were +offered up in church and solemn leave-taking performed. +Once on the other side, descriptive letters were conscientiously +written, and eagerly read by friends at home,—in spite of +these epistles being on the thinnest of paper and with crossing +carried to a fine art, for postage was high in the forties. +Above all, a journal was kept.</p> +<p>Such a journal lies before me as I write. Four little +volumes in worn morocco covers and faded “Italian” +writing, more precious than all my other books combined, their +sight recalls that lost time—my youth—when, as a +reward, they were unlocked that I might look at the drawings, and +the sweetest voice in the world would read to me from them! +Happy, vanished days, that are so far away they seem to have been +in another existence!</p> +<p>The first volume opens with the voyage across the Atlantic, +made in an American clipper (a model unsurpassed the world over), +which was accomplished in thirteen days, a feat rarely equalled +now, by sail. Genial Captain Nye was in command. The +same who later, when a steam propelled vessel was offered him, +refused, as unworthy of a seaman, “to boil a kettle across +the ocean.”</p> +<p>Life friendships were made in those little cabins, under the +swinging lamp the travellers re-read last volumes so as to be +prepared to appreciate everything on landing. Ireland, +England and Scotland were visited with an enthusiasm born of +Scott, the tedium of long coaching journeys being beguiled by the +first “numbers” of “Pickwick,” over which +the men of the party roared, but which the ladies did not care +for, thinking it vulgar, and not to be compared to +“Waverley,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” or +“The Mysteries of Udolpho.”</p> +<p>A circular letter to our diplomatic agents abroad was +presented in each city, a rite invariably followed by an +invitation to dine, for which occasions a black satin frock with +a low body and a few simple ornaments, including (supreme +elegance) a diamond cross, were carried in the trunks. In +London a travelling carriage was bought and stocked, the +indispensable courier engaged, half guide, half servant, who was +expected to explore a city, or wait at table, as occasion +required. Four days were passed between Havre and Paris, +and the slow progress across Europe was accomplished, Murray in +one hand and Byron in the other.</p> +<p>One page used particularly to attract my boyish +attention. It was headed by a naïve little drawing of +the carriage at an Italian inn door, and described how, after the +dangers and discomforts of an Alpine pass, they descended by +sunny slopes into Lombardy. Oh! the rapture that breathes +from those simple pages! The vintage scenes, the mid-day +halt for luncheon eaten in the open air, the afternoon start, the +front seat of the carriage heaped with purple grapes, used to +fire my youthful imagination and now recalls Madame de +Staël’s line on perfect happiness: “To be young! +to be in love! to be in Italy!”</p> +<p>Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I doubt it! It +has become too much a matter of course, a necessary part of the +routine of life. Much of the bloom is brushed from foreign +scenes by descriptive books and photographs, that St. +Mark’s or Mt. Blanc has become as familiar to a +child’s eye as the house he lives in, and in consequence +the reality now instead of being a revelation is often a +disappointment.</p> +<p>In my youth, it was still an event to cross. I remember +my first voyage on the old side-wheeled <i>Scotia</i>, and +Captain Judkins in a wheeled chair, and a perpetual bad temper, +being pushed about the deck; and our delight, when the inevitable +female asking him (three days out) how far we were from land, got +the answer “about a mile!”</p> +<p>“Indeed! How interesting! In which +direction?”</p> +<p>“In that direction, madam,” shouted the captain, +pointing downward as he turned his back to her.</p> +<p>If I remember, we were then thirteen days getting to +Liverpool, and made the acquaintance on board of the people with +whom we travelled during most of that winter. Imagine +anyone now making an acquaintance on board a steamer! In +those simple days people depended on the friendships made at +summer hotels or boarding-houses for their visiting list. +At present, when a girl comes out, her mother presents her to +everybody she will be likely to know if she were to live a +century. In the seventies, ladies cheerfully shared their +state-rooms with women they did not know, and often became +friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite can +be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two particular +“steamers,” the great lady is in despair. Yet +our mothers were quite as refined as the present generation, only +they took life simply, as they found it.</p> +<p>Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have +reached an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to +them a twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for +making children good Americans is to bring them up abroad. +Once they get back here it is hard to entice them away again.</p> +<p>With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something +of the glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly +rush across see and appreciate less in a lifetime than our +parents did in their one tour abroad. A good lady of my +acquaintance was complaining recently how much Paris bored +her.</p> +<p>“What can you do to pass the time?” she +asked. I innocently answered that I knew nothing so +entrancing as long mornings passed at the Louvre.</p> +<p>“Oh, yes, I do that too,” she replied, “but +I like the ‘Bon Marché’ best!”</p> +<p>A trip abroad has become a purely social function to a large +number of wealthy Americans, including “presentation” +in London and a winter in Rome or Cairo. And just as a +“smart” Englishman is sure to tell you that he has +never visited the “Tower,” it has become good form to +ignore the sight-seeing side of Europe; hundreds of New Yorkers +never seeing anything of Paris beyond the Rue de la Paix and the +Bois. They would as soon think of going to Cluny or St. +Denis as of visiting the museum in our park!</p> +<p>Such people go to Fontainebleau because they are buying +furniture, and they wish to see the best models. They go to +Versailles on the coach and “do” the Palace during +the half-hour before luncheon. Beyond that, enthusiasm +rarely carries them. As soon as they have settled +themselves at the Bristol or the Rhin begins the endless +treadmill of leaving cards on all the people just seen at home, +and whom they will meet again in a couple of months at Newport or +Bar Harbor. This duty and the all-entrancing occupation of +getting clothes fills up every spare hour. Indeed, clothes +seem to pervade the air of Paris in May, the conversation rarely +deviating from them. If you meet a lady you know looking +ill, and ask the cause, it generally turns out to be “four +hours a day standing to be fitted.” Incredible as it +may seem, I have been told of one plain maiden lady, who makes a +trip across, spring and autumn, with the sole object of getting +her two yearly outfits.</p> +<p>Remembering the hundreds of cultivated people whose dream in +life (often unrealized from lack of means) has been to go abroad +and visit the scenes their reading has made familiar, and knowing +what such a trip would mean to them, and how it would be looked +back upon during the rest of an obscure life, I felt it almost a +duty to “suppress” a wealthy female (doubtless an +American cousin of Lady Midas) when she informed me, the other +day, that decidedly she would not go abroad this spring.</p> +<p>“It is not necessary. Worth has my +measures!”</p> +<h2>No. 4—The Outer and the Inner Woman</h2> +<p>It is a sad commentary on our boasted civilization that cases +of shoplifting occur more and more frequently each year, in which +the delinquents are women of education and refinement, or at +least belong to families and occupy positions in which one would +expect to find those qualities! The reason, however, is not +difficult to discover.</p> +<p>In the wake of our hasty and immature prosperity has come (as +it does to all suddenly enriched societies) a love of +ostentation, a desire to dazzle the crowd by displays of luxury +and rich trappings indicative of crude and vulgar +standards. The newly acquired money, instead of being +expended for solid comforts or articles which would afford +lasting satisfaction, is lavished on what can be worn in public, +or the outer shell of display, while the home table and fireside +belongings are neglected. A glance around our theatres, or +at the men and women in our crowded thoroughfares, is sufficient +to reveal to even a casual observer that the mania for fine +clothes and what is costly, <i>per se</i>, has become the +besetting sin of our day and our land.</p> +<p>The tone of most of the papers and of our theatrical +advertisements reflects this feeling. The amount of money +expended for a work of art or a new building is mentioned before +any comment as to its beauty or fitness. A play is spoken +of as “Manager So and So’s thirty-thousand-dollar +production!” The fact that a favorite actress will +appear in four different dresses during the three acts of a +comedy, each toilet being a special creation designed for her by +a leading Parisian house, is considered of supreme importance and +is dwelt upon in the programme as a special attraction.</p> +<p>It would be astonishing if the taste of our women were +different, considering the way clothes are eternally being +dangled before their eyes. Leading papers publish +illustrated supplements devoted exclusively to the subject of +attire, thus carrying temptation into every humble home, and +suggesting unattainable luxuries. Windows in many of the +larger shops contain life-sized manikins loaded with the latest +costly and ephemeral caprices of fashion arranged to catch the +eye of the poorer class of women, who stand in hundreds gazing at +the display like larks attracted by a mirror! Watch those +women as they turn away, and listen to their sighs of discontent +and envy. Do they not tell volumes about petty hopes and +ambitions?</p> +<p>I do not refer to the wealthy women whose toilets are in +keeping with their incomes and the general footing of their +households; that they should spend more or less in fitting +themselves out daintily is of little importance. The point +where this subject becomes painful is in families of small means +where young girls imagine that to be elaborately dressed is the +first essential of existence, and, in consequence, bend their +labors and their intelligence towards this end. Last spring +I asked an old friend where she and her daughters intended +passing their summer. Her answer struck me as being +characteristic enough to quote: “We should much +prefer,” she said, “returning to Bar Harbor, for we +all enjoy that place and have many friends there. But the +truth is, my daughters have bought themselves very little in the +way of toilet this year, as our finances are not in a flourishing +condition. So my poor girls will be obliged to make their +last year’s dresses do for another season. Under +these circumstances, it is out of the question for us to return a +second summer to the same place.”</p> +<p>I do not know how this anecdote strikes my readers. It +made me thoughtful and sad to think that, in a family of +intelligent and practical women, such a reason should be +considered sufficient to outweigh enjoyment, social relations, +even health, and allowed to change the plans of an entire +family.</p> +<p>As American women are so fond of copying English ways they +should be willing to take a few lessons on the subject of raiment +from across the water. As this is not intended to be a +dissertation on “How to Dress Well on Nothing a +Year,” and as I feel the greatest diffidence in approaching +a subject of which I know absolutely nothing, it will be better +to sheer off from these reefs and quicksands. Every one who +reads these lines will know perfectly well what is meant, when +reference is made to the good sense and practical utility of +English women’s dress.</p> +<p>What disgusts and angers me (when my way takes me into our +surface or elevated cars or into ferry boats and local trains) is +the utter dissonance between the outfit of most of the women I +meet and their position and occupation. So universal is +this, that it might almost be laid down as an axiom, that the +American woman, no matter in what walk of life you observe her, +or what the time or the place, is always persistently and +grotesquely overdressed. From the women who frequent the +hotels of our summer or winter resorts, down all the steps of the +social staircase to the char-woman, who consents (spasmodically) +to remove the dust and waste-papers from my office, there seems +to be the same complete disregard of fitness. The other +evening, in leaving my rooms, I brushed against a portly person +in the half-light of the corridor. There was a shimmer of +(what appeared to my inexperienced eyes as) costly stuffs, a huge +hat crowned the shadow itself, “topped by nodding +plumes,” which seemed to account for the depleted condition +of my feather duster.</p> +<p>I found on inquiring of the janitor, that the dressy person I +had met, was the char-woman in street attire, and that a closet +was set aside in the building, for the special purpose of her +morning and evening transformations, which she underwent in the +belief that her social position in Avenue A would suffer, should +she appear in the streets wearing anything less costly than +seal-skin and velvet or such imitations of those expensive +materials as her stipend would permit.</p> +<p>I have as tenants of a small wooden house in Jersey City, a +bank clerk, his wife and their three daughters. He earns in +the neighborhood of fifteen hundred dollars a year. Their +rent (with which, by the way, they are always in arrears) is +three hundred dollars. I am favored spring and autumn by a +visit from the ladies of that family, in the hope (generally +futile) of inducing me to do some ornamental papering or painting +in their residence, subjects on which they have by experience +found my agent to be unapproachable. When those four women +descend upon me, I am fairly dazzled by the splendor of their +attire, and lost in wonder as to how the price of all that finery +can have been squeezed out of the twelve remaining hundreds of +their income. When I meet the father he is shabby to the +outer limits of the genteel. His hat has, I am sure, +supported the suns and snowstorms of a dozen seasons. There +is a threadbare shine on his apparel that suggests a heartache in +each whitened seam, but the ladies are mirrors of fashion, as +well as moulds of form. What can remain for any creature +comforts after all those fine clothes have been paid for? +And how much is put away for the years when the long-suffering +money maker will be past work, or saved towards the time when +sickness or accident shall appear on the horizon? How those +ladies had the “nerve” to enter a ferry boat or crowd +into a cable car, dressed as they were, has always been a marvel +to me. A landau and two liveried servants would barely have +been in keeping with their appearance.</p> +<p>Not long ago, a great English nobleman, who is also famous in +the yachting world, visited this country accompanied by his two +daughters, high-bred and genial ladies. No self-respecting +American shop girl or fashionable typewriter would have +condescended to appear in the inexpensive attire which those +English women wore. Wherever one met them, at dinner, +<i>fête</i>, or ball, they were always the most simply +dressed women in the room. I wonder if it ever occurred to +any of their gorgeously attired hostesses, that it was because +their transatlantic guests were so sure of their position, that +they contented themselves with such simple toilets knowing that +nothing they might wear could either improve or alter their +standing.</p> +<p>In former ages, sumptuary laws were enacted by parental +governments, in the hope of suppressing extravagance in dress, +the state of affairs we deplore now, not being a new development +of human weakness, but as old as wealth.</p> +<p>The desire to shine by the splendor of one’s trappings +is the first idea of the parvenu, especially here in this +country, where the ambitious are denied the pleasure of acquiring +a title, and where official rank carries with it so little social +weight. Few more striking ways present themselves to the +crude and half-educated for the expenditure of a new fortune than +the purchase of sumptuous apparel, the satisfaction being +immediate and material. The wearer of a complete and +perfect toilet must experience a delight of which the uninitiated +know nothing, for such cruel sacrifices are made and so many +privations endured to procure this satisfaction. When I see +groups of women, clad in the latest designs of purple and fine +linen, stand shivering on street corners of a winter night, until +they can crowd into a car, I doubt if the joy they get from their +clothes, compensates them for the creature comforts they are +forced to forego, and I wonder if it never occurs to them to +spend less on their wardrobes and so feel they can afford to +return from a theatre or concert comfortably, in a cab, as a +foreign woman, with their income would do.</p> +<p>There is a stoical determination about the American point of +view that compels a certain amount of respect. Our +countrywomen will deny themselves pleasures, will economize on +their food and will remain in town during the summer, but when +walking abroad they must be clad in the best, so that no one may +know by their appearance if the income be counted by hundreds or +thousands.</p> +<p>While these standards prevail and the female mind is fixed on +this subject with such dire intent, it is not astonishing that a +weaker sister is occasionally tempted beyond her powers of +resistance. Nor that each day a new case of a well-dressed +woman thieving in a shop reaches our ears. The poor +feeble-minded creature is not to blame. She is but the +reflexion of the minds around her and is probably like the lady +Emerson tells of, who confessed to him “that the sense of +being perfectly well-dressed had given her a feeling of inward +tranquillity which religion was powerless to bestow.”</p> +<h2>No. 5—On Some Gilded Misalliances</h2> +<p>A dear old American lady, who lived the greater part of her +life in Rome, and received every body worth knowing in her +spacious drawing-rooms, far up in the dim vastnesses of a Roman +palace, used to say that she had only known one really happy +marriage made by an American girl abroad.</p> +<p>In those days, being young and innocent, I considered that +remark cynical, and in my heart thought nothing could be more +romantic and charming than for a fair compatriot to assume an +historic title and retire to her husband’s estates, and +rule smilingly over him and a devoted tenantry, as in the last +act of a comic opera, when a rose-colored light is burning and +the orchestra plays the last brilliant chords of a wedding +march.</p> +<p>There seemed to my perverted sense a certain poetic justice +about the fact that money, gained honestly but prosaically, in +groceries or gas, should go to regild an ancient blazon or prop +up the crumbling walls of some stately palace abroad.</p> +<p>Many thoughtful years and many cruel realities have taught me +that my gracious hostess of the “seventies” was +right, and that marriage under these conditions is apt to be much +more like the comic opera after the curtain has been rung down, +when the lights are out, the applauding public gone home, and the +weary actors brought slowly back to the present and the positive, +are wondering how they are to pay their rent or dodge the warrant +in ambush around the corner.</p> +<p>International marriages usually come about from a deficient +knowledge of the world. The father becomes rich, the family +travel abroad, some mutual friend (often from purely interested +motives) produces a suitor for the hand of the daughter, in the +shape of a “prince” with a title that makes the whole +simple American family quiver with delight.</p> +<p>After a few visits the suitor declares himself; the girl is +flattered, the father loses his head, seeing visions of his loved +daughter hob-nobbing with royalty, and (intoxicating thought!) +snubbing the “swells” at home who had shown +reluctance to recognize him and his family.</p> +<p>It is next to impossible for him to get any reliable +information about his future son-in-law in a country where, as an +American, he has few social relations, belongs to no club, and +whose idiom is a sealed book to him. Every circumstance +conspires to keep the flaws on the article for sale out of sight +and place the suitor in an advantageous light. Several +weeks’ “courting” follows, paterfamilias agrees +to part with a handsome share of his earnings, and a marriage is +“arranged.”</p> +<p>In the case where the girl has retained some of her +self-respect the suitor is made to come to her country for the +ceremony. And, that the contrast between European ways and +our simple habits may not be too striking, an establishment is +hastily got together, with hired liveries and new-bought +carriages, as in a recent case in this state. The +sensational papers write up this “international +union,” and publish “faked” portraits of the +bride and her noble spouse. The sovereign of the +groom’s country (enchanted that some more American money is +to be imported into his land) sends an economical present and an +autograph letter. The act ends. Limelight and slow +music!</p> +<p>In a few years rumors of dissent and trouble float vaguely +back to the girl’s family. Finally, either a great +scandal occurs, and there is one dishonored home the more in the +world, or an expatriated woman, thousands of miles from the +friends and relatives who might be of some comfort to her, makes +up her mind to accept “anything” for the sake of her +children, and attempts to build up some sort of an existence out +of the remains of her lost illusions, and the father wakes up +from his dream to realize that his wealth has only served to ruin +what he loved best in all the world.</p> +<p>Sometimes the conditions are delightfully comic, as in a +well-known case, where the daughter, who married into an +indolent, happy-go-lucky Italian family, had inherited her +father’s business push and energy along with his fortune, +and immediately set about “running” her +husband’s estate as she had seen her father do his +bank. She tried to revive a half-forgotten industry in the +district, scraped and whitewashed their picturesque old villa, +proposed her husband’s entering business, and in short +dashed head down against all his inherited traditions and +national prejudices, until her new family loathed the sight of +the brisk American face, and the poor she had tried to help, +sulked in their newly drained houses and refused to be +comforted. Her ways were not Italian ways, and she seemed +to the nun-like Italian ladies, almost unsexed, as she tramped +about the fields, talking artificial manure and subsoil drainage +with the men. Yet neither she nor her husband was to +blame. The young Italian had but followed the teachings of +his family, which decreed that the only honorable way for an +aristocrat to acquire wealth was to marry it. The American +wife honestly tried to do her duty in this new position, +naïvely thinking she could engraft transatlantic +“go” upon the indolent Italian character. Her +work was in vain; she made herself and her husband so unpopular +that they are now living in this country, regretting too late the +error of their ways.</p> +<p>Another case but little less laughable, is that of a Boston +girl with a neat little fortune of her own, who, when married to +the young Viennese of her choice, found that he expected her to +live with his family on the third floor of their +“palace” (the two lower floors being rented to +foreigners), and as there was hardly enough money for a box at +the opera, she was not expected to go, whereas his position made +it necessary for him to have a stall and appear there nightly +among the men of his rank, the astonished and disillusioned +Bostonian remaining at home <i>en +tête-à-tête</i> with the women of his family, +who seemed to think this the most natural arrangement in the +world.</p> +<p>It certainly is astonishing that we, the most patriotic of +nations, with such high opinion of ourselves and our +institutions, should be so ready to hand over our daughters and +our ducats to the first foreigner who asks for them, often +requiring less information about him than we should consider +necessary before buying a horse or a dog.</p> +<p>Women of no other nation have this mania for espousing +aliens. Nowhere else would a girl with a large fortune +dream of marrying out of her country. Her highest ideal of +a husband would be a man of her own kin. It is the rarest +thing in the world to find a well-born French, Spanish, or +Italian woman married to a foreigner and living away from her +country. How can a woman expect to be happy separated from +all the ties and traditions of her youth? If she is taken +abroad young, she may still hope to replace her friends as is +often done. But the real reason of unhappiness (greater and +deeper than this) lies in the fundamental difference of the whole +social structure between our country and that of her adoption, +and the radically different way of looking at every side of +life.</p> +<p>Surely a girl must feel that a man who allows a marriage to be +arranged for him (and only signs the contact because its +pecuniary clauses are to his satisfaction, and who would withdraw +in a moment if these were suppressed), must have an entirely +different point of view from her own on all the vital issues of +life.</p> +<p>Foreigners undoubtedly make excellent husbands for their own +women. But they are, except in rare cases, unsatisfactory +helpmeets for American girls. It is impossible to touch on +more than a side or two of this subject. But as an +illustration the following contrasted stories may be cited:</p> +<p>Two sisters of an aristocratic American family, each with an +income of over forty thousand dollars a year, recently married +French noblemen. They naturally expected to continue abroad +the life they had led at home, in which opera boxes, saddle +horses, and constant entertaining were matters of course. +In both cases, our compatriots discovered that their husbands +(neither of them penniless) had entirely different views. +In the first place, they were told that it was considered +“bad form” in France for young married women to +entertain; besides, the money was needed for improvements, and in +many other ways, and as every well-to-do French family puts aside +at least a third of its income as <i>dots</i> for the children +(boys as well as girls), these brides found themselves cramped +for money for the first time in their lives, and obliged, during +their one month a year in Paris, to put up with hired traps, and +depend on their friends for evenings at the opera.</p> +<p>This story is a telling set-off to the case of an American +wife, who one day received a windfall in the form of a check for +a tidy amount. She immediately proposed a trip abroad to +her husband, but found that he preferred to remain at home in the +society of his horses and dogs. So our fair compatriot +starts off (with his full consent), has her outing, spends her +little “pile,” and returns after three or four months +to the home of her delighted spouse.</p> +<p>Do these two stories need any comment? Let our sisters +and their friends think twice before they make themselves +irrevocably wheels in a machine whose working is unknown to them, +lest they be torn to pieces as it moves. Having the good +luck to be born in the “paradise of women,” let them +beware how they leave it, charm the serpent never so wisely, for +they may find themselves, like the Peri, outside the gate.</p> +<h2>No. 6—The Complacency of Mediocrity</h2> +<p>Full as small intellects are of queer kinks, unexplained +turnings and groundless likes and dislikes, the bland contentment +that buoys up the incompetent is the most difficult of all +vagaries to account for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass +without examples of this exasperating weakness appearing on the +surface of those shallows that commonplace people so naïvely +call “their minds.”</p> +<p>What one would expect is extreme modesty, in the half-educated +or the ignorant, and self-approbation higher up in the scale, +where it might more reasonably dwell. Experience, however, +teaches that exactly the opposite is the case among those who +have achieved success.</p> +<p>The accidents of a life turned by chance out of the beaten +tracks, have thrown me at times into acquaintanceship with some +of the greater lights of the last thirty years. And not +only have they been, as a rule, most unassuming men and women; +but in the majority of cases positively self-depreciatory; +doubting of themselves and their talents, constantly aiming at +greater perfection in their art or a higher development of their +powers, never contented with what they have achieved, beyond the +idea that it has been another step toward their goal. +Knowing this, it is always a shock on meeting the mediocre people +who form such a discouraging majority in any society, to discover +that they are all so pleased with themselves, their achievements, +their place in the world, and their own ability and +discernment!</p> +<p>Who has not sat chafing in silence while Mediocrity, in a +white waistcoat and jangling fobs, occupied the after-dinner hour +in imparting second-hand information as his personal views on +literature and art? Can you not hear him saying once again: +“I don’t pretend to know anything about art and all +that sort of thing, you know, but when I go to an exhibition I +can always pick out the best pictures at a glance. Sort of +a way I have, and I never make mistakes, you know.”</p> +<p>Then go and watch, as I have, Henri Rochefort as he +laboriously forms the opinions that are to appear later in one of +his “<i>Salons</i>,” realizing the while that he is +<i>facile princeps</i> among the art critics of his day, that +with a line he can make or mar a reputation and by a word draw +the admiring crowd around an unknown canvas. While +Rochefort toils and ponders and hesitates, do you suppose a doubt +as to his own astuteness ever dims the self-complacency of White +Waistcoat? Never!</p> +<p>There lies the strength of the feeble-minded. By a +special dispensation of Providence, they can never see but one +side of a subject, so are always convinced that they are right, +and from the height of their contentment, look down on those who +chance to differ with them.</p> +<p>A lady who has gathered into her dainty salons the fruit of +many years’ careful study and tireless +“weeding” will ask anxiously if you are quite sure +you like the effect of her latest acquisition—some +eighteenth-century statuette or screen (flotsam, probably, from +the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to your +verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by +contract, with the latest “Louis Fourteenth Street” +productions, conducts you complacently through her chambers of +horrors, wreathed in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance and that +smug assurance granted only to the—small.</p> +<p>When a small intellect goes in for cultivating itself and +improving its mind, you realize what the poet meant in asserting +that a little learning was a dangerous thing. For +Mediocrity is apt, when it dines out, to get up a subject +beforehand, and announce to an astonished circle, as quite new +and personal discoveries, that the Renaissance was introduced +into France from Italy, or that Columbus in his day made +important “finds.”</p> +<p>When the incompetent advance another step and write or +paint—which, alas! is only too frequent—the world of +art and literature is flooded with their productions. When +White Waistcoat, for example, takes to painting, late in life, +and comes to you, canvas in hand, for criticism (read praise), he +is apt to remark modestly:</p> +<p>“Corot never painted until he was fifty, and I am only +forty-eight. So I feel I should not let myself be +discouraged.”</p> +<p>The problem of life is said to be the finding of a happiness +that is not enjoyed at the expense of others, and surely this +class have solved that Sphinx’s riddle, for they float +through their days in a dream of complacency disturbed neither by +corroding doubt nor harassed by jealousies.</p> +<p>Whole families of feeble-minded people, on the strength of an +ancestor who achieved distinction a hundred years ago, live in +constant thanksgiving that they “are not as other +men.” None of the great man’s descendants have +done anything to be particularly proud of since their remote +progenitor signed the Declaration of Independence or governed a +colony. They have vegetated in small provincial cities and +inter-married into other equally fortunate families, but the +sense of superiority is ever present to sustain them, under +straitened circumstances and diminishing prestige. The +world may move on around them, but they never advance. Why +should they? They have reached perfection. The brains +and enterprise that have revolutionized our age knock in vain at +their doors. They belong to that vast “majority that +is always in the wrong,” being so pleased with themselves, +their ways, and their feeble little lines of thought, that any +change or advancement gives their system a shock.</p> +<p>A painter I know was once importuned for a sketch by a lady of +this class. After many delays and renewed demands he +presented her one day, when she and some friends were visiting +his studio, with a delightful open-air study simply framed. +She seemed confused at the offering, to his astonishment, as she +had not lacked <i>aplomb</i> in asking for the sketch. +After much blushing and fumbling she succeeded in getting the +painting loose, and handing back the frame, remarked:</p> +<p>“I will take the painting, but you must keep the +frame. My husband would never allow me to accept anything +of value from you!”—and smiled on the speechless +painter, doubtless charmed with her own tact.</p> +<p>Complacent people are the same drag on a society that a brake +would be to a coach going up hill. They are the +“eternal negative” and would extinguish, if they +could, any light stronger than that to which their weak eyes have +been accustomed. They look with astonishment and distrust +at any one trying to break away from their tiresome old ways and +habits, and wonder why all the world is not as pleased with their +personalities as they are themselves, suggesting, if you are +willing to waste your time listening to their twaddle, that there +is something radically wrong in any innovation, that both +“Church and State” will be imperilled if things are +altered. No blight, no mildew is more fatal to a plant than +the “complacent” are to the world. They resent +any progress and are offended if you mention before them any new +standards or points of view. “What has been good +enough for us and our parents should certainly be satisfactory to +the younger generations.” It seems to the contented +like pure presumption on the part of their acquaintances to +wander after strange gods, in the shape of new ideals, higher +standards of culture, or a perfected refinement of +surroundings.</p> +<p>We are perhaps wrong to pity complacent people. It is +for another class our sympathy should be kept; for those who +cannot refrain from doubting of themselves and the value of their +work—those unfortunate gifted and artistic spirits who +descend too often the <i>via dolorosa</i> of discontent and +despair, who have a higher ideal than their neighbors, and, in +struggling after an unattainable perfection, fall by the +wayside.</p> +<h2>No. 7—The Discontent of Talent</h2> +<p>The complacency that buoys up self-sufficient souls, soothing +them with the illusion that they themselves, their towns, +country, language, and habits are above improvement, causing them +to shudder, as at a sacrilege, if any changes are suggested, is +fortunately limited to a class of stay-at-home nonentities. +In proportion as it is common among them, is it rare or +delightfully absent in any society of gifted or imaginative +people.</p> +<p>Among our globe-trotting compatriots this defect is much less +general than in the older nations of the world, for the excellent +reason, that the moment a man travels or takes the trouble to +know people of different nationalities, his armor of complacency +receives so severe a blow, that it is shattered forever, the +wanderer returning home wiser and much more modest. There +seems to be something fatal to conceit in the air of great +centres; professionally or in general society a man so soon finds +his level.</p> +<p>The “great world” may foster other faults; human +nature is sure to develop some in every walk of life. Smug +contentment, however, disappears in its rarefied atmosphere, +giving place to a craving for improvement, a nervous alertness +that keeps the mind from stagnating and urges it on to do its +best.</p> +<p>It is never the beautiful woman who sits down in smiling +serenity before her mirror. She is tireless in her efforts +to enhance her beauty and set it off to the best advantage. +Her figure is never slender enough, nor her carriage sufficiently +erect to satisfy. But the “frump” will let +herself and all her surroundings go to seed, not from humbleness +of mind or an overwhelming sense of her own unworthiness, but in +pure complacent conceit.</p> +<p>A criticism to which the highly gifted lay themselves open +from those who do not understand them, is their love of praise, +the critics failing to grasp the fact that this passion for +measuring one’s self with others, like the gad-fly pursuing +poor Io, never allows a moment’s repose in the green +pastures of success, but goads them constantly up the rocky sides +of endeavor. It is not that they love flattery, but that +they need approbation as a counterpoise to the dark moments of +self-abasement and as a sustaining aid for higher flights.</p> +<p>Many years ago I was present at a final sitting which my +master, Carolus Duran, gave to one of my fair compatriots. +He knew that the lady was leaving Paris on the morrow, and that +in an hour, her husband and his friends were coming to see and +criticise the portrait—always a terrible ordeal for an +artist.</p> +<p>To any one familiar with this painter’s moods, it was +evident that the result of the sitting was not entirely +satisfactory. The quick breathing, the impatient tapping +movement of the foot, the swift backward springs to obtain a +better view, so characteristic of him in moments of doubt, and +which had twenty years before earned him the name of <i>le +danseur</i> from his fellow-copyists at the Louvre, betrayed to +even a casual observer that his discouragement and discontent +were at boiling point.</p> +<p>The sound of a bell and a murmur of voices announced the +entrance of the visitors into the vast studio. After the +formalities of introduction had been accomplished the new-comers +glanced at the portrait, but uttered never a word. From it +they passed in a perfectly casual manner to an inspection of the +beautiful contents of the room, investigating the tapestries, +admiring the armor, and finally, after another glance at the +portrait, the husband remarked: “You have given my wife a +jolly long neck, haven’t you?” and, turning to his +friends, began laughing and chatting in English.</p> +<p>If vitriol had been thrown on my poor master’s quivering +frame, the effect could not have been more instantaneous, his +ignorance of the language spoken doubtless exaggerating his +impression of being ridiculed. Suddenly he turned very +white, and before any of us had divined his intention he had +seized a Japanese sword lying by and cut a dozen gashes across +the canvas. Then, dropping his weapon, he flung out of the +room, leaving his sitter and her friends in speechless +consternation, to wonder then and ever after in what way they had +offended him. In their opinions, if a man had talent and +understood his business, he should produce portraits with the +same ease that he would answer dinner invitations, and if they +paid for, they were in no way bound also to praise, his +work. They were entirely pleased with the result, but did +not consider it necessary to tell him so, no idea having crossed +their minds that he might be in one of those moods so frequent +with artistic natures, when words of approbation and praise are +as necessary to them, as the air we breathe is to us, mortals of +a commoner clay.</p> +<p>Even in the theatrical and operatic professions, those hotbeds +of conceit, you will generally find among the “stars” +abysmal depths of discouragement and despair. One great +tenor, who has delighted New York audiences during several +winters past, invariably announces to his intimates on arising +that his “voice has gone,” and that, in consequence +he will “never sing again,” and has to be caressed +and cajoled back into some semblance of confidence before +attempting a performance. This same artist, with an almost +limitless repertoire and a reputation no new successes could +enhance, recently risked all to sing what he considered a higher +class of music, infinitely more fatiguing to his voice, because +he was impelled onward by the ideal that forces genius to +constant improvement and development of its powers.</p> +<p>What the people who meet these artists occasionally at a +private concert or behind the scenes during the intense strain of +a representation, take too readily for monumental egoism and +conceit, is, the greater part of the time, merely the desire for +a sustaining word, a longing for the stimulant of praise.</p> +<p>All actors and singers are but big children, and must be +humored and petted like children when you wish them to do their +best. It is necessary for them to feel in touch with their +audiences; to be assured that they are not falling below the high +ideals formed for their work.</p> +<p>Some winters ago a performance at the opera nearly came to a +standstill because an all-conquering soprano was found crying in +her dressing-room. After many weary moments of consolation +and questioning, it came out that she felt quite sure she no +longer had any talent. One of the other singers had laughed +at her voice, and in consequence there was nothing left to live +for. A half-hour later, owing to judicious +“treatment,” she was singing gloriously and bowing +her thanks to thunders of applause.</p> +<p>Rather than blame this divine discontent that has made man +what he is to-day, let us glorify and envy it, pitying the while +the frail mortal vessels it consumes with its flame. No +adulation can turn such natures from their goal, and in the hour +of triumph the slave is always at their side to whisper the word +of warning. This discontent is the leaven that has raised +the whole loaf of dull humanity to better things and higher +efforts, those privileged to feel it are the suns that illuminate +our system. If on these luminaries observers have +discovered spots, it is well to remember that these blemishes are +but the defects of their qualities, and better far than the total +eclipse that shrouds so large a part of humanity in colorless +complacency.</p> +<p>It will never be known how many master-pieces have been lost +to the world because at the critical moment a friend has not been +at hand with the stimulant of sympathy and encouragement needed +by an overworked, straining artist who was beginning to lose +confidence in himself; to soothe his irritated nerves with the +balm of praise, and take his poor aching head on a friendly +shoulder and let him sob out there all his doubt and +discouragement.</p> +<p>So let us not be niggardly or ungenerous in meting out to +struggling fellow-beings their share, and perchance a little more +than their share of approbation and applause, poor enough return, +after all, for the pleasure their labors have procured us. +What adequate compensation can we mete out to an author for the +hours of delight and self-forgetfulness his talent has brought to +us in moments of loneliness, illness, or grief? What can +pay our debt to a painter who has fixed on canvas the face we +love?</p> +<p>The little return that it is in our power to make for all the +joy these gifted fellow-beings bring into our lives is (closing +our eyes to minor imperfections) to warmly applaud them as they +move upward, along their stony path.</p> +<h2>No. 8—Slouch</h2> +<p>I should like to see, in every school-room of our growing +country, in every business office, at the railway stations, and +on street corners, large placards placed with “Do not +slouch” printed thereon in distinct and imposing +characters. If ever there was a tendency that needed +nipping in the bud (I fear the bud is fast becoming a full-blown +flower), it is this discouraging national failing.</p> +<p>Each year when I return from my spring wanderings, among the +benighted and effete nations of the Old World, on whom the +untravelled American looks down from the height of his +superiority, I am struck anew by the contrast between the trim, +well-groomed officials left behind on one side of the ocean and +the happy-go-lucky, slouching individuals I find on the +other.</p> +<p>As I ride up town this unpleasant impression deepens. In +the “little Mother Isle” I have just left, +bus-drivers have quite a coaching air, with hat and coat of +knowing form. They sport flowers in their button-holes and +salute other bus-drivers, when they meet, with a twist of whip +and elbow refreshingly correct, showing that they take pride in +their calling, and have been at some pains to turn themselves out +as smart in appearance as finances would allow.</p> +<p>Here, on the contrary, the stage and cab drivers I meet seem +to be under a blight, and to have lost all interest in +life. They lounge on the box, their legs straggling +aimlessly, one hand holding the reins, the other hanging +dejectedly by the side. Yet there is little doubt that +these heartbroken citizens are earning double what their London +<i>confrères</i> gain. The shadow of the national +peculiarity is over them.</p> +<p>When I get to my rooms, the elevator boy is reclining in the +lift, and hardly raises his eye-lids as he languidly manoeuvres +the rope. I have seen that boy now for months, but never +when his boots and clothes were brushed or when his cravat was +not riding proudly above his collar. On occasions I have +offered him pins, which he took wearily, doubtless because it was +less trouble than to refuse. The next day, however, his +cravat again rode triumphant, mocking my efforts to keep it in +its place. His hair, too, has been a cause of wonder to +me. How does he manage to have it always so long and so +unkempt? More than once, when expecting callers, I have +bribed him to have it cut, but it seemed to grow in the night, +back to its poetic profusion.</p> +<p>In what does this noble disregard for appearances which +characterizes American men originate? Our climate, as some +suggest, or discouragement at not all being millionaires? +It more likely comes from an absence with us of the military +training that abroad goes so far toward licking young men into +shape.</p> +<p>I shall never forget the surprise on the face of a French +statesman to whom I once expressed my sympathy for his country, +laboring under the burden of so vast a standing army. He +answered:</p> +<p>“The financial burden is doubtless great; but you have +others. Witness your pension expenditures. With us +the money drawn from the people is used in such a way as to be of +inestimable value to them. We take the young hobbledehoy +farm-hand or mechanic, ignorant, mannerless, uncleanly as he may +be, and turn him out at the end of three years with his regiment, +self-respecting and well-mannered, with habits of cleanliness and +obedience, having acquired a bearing, and a love of order that +will cling to and serve him all his life. We do not go so +far,” he added, “as our English neighbors in drilling +men into superb manikins of ‘form’ and +carriage. Our authorities do not consider it +necessary. But we reclaim youths from the slovenliness of +their native village or workshop and make them tidy and mannerly +citizens.”</p> +<p>These remarks came to mind the other day as I watched a group +of New England youths lounging on the steps of the village store, +or sitting in rows on a neighboring fence, until I longed to try +if even a judicial arrangement of tacks, ‘business-end +up,’ on these favorite seats would infuse any energy into +their movements. I came to the conclusion that my French +acquaintance was right, for the only trim-looking men to be seen, +were either veterans of our war or youths belonging to the local +militia. And nowhere does one see finer specimens of +humanity than West Point and Annapolis turn out.</p> +<p>If any one doubts what kind of men slouching youths develop +into, let him look when he travels, at the dejected appearance of +the farmhouses throughout our land. Surely our rural +populations are not so much poorer than those of other +countries. Yet when one compares the dreary homes of even +our well-to-do farmers with the smiling, well-kept hamlets seen +in England or on the Continent, such would seem to be the +case.</p> +<p>If ours were an old and bankrupt nation, this air of +discouragement and decay could not be greater. Outside of +the big cities one looks in vain for some sign of American dash +and enterprise in the appearance of our men and their homes.</p> +<p>During a journey of over four thousand miles, made last spring +as the guest of a gentleman who knows our country thoroughly, I +was impressed most painfully with this abject air. Never in +all those days did we see a fruit-tree trained on some sunny +southern wall, a smiling flower-garden or carefully clipped +hedge. My host told me that hardly the necessary vegetables +are grown, the inhabitants of the West and South preferring +canned food. It is less trouble!</p> +<p>If you wish to form an idea of the extent to which slouch +prevails in our country, try to start a “village +improvement society,” and experience, as others have done, +the apathy and ill-will of the inhabitants when you go about +among them and strive to summon some of their local pride to your +aid.</p> +<p>In the town near which I pass my summers, a large stone, +fallen from a passing dray, lay for days in the middle of the +principal street, until I paid some boys to remove it. No +one cared, and the dull-eyed inhabitants would doubtless be +looking at it still but for my impatience.</p> +<p>One would imagine the villagers were all on the point of +moving away (and they generally are, if they can sell their +land), so little interest do they show in your plans. Like +all people who have fallen into bad habits, they have grown to +love their slatternly ways and cling to them, resenting furiously +any attempt to shake them up to energy and reform.</p> +<p>The farmer has not, however, a monopoly. Slouch seems +ubiquitous. Our railway and steam-boat systems have tried +in vain to combat it, and supplied their employees with a livery +(I beg the free and independent voter’s pardon, a +uniform!), with but little effect. The inherent tendency is +too strong for the corporations. The conductors still +shuffle along in their spotted garments, the cap on the back of +the head, and their legs anywhere, while they chew gum in +defiance of the whole Board of Directors.</p> +<p>Go down to Washington, after a visit to the Houses of +Parliament or the Chamber of Deputies, and observe the contrast +between the bearing of our Senators and Representatives and the +air of their <i>confrères</i> abroad. Our law-makers +seem trying to avoid every appearance of +“smartness.” Indeed, I am told, so great is the +prejudice in the United States against a well-turned-out man that +a candidate would seriously compromise his chances of election +who appeared before his constituents in other than the accustomed +shabby frock-coat, unbuttoned and floating, a pot hat, no gloves, +as much doubtfully white shirt-front as possible, and a wisp of +black silk for a tie; and if he can exhibit also a chin-whisker, +his chances of election are materially increased.</p> +<p>Nothing offends an eye accustomed to our native <i>laisser +aller</i> so much as a well-brushed hat and shining boots. +When abroad, it is easy to spot a compatriot as soon and as far +as you can see one, by his graceless gait, a cross between a +lounge and a shuffle. In reading-, or dining-room, he is +the only man whose spine does not seem equal to its work, so he +flops and straggles until, for the honor of your land, you long +to shake him and set him squarely on his legs.</p> +<p>No amount of reasoning can convince me that outward +slovenliness is not a sign of inward and moral supineness. +A neglected exterior generally means a lax moral code. The +man who considers it too much trouble to sit erect can hardly +have given much time to his tub or his toilet. Having +neglected his clothes, he will neglect his manners, and between +morals and manners we know the tie is intimate.</p> +<p>In the Orient a new reign is often inaugurated by the +construction of a mosque. Vast expense is incurred to make +it as splendid as possible. But, once completed, it is +never touched again. Others are built by succeeding +sovereigns, but neither thought nor treasure is ever expended on +the old ones. When they can no longer be used, they are +abandoned, and fall into decay. The same system seems to +prevail among our private owners and corporations. Streets +are paved, lamp-posts erected, store-fronts carefully adorned, +but from the hour the workman puts his finishing touch upon them +they are abandoned to the hand of fate. The mud may cake up +knee-deep, wind and weather work their own sweet will, it is no +one’s business to interfere.</p> +<p>When abroad one of my amusements has been of an early morning +to watch Paris making its toilet. The streets are taking a +bath, liveried attendants are blacking the boots of the +lamp-posts and newspaper-<i>kiosques</i>, the shop-fronts are +being shaved and having their hair curled, café’s +and restaurants are putting on clean shirts and tying their +cravats smartly before their many mirrors. By the time the +world is up and about, the whole city, smiling freshly from its +matutinal tub, is ready to greet it gayly.</p> +<p>It is this attention to detail that gives to Continental +cities their air of cheerfulness and thrift, and the utter lack +of it that impresses foreigners so painfully on arriving at our +shores.</p> +<p>It has been the fashion to laugh at the dude and his high +collar, at the darky in his master’s cast-off clothes, +aping style and fashion. Better the dude, better the +colored dandy, better even the Bowery “tough” with +his affected carriage, for they at least are reaching blindly out +after something better than their surroundings, striving after an +ideal, and are in just so much the superiors of the foolish souls +who mock them—better, even misguided efforts, than the +ignoble stagnant quagmire of slouch into which we seem to be +slowly descending.</p> +<h2>No. 9—Social Suggestion</h2> +<p>The question of how far we are unconsciously influenced by +people and surroundings, in our likes and dislikes, our opinions, +and even in our pleasures and intimate tastes, is a delicate and +interesting one, for the line between success and failure in the +world, as on the stage or in most of the professions, is so +narrow and depends so often on what humor one’s +“public” happen to be in at a particular moment, that +the subject is worthy of consideration.</p> +<p>Has it never happened to you, for instance, to dine with +friends and go afterwards in a jolly humor to the play which +proved so delightful that you insist on taking your family +immediately to see it; when to your astonishment you discover +that it is neither clever nor amusing, on the contrary rather +dull. Your family look at you in amazement and wonder what +you had seen to admire in such an asinine performance. +There was a case of suggestion! You had been influenced by +your friends and had shared their opinions. The same thing +occurs on a higher scale when one is raised out of one’s +self by association with gifted and original people, a communion +with more cultivated natures which causes you to discover and +appreciate a thousand hidden beauties in literature, art or music +that left to yourself, you would have failed to notice. +Under these circumstances you will often be astonished at the +point and piquancy of your own conversation. This is but +too true of a number of subjects.</p> +<p>We fondly believe our opinions and convictions to be original, +and with innocent conceit, imagine that we have formed them for +ourselves. The illusion of being unlike other people is a +common vanity. Beware of the man who asserts such a +claim. He is sure to be a bore and will serve up to you, as +his own, a muddle of ideas and opinions which he has absorbed +like a sponge from his surroundings.</p> +<p>No place is more propitious for studying this curious +phenomenon, than behind the scenes of a theatre, the last few +nights before a first performance. The whole company is +keyed up to a point of mutual admiration that they are far from +feeling generally. “The piece is charming and sure to +be a success.” The author and the interpreters of his +thoughts are in complete communion. The first night +comes. The piece is a failure! Drop into the +greenroom then and you will find an astonishing change has taken +place. The Star will take you into a corner and assert +that, she “always knew the thing could not go, it was too +imbecile, with such a company, it was folly to expect anything +else.” The author will abuse the Star and the +management. The whole troupe is frankly disconcerted, like +people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had +seen in the play to admire.</p> +<p>In the social world we are even more inconsistent, accepting +with tameness the most astonishing theories and opinions. +Whole circles will go on assuring each other how clever Miss +So-and-So is, or, how beautiful they think someone else. +Not because these good people are any cleverer, or more +attractive than their neighbors, but simply because it is in the +air to have these opinions about them. To such an extent +does this hold good, that certain persons are privileged to be +vulgar and rude, to say impertinent things and make remarks that +would ostracize a less fortunate individual from the polite world +for ever; society will only smilingly shrug its shoulders and +say: “It is only Mr. So-and-So’s way.” It +is useless to assert that in cases like these, people are in +possession of their normal senses. They are under +influences of which they are perfectly unconscious.</p> +<p>Have you ever seen a piece guyed? Few sadder sights +exist, the human being rarely getting nearer the brute than when +engaged in this amusement. Nothing the actor or actress can +do will satisfy the public. Men who under ordinary +circumstances would be incapable of insulting a woman, will +whistle and stamp and laugh, at an unfortunate girl who is doing +her utmost to amuse them. A terrible example of this was +given two winters ago at one of our concert halls, when a family +of Western singers were subjected to absolute ill-treatment at +the hands of the public. The young girls were perfectly +sincere, in their rude way, but this did not prevent men from +offering them every insult malice could devise, and making them a +target for every missile at hand. So little does the public +think for itself in cases like this, that at the opening of the +performance had some well-known person given the signal for +applause, the whole audience would, in all probability, have been +delighted and made the wretched sisters a success.</p> +<p>In my youth it was the fashion to affect admiration for the +Italian school of painting and especially for the great masters +of the Renaissance. Whole families of perfectly inartistic +English and Americans might then he heard conscientiously +admiring the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo’s +Last Supper (Botticelli had not been invented then) in the +choicest guide-book language.</p> +<p>When one considers the infinite knowledge of technique +required to understand the difficulties overcome by the giants of +the Renaissance and to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of +their creations, one asks one’s self in wonder what our +parents admired in those paintings, and what tempted them to +bring home and adorn their houses with such dreadful copies of +their favorites. For if they appreciated the originals they +never would have bought the copies, and if the copies pleased +them, they must have been incapable of enjoying the +originals. Yet all these people thought themselves +perfectly sincere. To-day you will see the same thing going +on before the paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the same +admiration expressed by people who, you feel perfectly sure, do +not realize why these works of art are superior and can no more +explain to you why they think as they do than the sheep that +follow each other through a hole in a wall, can give a reason for +their actions.</p> +<p>Dress and fashion in clothes are subjects above all others, +where the ineptitude of the human mind is most evident. Can +it be explained in any other way, why the fashions of yesterday +always appear so hideous to us,—almost grotesque? +Take up an old album of photographs and glance over the faded +contents. Was there ever anything so absurd? Look at +the top hats men wore, and at the skirts of the women!</p> +<p>The mother of a family said to me the other day: “When I +recall the way in which girls were dressed in my youth, I wonder +how any of us ever got a husband.”</p> +<p>Study a photograph of the Empress Eugénie, that supreme +arbiter of elegance and grace. Oh! those bunchy hooped +skirts! That awful India shawl pinned off the shoulders, +and the bonnet perched on a roll of hair in the nape of the +neck! What were people thinking of at that time? Were +they lunatics to deform in this way the beautiful lines of the +human body which it should be the first object of toilet to +enhance, or were they only lacking in the artistic sense? +Nothing of the kind. And what is more, they were convinced +that the real secret of beauty in dress had been discovered by +them; that past fashions were absurd, and that the future could +not improve on their creations. The sculptors and painters +of that day (men of as great talent as any now living), were +enthusiastic in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or on +canvas, and authors raved about the ideal grace with which a +certain beauty draped her shawl.</p> +<p>Another marked manner in which we are influenced by +circumambient suggestion, is in the transient furore certain +games and pastimes create. We see intelligent people so +given over to this influence as barely to allow themselves time +to eat and sleep, begrudging the hours thus stolen from their +favorite amusement.</p> +<p>Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment of our young +people’s time; now golf has transplanted tennis in public +favor, which does not prove, however, that the latter is the +better game, but simply that compelled by the accumulated force +of other people’s opinions, youths and maidens, old duffers +and mature spinsters are willing to pass many hours daily in all +kinds of weather, solemnly following an indian-rubber ball across +ten-acre lots.</p> +<p>If you suggest to people who are laboring under the illusion +they are amusing themselves that the game, absorbing so much of +their attention, is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever in +combinations as croquet, that in fact it would be quite as +amusing to roll an empty barrel several times around a plowed +field, they laugh at you in derision and instantly put you down +in their profound minds as a man who does not understand +“sport.”</p> +<p>Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty years ago and had +night come to interrupt a game of croquet would have ordered +lanterns lighted in order to finish the match so enthralling were +its intricacies.</p> +<p>Everybody has known how to play <i>Bézique</i> in this +country for years, yet within the last eighteen months, whole +circles of our friends have been seized with a midsummer madness +and willingly sat glued to a card-table through long hot +afternoons and again after dinner until day dawned on their +folly.</p> +<p>Certain <i>Mémoires</i> of Louis Fifteenth’s +reign tell of an “unravelling” mania that developed +at his court. It began by some people fraying out old silks +to obtain the gold and silver threads from worn-out stuffs; this +occupation soon became the rage, nothing could restrain the +delirium of destruction, great ladies tore priceless tapestries +from their walls and brocades from their furniture, in order to +unravel those materials and as the old stock did not suffice for +the demand thousands were spent on new brocades and velvets, +which were instantly destroyed, entertainments were given where +unravelling was the only amusement offered, the entire court +thinking and talking of nothing else for months.</p> +<p>What is the logical deduction to be drawn from all this? +Simply that people do not see with their eyes or judge with their +understandings; that an all-pervading hypnotism, an ambient +suggestion, at times envelops us taking from people all free +will, and replacing it with the taste and judgment of the +moment.</p> +<p>The number of people is small in each generation, who are +strong enough to rise above their surroundings and think for +themselves. The rest are as dry leaves on a stream. +They float along and turn gayly in the eddies, convinced all the +time (as perhaps are the leaves) that they act entirely from +their own volition and that their movements are having a profound +influence on the direction and force of the current.</p> +<h2>No. 10—Bohemia</h2> +<p>Lunching with a talented English comedian and his wife the +other day, the conversation turned on Bohemia, the evasive +no-man’s-land that Thackeray referred to, in so many of his +books, and to which he looked back lovingly in his later years, +when, as he said, he had forgotten the road to Prague.</p> +<p>The lady remarked: “People have been more than kind to +us here in New York. We have dined and supped out +constantly, and have met with gracious kindness, such as we can +never forget. But so far we have not met a single painter, +or author, or sculptor, or a man who has explored a corner of the +earth. Neither have we had the good luck to find ourselves +in the same room with Tesla or Rehan, Edison or Drew. We +shall regret so much when back in England and are asked about +your people of talent, being obliged to say, ‘We never met +any of them.’ Why is it? We have not been in +any one circle, and have pitched our tents in many cities, during +our tours over here, but always with the same result. We +read your American authors as much as, if not more than, our +own. The names of dozens of your discoverers and painters +are household words in England. When my husband planned his +first tour over here my one idea was, ‘How nice it will +be! Now I shall meet those delightful people of whom I have +heard so much.’ The disappointment has been +complete. Never one have I seen.”</p> +<p>I could not but feel how all too true were the remarks of this +intelligent visitor, remembering how quick the society of London +is to welcome a new celebrity or original character, how a place +is at once made for him at every hospitable board, a permanent +one to which he is expected to return; and how no Continental +entertainment is considered complete without some bright +particular star to shine in the firmament.</p> +<p>“Lion-hunting,” I hear my reader say with a +sneer. That may be, but it makes society worth the candle, +which it rarely is over here. I realized what I had often +vaguely felt before, that the Bohemia the English lady was +looking for was not to be found in this country, more’s the +pity. Not that the elements are lacking. Far from it, +(for even more than in London should we be able to combine such a +society), but perhaps from a misconception of the true idea of +such a society, due probably to Henry Murger’s dreary book +<i>Scènes de la vie de Bohême</i> which is +chargeable with the fact that a circle of this kind evokes in the +mind of most Americans visions of a scrubby, poorly-fed and +less-washed community, a world they would hardly dare ask to +their tables for fear of some embarrassing unconventionality of +conduct or dress.</p> +<p>Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in Murger or Paul +de Kock, at their worst, the hero is still a gentleman, and even +when he borrows a friend’s coat, it is to go to a great +house and among people of rank. Besides, we are becoming +too cosmopolitan, and wander too constantly over this little +globe, not to have learned that the Bohemia of 1830 is as +completely a thing of the past as a <i>grisette</i> or a +glyphisodon. It disappeared with Gavarni and the authors +who described it. Although we have kept the word, its +meaning has gradually changed until it has come to mean something +difficult to define, a will-o’-the-wisp, which one tries +vainly to grasp. With each decade it has put on a new form +and changed its centre, the one definite fact being that it +combines the better elements of several social layers.</p> +<p>Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, at one of +Madeleine Lemaire’s informal evenings in her studio. +There you may find the Prince de Ligne, chatting with +Réjane or Coquelin; or Henri d’Orléans, just +back from an expedition into Africa. A little further on, +Saint-Saens will be running over the keys, preparing an +accompaniment for one of Madame de Trédern’s +songs. The Princess Mathilde (that passionate lover of art) +will surely be there, and—but it is needless to +particularize.</p> +<p>Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to one of +Irving’s choice suppers after the play. You will find +the bar, the stage, and the pulpit represented there, a +“happy family” over which the “Prince” +often presides, smoking cigar after cigar, until the tardy London +daylight appears to break up the entertainment.</p> +<p>For both are centres where the gifted and the travelled meet +the great of the social world, on a footing of perfect equality, +and where, if any prestige is accorded, it is that of +brains. When you have seen these places and a dozen others +like them, you will realize what the actor’s wife had in +her mind.</p> +<p>Now, let me whisper to you why I think such circles do not +exist in this country. In the first place, we are still too +provincial in this big city of ours. New York always +reminds me of a definition I once heard of California fruit: +“Very large, with no particular flavor.” We are +like a boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too quickly and +look like a man, but whose mind has not kept pace with his +body. What he knows is undigested and chaotic, while his +appearance makes you expect more of him than he can +give—hence disappointment.</p> +<p>Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has retained all +sorts of littlenesses and prejudices which older civilizations +have long since relegated to the mental lumber room. An +equivalent to this point of view you will find in England or +France only in the smaller “cathedral” cities, and +even there the old aristocrats have the courage of their +opinions. Here, where everything is quite frankly on a +money basis, and “positions” are made and lost like a +fortune, by a turn of the market, those qualities which are +purely mental, and on which it is hard to put a practical value, +are naturally at a discount. We are quite ready to pay for +the best. Witness our private galleries and the opera, but +we say, like the parvenu in Émile Augier’s +delightful comedy <i>Le Gendre de M. Poirier</i>, +“Patronize art? Of course! But the +artists? Never!” And frankly, it would be too +much, would it not, to expect a family only half a generation +away from an iron foundry, or a mine, to be willing to receive +Irving or Bernhardt on terms of perfect equality?</p> +<p>As it would be unjust to demand a mature mind in the overgrown +boy, it is useless to hope for delicate tact and social feeling +from the parvenu. To be gracious and at ease with all +classes and professions, one must be perfectly sure of +one’s own position, and with us few feel this security, it +being based on too frail a foundation, a crisis in the +“street” going a long way towards destroying it.</p> +<p>Of course I am generalizing and doubt not that in many +cultivated homes the right spirit exists, but unfortunately these +are not the centres which give the tone to our +“world.” Lately at one of the most splendid +houses in this city a young Italian tenor had been engaged to +sing. When he had finished he stood alone, unnoticed, +unspoken to for the rest of the evening. He had been paid +to sing. “What more, in common sense, could he +want?” thought the “world,” without reflecting +that it was probably not the <i>tenor</i> who lost by that +arrangement. It needs a delicate hand to hold the reins +over the backs of such a fine-mouthed community as artists and +singers form. They rarely give their best when singing or +performing in a hostile atmosphere.</p> +<p>A few years ago when a fancy-dress ball was given at the +Academy of Design, the original idea was to have it an +artists’ ball; the community of the brush were, however, +approached with such a complete lack of tact that, with hardly an +exception, they held aloof, and at the ball shone conspicuous by +their absence.</p> +<p>At present in this city I know of but two hospitable firesides +where you are sure to meet the best the city holds of either +foreign or native talent. The one is presided over by the +wife of a young composer, and the other, oddly enough, by two +unmarried ladies. An invitation to a dinner or a supper at +either of these houses is as eagerly sought after and as highly +prized in the great world as it is by the Bohemians, though +neither “salon” is open regularly.</p> +<p>There is still hope for us, and I already see signs of better +things. Perhaps, when my English friend returns in a few +years, we may be able to prove to her that we have found the road +to Prague.</p> +<h2>No. 11—Social Exiles</h2> +<p>Balzac, in his <i>Comédie Humaine</i>, has reviewed +with a master-hand almost every phase of the Social World of +Paris down to 1850 and Thackeray left hardly a corner of London +High Life unexplored; but so great have been the changes +(progress, its admirers call it,) since then, that, could Balzac +come back to his beloved Paris, he would feel like a foreigner +there; and Thackeray, who was among us but yesterday, would have +difficulty in finding his bearings in the sea of the London world +to-day.</p> +<p>We have changed so radically that even a casual observer +cannot help being struck by the difference. Among other +most significant “phenomena” has appeared a phase of +life that not only neither of these great men observed (for the +very good reason that it had not appeared in their time), but +which seems also to have escaped the notice of the writers of our +own day, close observers as they are of any new +development. I mean the class of Social Exiles, pitiable +wanderers from home and country, who haunt the Continent, and are +to be found (sad little colonies) in out-of-the-way corners of +almost every civilized country.</p> +<p>To know much of this form of modern life, one must have been a +wanderer, like myself, and have pitched his tent in many queer +places; for they are shy game and not easily raised, frequenting +mostly quiet old cities like Versailles and Florence, or +inexpensive watering-places where their meagre incomes become +affluence by contrast. The first thought on dropping in on +such a settlement is, “How in the world did these people +ever drift here?” It is simple enough and generally +comes about in this way:</p> +<p>The father of a wealthy family dies. The fortune turns +out to be less than was expected. The widow and children +decide to go abroad for a year or so, during their period of +mourning, partially for distraction, and partially (a fact which +is not spoken of) because at home they would be forced to change +their way of living to a simpler one, and that is hard to do, +just at first. Later they think it will be quite +easy. So the family emigrates, and after a little +sight-seeing, settles in Dresden or Tours, casually at first, in +a hotel. If there are young children they are made the +excuse. “The languages are so important!” +Or else one of the daughters develops a taste for music, or a son +takes up the study of art. In a year or two, before a +furnished apartment is taken, the idea of returning is discussed, +but abandoned “for the present.” They begin +vaguely to realize how difficult it will be to take life up again +at home. During all this time their income (like everything +else when the owners are absent) has been slowly but surely +disappearing, making the return each year more difficult. +Finally, for economy, an unfurnished apartment is taken. +They send home for bits of furniture and family belongings, and +gradually drop into the great army of the expatriated.</p> +<p>Oh, the pathos of it! One who has not seen these poor +stranded waifs in their self-imposed exile, with eyes turned +towards their native land, cannot realize all the sadness and +loneliness they endure, rarely adopting the country of their +residence but becoming more firmly American as the years go +by. The home papers and periodicals are taken, the American +church attended, if there happens to be one; the English chapel, +if there is not. Never a French church! In their +hearts they think it almost irreverent to read the service in +French. The acquaintance of a few fellow-exiles is made and +that of a half-dozen English families, mothers and daughters and +a younger son or two, whom the ferocious primogeniture custom has +cast out of the homes of their childhood to economize on the +Continent.</p> +<p>I have in my mind a little settlement of this kind at +Versailles, which was a type. The formal old city, fallen +from its grandeur, was a singularly appropriate setting to the +little comedy. There the modest purses of the exiles found +rents within their reach, the quarters vast and airy. The +galleries and the park afforded a diversion, and then Paris, dear +Paris, the American Mecca, was within reach. At the time I +knew it, the colony was fairly prosperous, many of its members +living in the two or three principal <i>pensions</i>, the others +in apartments of their own. They gave feeble little +entertainments among themselves, card-parties and teas, and dined +about with each other at their respective <i>tables +d’hôte</i>, even knowing a stray Frenchman or two, +whom the quest of a meal had tempted out of their native +fastnesses as it does the wolves in a hard winter. Writing +and receiving letters from America was one of the principal +occupations, and an epistle descriptive of a particular event at +home went the rounds, and was eagerly read and discussed.</p> +<p>The merits of the different <i>pensions</i> also formed a +subject of vital interest. The advantages and disadvantages +of these rival establishments were, as a topic, never +exhausted. <i>Madame une telle</i> gave five o’clock +tea, included in the seven francs a day, but her rival gave one +more meat course at dinner and her coffee was certainly better, +while a third undoubtedly had a nicer set of people. No one +here at home can realize the importance these matters gradually +assume in the eyes of the exiles. Their slender incomes +have to be so carefully handled to meet the strain of even this +simple way of living, if they are to show a surplus for a little +trip to the seashore in the summer months, that an extra franc a +day becomes a serious consideration.</p> +<p>Every now and then a family stronger-minded than the others, +or with serious reasons for returning home (a daughter to bring +out or a son to put into business), would break away from its +somnolent surroundings and re-cross the Atlantic, alternating +between hope and fear. It is here that a sad fate awaits +these modern Rip Van Winkles. They find their native cities +changed beyond recognition. (For we move fast in these +days.) The mother gets out her visiting list of ten years +before and is thunderstruck to find that it contains chiefly +names of the “dead, the divorced, and +defaulted.” The waves of a decade have washed over +her place and the world she once belonged to knows her no +more. The leaders of her day on whose aid she counted have +retired from the fray. Younger, and alas! unknown faces sit +in the opera boxes and around the dinner tables where before she +had found only friends. After a feeble little struggle to +get again into the “swim,” the family drifts back +across the ocean into the quiet back water of a continental town, +and goes circling around with the other twigs and dry leaves, +moral flotsam and jetsam, thrown aside by the great rush of the +outside world.</p> +<p>For the parents the life is not too sad. They have had +their day, and are, perhaps, a little glad in their hearts of a +quiet old age, away from the heat and sweat of the battle; but +for the younger generation it is annihilation. Each year +their circle grows smaller. Death takes away one member +after another of the family, until one is left alone in a foreign +land with no ties around her, or with her far-away +“home,” the latter more a name now than a +reality.</p> +<p>A year or two ago I was taking luncheon with our consul at his +primitive villa, an hour’s ride from the city of Tangier, a +ride made on donkey-back, as no roads exist in that sunny +land. After our coffee and cigars, he took me a +half-hour’s walk into the wilderness around him to call on +his nearest neighbors, whose mode of existence seemed a source of +anxiety to him. I found myself in the presence of two +American ladies, the younger being certainly not less than +seventy-five. To my astonishment I found they had been +living there some thirty years, since the death of their parents, +in an isolation and remoteness impossible to describe, in an Arab +house, with native servants, “the world forgetting, by the +world forgot.” Yet these ladies had names well known +in New York fifty years ago.</p> +<p>The glimpse I had of their existence made me thoughtful as I +rode home in the twilight, across a suburb none too safe for +strangers. What had the future in store for those +two? Or, worse still, for the survivor of those two? +In contrast, I saw a certain humble “home” far away +in America, where two old ladies were ending their lives +surrounded by loving friends and relations, honored and cherished +and guarded tenderly from the rude world.</p> +<p>In big cities like Paris and Rome there is another class of +the expatriated, the wealthy who have left their homes in a +moment of pique after the failure of some social or political +ambition; and who find in these centres the recognition refused +them at home and for which their souls thirsted.</p> +<p>It is not to these I refer, although it is curious to see a +group of people living for years in a country of which they, half +the time, do not speak the language (beyond the necessities of +housekeeping and shopping), knowing but few of its inhabitants, +and seeing none of the society of the place, their acquaintance +rarely going beyond that equivocal, hybrid class that surrounds +rich “strangers” and hangs on to the outer edge of +the <i>grand monde</i>. One feels for this latter class +merely contempt, but one’s pity is reserved for the +former. What object lessons some lives on the Continent +would be to impatient souls at home, who feel discontented with +their surroundings, and anxious to break away and wander +abroad! Let them think twice before they cut the thousand +ties it has taken a lifetime to form. Better monotony at +your own fireside, my friends, where at the worst, you are known +and have your place, no matter how small, than an old age among +strangers.</p> +<h2>No. 12—“Seven Ages” of Furniture</h2> +<p>The progress through life of active-minded Americans is apt to +be a series of transformations. At each succeeding phase of +mental development, an old skin drops from their growing +intelligence, and they assimilate the ideas and tastes of their +new condition, with a facility and completeness unknown to other +nations.</p> +<p>One series of metamorphoses particularly amusing to watch is, +that of an observant, receptive daughter of Uncle Sam who, aided +and followed (at a distance) by an adoring husband, gradually +develops her excellent brain, and rises through fathoms of +self-culture and purblind experiment, to the surface of +dilettantism and connoisseurship. One can generally detect +the exact stage of evolution such a lady has reached by the bent +of her conversation, the books she is reading, and, last but not +least, by her material surroundings; no outward and visible signs +reflecting inward and spiritual grace so clearly as the objects +people collect around them for the adornment of their rooms, or +the way in which those rooms are decorated.</p> +<p>A few years ago, when a young man and his bride set up +housekeeping on their own account, the “old people” +of both families seized the opportunity to unload on the +beginners (under the pretence of helping them along) a quantity +of furniture and belongings that had (as the shopkeepers say) +“ceased to please” their original owners. The +narrow quarters of the tyros are encumbered by ungainly sofas and +arm-chairs, most probably of carved rosewood. +<i>Étagères</i> of the same lugubrious material +grace the corners of their tiny drawing-room, the bits of mirror +inserted between the shelves distorting the image of the owners +into headless or limbless phantoms. Half of their little +dining-room is filled with a black-walnut sideboard, ingeniously +contrived to take up as much space as possible and hold nothing, +its graceless top adorned with a stag’s head carved in wood +and imitation antlers.</p> +<p>The novices in their innocence live contented amid their +hideous surroundings for a year or two, when the wife enters her +second epoch, which, for want of a better word, we will call the +Japanese period. The grim furniture gradually disappears +under a layer of silk and gauze draperies, the bare walls blossom +with paper umbrellas, fans are nailed in groups promiscuously, +wherever an empty space offends her eye. Bows of ribbon are +attached to every possible protuberance of the furniture. +Even the table service is not spared. I remember dining at +a house in this stage of its artistic development, where the +marrow bones that formed one course of the dinner appeared each +with a coquettish little bow-knot of pink ribbon around its +neck.</p> +<p>Once launched on this sea of adornment, the housewife soon +loses her bearings and decorates indiscriminately. Her old +evening dresses serve to drape the mantelpieces, and she passes +every spare hour embroidering, braiding, or fringing some +material to adorn her rooms. At Christmas her friends +contribute specimens of their handiwork to the collection.</p> +<p>The view of other houses and other decorations before long +introduces the worm of discontent into the blossom of our +friend’s contentment. The fruit of her labors becomes +tasteless on her lips. As the finances of the family are +satisfactory, the re-arrangement of the parlor floor is (at her +suggestion) confided to a firm of upholsterers, who make a clean +sweep of the rosewood and the bow-knots, and retire, after some +months of labor, leaving the delighted wife in possession of a +suite of rooms glittering with every monstrosity that an +imaginative tradesman, spurred on by unlimited credit, could +devise.</p> +<p>The wood work of the doors and mantels is an intricate puzzle +of inlaid woods, the ceilings are panelled and painted in +complicated designs. The “parlor” is provided +with a complete set of neat, old-gold satin furniture, puffed at +its angles with peacock-colored plush.</p> +<p>The monumental folding doors between the long, narrow rooms +are draped with the same chaste combination of stuffs.</p> +<p>The dining-room blazes with a gold and purple wall paper, set +off by ebonized wood work and furniture. The conscientious +contractor has neglected no corner. Every square inch of +the ceilings, walls, and floors has been carved, embossed, +stencilled, or gilded into a bewildering monotony.</p> +<p>The husband, whose affairs are rapidly increasing on his +hands, has no time to attend to such insignificant details as +house decoration, the wife has perfect confidence in the taste of +the firm employed. So at the suggestion of the latter, and +in order to complete the beauty of the rooms, a Bouguereau, a +Toulmouche and a couple of Schreyers are bought, and a number of +modern French bronzes scattered about on the multicolored +cabinets. Then, at last, the happy owners of all this +splendor open their doors to the admiration of their friends.</p> +<p>About the time the peacock plush and the gilding begin to show +signs of wear and tear, rumors of a fresh fashion in decoration +float across from England, and the new gospel of the beautiful +according to Clarence Cook is first preached to an astonished +nation.</p> +<p>The fortune of our couple continuing to develop with pleasing +rapidity, the building of a country house is next decided +upon. A friend of the husband, who has recently started out +as an architect, designs them a picturesque residence without a +straight line on its exterior or a square room inside. This +house is done up in strict obedience to the teachings of the new +sect. The dining-room is made about as cheerful as the +entrance to a family vault. The rest of the house bears a +close resemblance to an ecclesiastical junk shop. The +entrance hall is filled with what appears to be a communion table +in solid oak, and the massive chairs and settees of the parlor +suggest the withdrawing room of Rowena, æsthetic shades of +momie-cloth drape deep-set windows, where anæmic and +disjointed females in stained glass pluck conventional roses.</p> +<p>To each of these successive transitions the husband has +remained obediently and tranquilly indifferent. He has in +his heart considered them all equally unfitting and uncomfortable +and sighed in regretful memory of a deep, old-fashioned arm-chair +that sheltered his after-dinner naps in the early rosewood +period. So far he has been as clay in the hands of his +beloved wife, but the anæmic ladies and the communion table +are the last drop that causes his cup to overflow. He +revolts and begins to take matters into his own hands with the +result that the household enters its fifth incarnation under his +guidance, during which everything is painted white and all the +wall-papers are a vivid scarlet. The family sit on bogus +Chippendale and eat off blue and white china.</p> +<p>With the building of their grand new house near the park the +couple rise together into the sixth cycle of their +development. Having travelled and studied the epochs by +this time, they can tell a Louis XIV. from a Louis XV. room, and +recognize that mahogany and brass sphinxes denote furniture of +the Empire. This newly acquired knowledge is, however, +vague and hazy. They have no confidence in themselves, so +give over the fitting of their principal floors to the New York +branch of a great French house. Little is talked of now but +periods, plans, and elevations. Under the guidance of the +French firm, they acquire at vast expense, faked reproductions as +historic furniture.</p> +<p>The spacious rooms are sticky with new gilding, and the +flowered brocades of the hangings and furniture crackle to the +touch. The rooms were not designed by the architect to +receive any special kind of “treatment.” +Immense folding-doors unite the salons, and windows open +anywhere. The decorations of the walls have been applied +like a poultice, regardless of the proportions of the rooms and +the distribution of the spaces.</p> +<p>Building and decorating are, however, the best of +educations. The husband, freed at last from his business +occupations, finds in this new study an interest and a charm +unknown to him before. He and his wife are both vaguely +disappointed when their resplendent mansion is finished, having +already outgrown it, and recognize that in spite of correct +detail, their costly apartments no more resemble the stately and +simple salons seen abroad than the cabin of a Fall River boat +resembles the <i>Galerie des Glaces</i> at Versailles. The +humiliating knowledge that they are all wrong breaks upon them, +as it is doing on hundreds of others, at the same time as the +desire to know more and appreciate better the perfect productions +of this art.</p> +<p>A seventh and last step is before them but they know not how +to make it. A surer guide than the upholsterer is, they +know, essential, but their library contains nothing to help +them. Others possess the information they need, yet they +are ignorant where to turn for what they require.</p> +<p>With singular appropriateness a volume treating of this +delightful “art” has this season appeared at +Scribner’s. “The Decoration of Houses” is +the result of a woman’s faultless taste collaborating with +a man’s technical knowledge. Its mission is to reveal +to the hundreds who have advanced just far enough to find that +they can go no farther alone, truths lying concealed beneath the +surface. It teaches that consummate taste is satisfied only +with a perfected simplicity; that the facades of a house must be +the envelope of the rooms within and adapted to them, as the +rooms are to the habits and requirements of them “that +dwell therein;” that proportion is the backbone of the +decorator’s art and that supreme elegance is fitness and +moderation; and, above all, that an attention to architectural +principles can alone lead decoration to a perfect +development.</p> +<h2>No. 13—Our Elite and Public Life</h2> +<p>The complaint is so often heard, and seems so well founded, +that there is a growing inclination, not only among men of social +position, but also among our best and cleverest citizens, to +stand aloof from public life, and this reluctance on their part +is so unfortunate, that one feels impelled to seek out the causes +where they must lie, beneath the surface. At a first glance +they are not apparent. Why should not the honor of +representing one’s town or locality be as eagerly sought +after with us as it is by English or French men of +position? That such is not the case, however, is +evident.</p> +<p>Speaking of this the other evening, over my after-dinner +coffee, with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who not +long ago represented our country at a European court, he advanced +two theories which struck me as being well worth repeating, and +which seemed to account to a certain extent for this curious +abstinence.</p> +<p>As a first and most important cause, he placed the fact that +neither our national nor (here in New York) our state capital +coincides with our metropolis. In this we differ from +England and all the continental countries. The result is +not difficult to perceive. In London, a man of the world, a +business man, or a great lawyer, who represents a locality in +Parliament, can fulfil his mandate and at the same time lead his +usual life among his own set. The lawyer or the business +man can follow during the day his profession, or those affairs on +which he depends to support his family and his position in the +world. Then, after dinner (owing to the peculiar hours +adopted for the sittings of Parliament), he can take his place as +a law-maker. If he be a London-born man, he in no way +changes his way of life or that of his family. If, on the +contrary, he be a county magnate, the change he makes is all for +the better, as it takes him and his wife and daughters up to +London, the haven of their longings, and the centre of all sorts +of social dissipations and advancement.</p> +<p>With us, it is exactly the contrary. As the District of +Columbia elects no one, everybody living in Washington officially +is more or less expatriated, and the social life it offers is a +poor substitute for the circle which most families leave to go +there.</p> +<p>That, however, is not the most important side of the +question. Go to any great lawyer of either New York or +Chicago, and propose sending him to Congress or the Senate. +His answer is sure to be, “I cannot afford it. I know +it is an honor, but what is to replace the hundred thousand +dollars a year which my profession brings me in, not to mention +that all my practice would go to pieces during my +absence?” Or again, “How should I dare to +propose to my family to leave one of the great centres of the +country to go and vegetate in a little provincial city like +Washington? No, indeed! Public life is out of the +question for me!”</p> +<p>Does any one suppose England would have the class of men she +gets in Parliament, if that body sat at Bristol?</p> +<p>Until recently the man who occupied the position of Lord +Chancellor made thirty thousand pounds a year by his profession +without interfering in any way with his public duties, and at the +present moment a recordership in London in no wise prevents +private practice. Were these gentlemen Americans, they +would be obliged to renounce all hope of professional income in +order to serve their country at its Capital.</p> +<p>Let us glance for a moment at the other reason. Owing to +our laws (doubtless perfectly reasonable, and which it is not my +intention to criticise,) a man must reside in the place he +represents. Here again we differ from all other +constitutional countries. Unfortunately, our clever young +men leave the small towns of their birth and flock up to the +great centres as offering wider fields for their +advancement. In consequence, the local elector finds his +choice limited to what is left—the intellectual skimmed +milk, of which the cream has been carried to New York or other +big cities. No country can exist without a metropolis, and +as such a centre by a natural law of assimilation absorbs the +best brains of the country, in other nations it has been found to +the interests of all parties to send down brilliant young men to +the “provinces,” to be, in good time, returned by +them to the national assemblies.</p> +<p>As this is not a political article the simple indication of +these two causes will suffice, without entering into the question +of their reasonableness or of their justice. The social +bearing of such a condition is here the only side of the question +under discussion; it is difficult to over-rate the influence that +a man’s family exert over his decisions.</p> +<p>Political ambition is exceedingly rare among our women of +position; when the American husband is bitten with it, the wife +submits to, rather than abets, his inclinations. In most +cases our women are not cosmopolitan enough to enjoy being +transplanted far away from their friends and relations, even to +fill positions of importance and honor. A New York woman of +great frankness and intelligence, who found herself recently in a +Western city under these circumstances, said, in answer to a +flattering remark that “the ladies of the place expected +her to become their social leader,” “I don’t +see anything to lead,” thus very plainly expressing her +opinion of the situation. It is hardly fair to expect a +woman accustomed to the life of New York or the foreign capitals, +to look forward with enthusiasm to a term of years passed in +Albany, or in Washington.</p> +<p>In France very much the same state of affairs has been reached +by quite a different route. The aristocracy detest the +present government, and it is not considered “good +form” by them to sit in the Chamber of Deputies or to +accept any but diplomatic positions. They condescend to +fill the latter because that entails living away from their own +country, as they feel more at ease in foreign courts than at the +Republican receptions of the Elysée.</p> +<p>There is a deplorable tendency among our self-styled +aristocracy to look upon their circle as a class apart. +They separate themselves more each year from the life of the +country, and affect to smile at any of their number who honestly +wish to be of service to the nation. They, like the French +aristocracy, are perfectly willing, even anxious, to fill +agreeable diplomatic posts at first-class foreign capitals, and +are naïvely astonished when their offers of service are not +accepted with gratitude by the authorities in Washington. +But let a husband propose to his better half some humble position +in the machinery of our government, and see what the lady’s +answer will be.</p> +<p>The opinion prevails among a large class of our wealthy and +cultivated people, that to go into public life is to descend to +duties beneath them. They judge the men who occupy such +positions with insulting severity, classing them in their minds +as corrupt and self-seeking, than which nothing can be more +childish or more imbecile. Any observer who has lived in +the different grades of society will quickly renounce the puerile +idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a +gentleman’s attention. This very political life, +which appears unworthy of their attention to so many men, is, in +reality, the great field where the nations of the world fight out +their differences, where the seed is sown that will ripen later +into vast crops of truth and justice. It is (if rightly +regarded and honestly followed) the battle-ground where +man’s highest qualities are put to their noblest +use—that of working for the happiness of others.</p> +<h2>No. 14—The Small Summer Hotel</h2> +<p>We certainly are the most eccentric race on the surface of the +globe and ought to be a delight to the soul of an explorer, so +full is our civilization of contradictions, unexplained habits +and curious customs. It is quite unnecessary for the +inquisitive gentlemen who pass their time prying into other +people’s affairs and then returning home to write books +about their discoveries, to risk their lives and digestions in +long journeys into Central Africa or to the frozen zones, while +so much good material lies ready to their hands in our own +land. The habits of the “natives” in New +England alone might occupy an active mind indefinitely, offering +as interesting problems as any to be solved by penetrating +Central Asia or visiting the man-eating tribes of Australia.</p> +<p>Perhaps one of our scientific celebrities, before undertaking +his next long voyage, will find time to make observations at home +and collect sufficient data to answer some questions that have +long puzzled my unscientific brain. He would be doing good +work. Fame and honors await the man who can explain why, +for instance, sane Americans of the better class, with money +enough to choose their surroundings, should pass so much of their +time in hotels and boarding houses. There must be a reason +for the vogue of these retreats—every action has a cause, +however remote. I shall await with the deepest interest a +paper on this subject from one of our great explorers, untoward +circumstances having some time ago forced me to pass a few days +in a popular establishment of this class.</p> +<p>During my visit I amused myself by observing the inmates and +trying to discover why they had come there. So far as I +could find out, the greater part of them belonged to our +well-to-do class, and when at home doubtless lived in luxurious +houses and were waited on by trained servants. In the small +summer hotel where I met them, they were living in dreary little +ten by twelve foot rooms, containing only the absolute +necessities of existence, a wash-stand, a bureau, two chairs and +a bed. And such a bed! One mattress about four inches +thick over squeaking slats, cotton sheets, so nicely calculated +to the size of the bed that the slightest move on the part of the +sleeper would detach them from their moorings and undo the +housemaid’s work; two limp, discouraged pillows that had +evidently been “banting,” and a few towels a foot +long with a surface like sand-paper, completed the fittings of +the room. Baths were unknown, and hot water was a luxury +distributed sparingly by a capricious handmaiden. It is +only fair to add that everything in the room was perfectly clean, +as was the coarse table linen in the dining room.</p> +<p>The meals were in harmony with the rooms and furniture, +consisting only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan +disregard for such sybarite foibles as seasoning or +dressing. I believe there was a substantial meal somewhere +in the early morning hours, but I never succeeded in getting down +in time to inspect it. By successful bribery, I induced one +of the village belles, who served at table, to bring a cup of +coffee to my room. The first morning it appeared already +poured out in the cup, with sugar and cold milk added at her +discretion. At one o’clock a dinner was served, +consisting of soup (occasionally), one meat dish and attendant +vegetables, a meagre dessert, and nothing else. At +half-past six there was an equally rudimentary meal, called +“tea,” after which no further food was distributed to +the inmates, who all, however, seemed perfectly contented with +this arrangement. In fact they apparently looked on the act +of eating as a disagreeable task, to be hurried through as soon +as possible that they might return to their aimless rocking and +chattering.</p> +<p>Instead of dinner hour being the feature of the day, uniting +people around an attractive table, and attended by conversation, +and the meal lasting long enough for one’s food to be +properly eaten, it was rushed through as though we were all +trying to catch a train. Then, when the meal was over, the +boarders relapsed into apathy again.</p> +<p>No one ever called this hospitable home a boarding-house, for +the proprietor was furious if it was given that name. He +also scorned the idea of keeping a hotel. So that I never +quite understood in what relation he stood toward us. He +certainly considered himself our host, and ignored the financial +side of the question severely. In order not to hurt his +feelings by speaking to him of money, we were obliged to get our +bills by strategy from a male subordinate. Mine host and +his family were apparently unaware that there were people under +their roof who paid them for board and lodging. We were all +looked upon as guests and “entertained,” and our +rights impartially ignored.</p> +<p>Nothing, I find, is so distinctive of New England as this +graceful veiling of the practical side of life. The +landlady always reminded me, by her manner, of Barrie’s +description of the bill-sticker’s wife who +“cut” her husband when she chanced to meet him +“professionally” engaged. As a result of this +extreme detachment from things material, the house ran itself, or +was run by incompetent Irish and negro “help.” +There were no bells in the rooms, which simplified the service, +and nothing could be ordered out of meal hours.</p> +<p>The material defects in board and lodging sink, however, into +insignificance before the moral and social unpleasantness of an +establishment such as this. All ages, all conditions, and +all creeds are promiscuously huddled together. It is +impossible to choose whom one shall know or whom avoid. A +horrible burlesque of family life is enabled, with all its +inconveniences and none of its sanctity. People from +different cities, with different interests and standards, are +expected to “chum” together in an intimacy that +begins with the eight o’clock breakfast and ends only when +all retire for the night. No privacy, no isolation is +allowed. If you take a book and begin to read in a remote +corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl +will tranquilly invade your poor little bit of privacy and gabble +of her affairs and the day’s gossip. There is no +escape unless you mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like +the Premiers of England when they visit Balmoral) on the bed, to +do your writing, for want of any other conveniences. Even +such retirement is resented by the boarders. You are +thought to be haughty and to give yourself airs if you do not sit +for twelve consecutive hours each day in unending conversation +with them.</p> +<p>When one reflects that thousands of our countrymen pass at +least one-half of their lives in these asylums, and that +thousands more in America know no other homes, but move from one +hotel to another, while the same outlay would procure them cosy, +cheerful dwellings, it does seem as if these modern Arabs, +Holmes’s “Folding Bed-ouins,” were gradually +returning to prehistoric habits and would end by eating roots +promiscuously in caves.</p> +<p>The contradiction appears more marked the longer one reflects +on the love of independence and impatience of all restraint that +characterize our race. If such an institution had been +conceived by people of the Old World, accustomed to moral slavery +and to a thousand petty tyrannies, it would not be so remarkable, +but that we, of all the races of the earth, should have created a +form of torture unknown to Louis XI. or to the Spanish +Inquisitors, is indeed inexplicable! Outside of this happy +land the institution is unknown. The <i>pension</i> when it +exists abroad, is only an exotic growth for an American +market. Among European nations it is undreamed of; the +poorest when they travel take furnished rooms, where they are +served in private, or go to restaurants or <i>table +d’hôtes</i> for their meals. In a strictly +continental hotel the public parlor does not exist. People +do not travel to make acquaintances, but for health or +recreation, or to improve their minds. The enforced +intimacy of our American family house, with its attendant +quarrelling and back-biting, is an infliction of which Europeans +are in happy ignorance.</p> +<p>One explanation, only, occurs to me, which is that among New +England people, largely descended from Puritan stock, there still +lingers some blind impulse at self-mortification, an hereditary +inclination to make this life as disagreeable as possible by +self-immolation. Their ancestors, we are told by Macaulay, +suppressed bull baiting, not because it hurt the bull, but +because it gave pleasure to the people. Here in New England +they refused the Roman dogma of Purgatory and then with complete +inconsistency, invented the boarding-house, in order, doubtless, +to take as much of the joy as possible out of this life, as a +preparation for endless bliss in the next.</p> +<h2>No. 15—A False Start</h2> +<p>Having had, during a wandering existence, many opportunities +of observing my compatriots away from home and familiar +surroundings in various circles of cosmopolitan society, at +foreign courts, in diplomatic life, or unofficial capacities, I +am forced to acknowledge that whereas my countrywoman invariably +assumed her new position with grace and dignity, my countryman, +in the majority of cases, appeared at a disadvantage.</p> +<p>I take particular pleasure in making this tribute to my +“sisters” tact and wit, as I have been accused of +being “hard” on American women, and some +half-humorous criticisms have been taken seriously by +over-susceptible women—doubtless troubled with guilty +consciences for nothing is more exact than the old French +proverb, “It is only the truth that wounds.”</p> +<p>The fact remains clear, however, that American men, as regards +polish, facility in expressing themselves in foreign languages, +the arts of pleasing and entertaining, in short, the thousand and +one nothings composing that agreeable whole, a cultivated member +of society, are inferior to their womankind. I feel sure +that all Americans who have travelled and have seen their +compatriot in his social relations with foreigners, will agree +with this, reluctant as I am to acknowledge it.</p> +<p>That a sister and brother brought up together, under the same +influences, should later differ to this extent seems +incredible. It is just this that convinces me we have made +a false start as regards the education and ambitions of our young +men.</p> +<p>To find the reasons one has only to glance back at our +past. After the struggle that insured our existence as a +united nation, came a period of great prosperity. When both +seemed secure, we did not pause and take breath, as it were, +before entering a new epoch of development, but dashed ahead on +the old lines. It is here that we got on the wrong +road. Naturally enough too, for our peculiar position on +this continent, far away from the centres of cultivation and art, +surrounded only by less successful states with which to compare +ourselves, has led us into forming erroneous ideas as to the +proportions of things, causing us to exaggerate the value of +material prosperity and undervalue matters of infinitely greater +importance, which have been neglected in consequence.</p> +<p>A man who, after fighting through our late war, had succeeded +in amassing a fortune, naturally wished his son to follow him on +the only road in which it had ever occurred to him that success +was of any importance. So beyond giving the boy a college +education, which he had not enjoyed, his ambition rarely went; +his idea being to make a practical business man of him, or a +lawyer, that he could keep the estate together more +intelligently. In thousands of cases, of course, individual +taste and bent over-ruled this influence, and a career of science +or art was chosen; but in the mass of the American people, it was +firmly implanted that the pursuit of wealth was the only +occupation to which a reasonable human being could devote +himself. A young man who was not in some way engaged in +increasing his income was looked upon as a very undesirable +member of society, and sure, sooner or later, to come to +harm.</p> +<p>Millionaires declined to send their sons to college, saying +they would get ideas there that would unfit them for business, to +Paterfamilias the one object of life. Under such fostering +influences, the ambitions in our country have gradually given way +to money standards and the false start has been made! +Leaving aside at once the question of money in its relation to +our politics (although it would be a fruitful subject for +moralizing), and confining ourselves strictly to the social side +of life, we soon see the results of this mammon worship.</p> +<p>In England (although Englishmen have been contemptuously +called the shop-keepers of the world) the extension and +maintenance of their vast empire is the mainspring which keeps +the great machine in movement. And one sees tens of +thousands of well-born and delicately-bred men cheerfully +entering the many branches of public service where the hope of +wealth can never come, and retiring on pensions or half-pay in +the strength of their middle age, apparently without a regret or +a thought beyond their country’s well-being.</p> +<p>In France, where the passionate love of their own land has +made colonial extension impossible, the modern Frenchman of +education is more interested in the yearly exhibition at the +<i>Salon</i> or in a successful play at the +<i>Français</i>, than in the stock markets of the +world.</p> +<p>Would that our young men had either of these bents! They +have copied from England a certain love of sport, without the +English climate or the calm of country and garrison life, to make +these sports logical and necessary. As the young American +millionaire thinks he must go on increasing his fortune, we see +the anomaly of a man working through a summer’s day in Wall +Street, then dashing in a train to some suburban club, and +appearing a half-hour later on the polo field. Next to +wealth, sport has become the ambition of the wealthy classes, and +has grown so into our college life that the number of students in +the freshman class of our great universities is seriously +influenced by that institution’s losses or gains at +football.</p> +<p>What is the result of all this? A young man starts in +life with the firm intention of making a great deal of +money. If he has any time left from that occupation he will +devote it to sport. Later in life, when he has leisure and +travels, or is otherwise thrown with cultivated strangers, he +must naturally be at a disadvantage. “Shop,” he +cannot talk; he knows that is vulgar. Music, art, the +drama, and literature are closed books to him, in spite of the +fact that he may have a box on the grand tier at the opera and a +couple of dozen high-priced “masterpieces” hanging +around his drawing-rooms. If he is of a finer clay than the +general run of his class, he will realize dimly that somehow the +goal has been missed in his life race. His chase after the +material has left him so little time to cultivate the ideal, that +he has prepared himself a sad and aimless old age; unless he can +find pleasure in doing as did a man I have been told about, who, +receiving half a dozen millions from his father’s estate, +conceived the noble idea of increasing them so that he might +leave to each of his four children as much as he had himself +received. With the strictest economy, and by suppressing +out of his life and that of his children all amusements and +superfluous outlay, he has succeeded now for many years in living +on the income of his income. Time will never hang heavy on +this Harpagon’s hands. He is a perfectly happy +individual, but his conversation is hardly of a kind to attract, +and it may be doubted if the rest of the family are as much to be +envied.</p> +<p>An artist who had lived many years of his life in Paris and +London was speaking the other day of a curious phase he had +remarked in our American life. He had been accustomed over +there to have his studio the meeting-place of friends, who would +drop in to smoke and lounge away an hour, chatting as he +worked. To his astonishment, he tells me that since he has +been in New York not one of the many men he knows has ever passed +an hour in his rooms. Is not that a significant fact? +Another remark which points its own moral was repeated to me +recently. A foreigner visiting here, to whom American +friends were showing the sights of our city, exclaimed at last: +“You have not pointed out to me any celebrities except +millionaires. ‘Do you see that man? he is worth ten +millions. Look at that house! it cost one million dollars, +and there are pictures in it worth over three million +dollars. That trotter cost one hundred thousand +dollars,’ etc.” Was he not right? And +does it not give my reader a shudder to see in black and white +the phrases that are, nevertheless, so often on our lips?</p> +<p>This levelling of everything to its cash value is so ingrained +in us that we are unconscious of it, as we are of using slang or +local expressions until our attention is called to them. I +was present once at a farce played in a London theatre, where the +audience went into roars of laughter every time the stage +American said, “Why, certainly.” I was +indignant, and began explaining to my English friend that we +never used such an absurd phrase. “Are you +sure?” he asked. “Why, certainly,” I +said, and stopped, catching the twinkle in his eye.</p> +<p>It is very much the same thing with money. We do not +notice how often it slips into the conversation. “Out +of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh.” +Talk to an American of a painter and the charm of his work. +He will be sure to ask, “Do his pictures sell well?” +and will lose all interest if you say he can’t sell them at +all. As if that had anything to do with it!</p> +<p>Remembering the well-known anecdote of Schopenhauer and the +gold piece which he used to put beside his plate at the <i>table +d’hôte</i>, where he ate, surrounded by the young +officers of the German army, and which was to be given to the +poor the first time he heard any conversation that was not about +promotion or women, I have been tempted to try the experiment in +our clubs, changing the subjects to stocks and sport, and feel +confident that my contributions to charity would not ruin me.</p> +<p>All this has had the result of making our men dull companions; +after dinner, or at a country house, if the subject they love is +tabooed, they talk of nothing! It is sad for a rich man +(unless his mind has remained entirely between the leaves of his +ledger) to realize that money really buys very little, and above +a certain amount can give no satisfaction in proportion to its +bulk, beyond that delight which comes from a sense of +possession. Croesus often discovers as he grows old that he +has neglected to provide himself with the only thing that +“is a joy for ever”—a cultivated +intellect—in order to amass a fortune that turns to ashes, +when he has time to ask of it any of the pleasures and resources +he fondly imagined it would afford him. Like +Talleyrand’s young man who would not learn whist, he finds +that he has prepared for himself a dreadful old age!</p> +<h2>No. 16—A Holy Land</h2> +<p>Not long ago an article came under my notice descriptive of +the neighborhood around Grant’s tomb and the calm that +midsummer brings to that vicinity, laughingly referred to as the +“Holy Land.”</p> +<p>As careless fingers wandering over the strings of a violin may +unintentionally strike a chord, so the writer of those lines, all +unconsciously, with a jest, set vibrating a world of tender +memories and associations; for the region spoken of is truly a +holy land to me, the playground of my youth, and connected with +the sweetest ties that can bind one’s thoughts to the +past.</p> +<p>Ernest Renan in his <i>Souvenirs d’Enfance</i>, tells of +a Brittany legend, firmly believed in that wild land, of the +vanished city of “Is,” which ages ago disappeared +beneath the waves. The peasants still point out at a +certain place on the coast the site of the fabled city, and the +fishermen tell how during great storms they have caught glimpses +of its belfries and ramparts far down between the waves; and +assert that on calm summer nights they can hear the bells chiming +up from those depths. I also have a vanished +“Is” in my heart, and as I grow older, I love to +listen to the murmurs that float up from the past. They +seem to come from an infinite distance, almost like echoes from +another life.</p> +<p>At that enchanted time we lived during the summers in an old +wooden house my father had re-arranged into a fairly comfortable +dwelling. A tradition, which no one had ever taken the +trouble to verify, averred that Washington had once lived there, +which made that hero very real to us. The picturesque old +house stood high on a slope where the land rises boldly; with an +admirable view of distant mountain, river and opposing +Palisades.</p> +<p>The new Riverside drive (which, by the bye, should make us +very lenient toward the men who robbed our city a score of years +ago, for they left us that vast work in atonement), has so +changed the neighborhood it is impossible now for pious feet to +make a pilgrimage to those childish shrines. One house, +however, still stands as when it was our nearest neighbor. +It had sheltered General Gage, land for many acres around had +belonged to him. He was an enthusiastic gardener, and +imported, among a hundred other fruits and plants, the +“Queen Claude” plum from France, which was +successfully acclimated on his farm. In New York a plum of +that kind is still called a “green gage.” The +house has changed hands many times since we used to play around +the Grecian pillars of its portico. A recent owner, +dissatisfied doubtless with its classic simplicity, has painted +it a cheerful mustard color and crowned it with a fine new +<i>Mansard</i> roof. Thus disfigured, and shorn of its +surrounding trees, the poor old house stands blankly by the +roadside, reminding one of the Greek statue in Anstey’s +“Painted Venus” after the London barber had decorated +her to his taste. When driving by there now, I close my +eyes.</p> +<p>Another house, where we used to be taken to play, was that of +Audubon, in the park of that name. Many a rainy afternoon I +have passed with his children choosing our favorite birds in the +glass cases that filled every nook and corner of the tumble-down +old place, or turning over the leaves of the enormous volumes he +would so graciously take down from their places for our +amusement. I often wonder what has become of those vast +<i>in-folios</i>, and if any one ever opens them now and admires +as we did the glowing colored plates in which the old +ornithologist took such pride. There is something +infinitely sad in the idea of a collection of books slowly +gathered together at the price of privations and sacrifices, +cherished, fondled, lovingly read, and then at the owner’s +death, coldly sent away to stand for ever unopened on the shelves +of some public library. It is like neglecting poor dumb +children!</p> +<p>An event that made a profound impression on my childish +imagination occurred while my father, who was never tired of +improving our little domain, was cutting a pathway down the steep +side of the slope to the river. A great slab, dislodged by +a workman’s pick, fell disclosing the grave of an Indian +chief. In a low archway or shallow cave sat the skeleton of +the chieftain, his bows and arrows arranged around him on the +ground, mingled with fragments of an elaborate costume, of which +little remained but the bead-work. That it was the tomb of +a man great among his people was evident from the care with which +the grave had been prepared and then hidden, proving how, +hundreds of years before our civilization, another race had +chosen this noble cliff and stately river landscape as the +fitting framework for a great warrior’s tomb.</p> +<p>This discovery made no little stir in the scientific world of +that day. Hundreds came to see it, and as photography had +not then come into the world, many drawings were made and casts +taken, and finally the whole thing was removed to the rooms of +the Historical Society. From that day the lonely little +path held an awful charm for us. Our childish readings of +Cooper had developed in us that love of the Indian and his wild +life, so characteristic of boyhood thirty years ago. On +still summer afternoons, the place had a primeval calm that froze +the young blood in our veins. Although we prided ourselves +on our quality as “braves,” and secretly pined to be +led on the war-path, we were shy of walking in that vicinity in +daylight, and no power on earth, not even the offer of the +tomahawk or snow-shoes for which our souls longed, would have +taken us there at night.</p> +<p>A place connected in my memory with a tragic association was +across the river on the last southern slope of the +Palisades. Here we stood breathless while my father told +the brief story of the duel between Burr and Hamilton, and showed +us the rock stained by the younger man’s life-blood. +In those days there was a simple iron railing around the spot +where Hamilton had expired, but of later years I have been unable +to find any trace of the place. The tide of immigration has +brought so deep a deposit of “saloons” and suburban +“balls” that the very face of the land is changed, +old lovers of that shore know it no more. Never were the +environs of a city so wantonly and recklessly degraded. +Municipalities have vied with millionaires in soiling and +debasing the exquisite shores of our river, that, thirty years +ago, were unrivalled the world over.</p> +<p>The glamour of the past still lies for me upon this landscape +in spite of its many defacements. The river whispers of +boyish boating parties, and the woods recall a thousand childish +hopes and fears, resolute departures to join the pirates, or the +red men in their strongholds—journeys boldly carried out +until twilight cooled our courage and the supper-hour proved a +stronger temptation than war and carnage.</p> +<p>When I sat down this summer evening to write a few lines about +happy days on the banks of the Hudson, I hardly realized how +sweet those memories were to me. The rewriting of the old +names has evoked from their long sleep so many loved faces. +Arms seem reaching out to me from the past. The house is +very still to-night. I seem to be nearer my loved dead than +to the living. The bells of my lost “Is” are +ringing clear in the silence.</p> +<h2>No. 17—Royalty At Play</h2> +<p>Few more amusing sights are to be seen in these days, than +that of crowned heads running away from their dull old courts and +functions, roughing it in hotels and villas, gambling, yachting +and playing at being rich nobodies. With much intelligence +they have all chosen the same Republican playground, where visits +cannot possibly be twisted into meaning any new +“combination” or political move, thus assuring +themselves the freedom from care or responsibility, that seems to +be the aim of their existence. Alongside of well-to-do +Royalties in good paying situations, are those out of a job, who +are looking about for a “place.” One cannot +take an afternoon’s ramble anywhere between Cannes and +Mentone without meeting a half-dozen of these magnates.</p> +<p>The other day, in one short walk, I ran across three +Empresses, two Queens, and an Heir-apparent, and then fled to my +hotel, fearing to be unfitted for America, if I went on +“keeping such company.” They are knowing +enough, these wandering great ones, and after trying many places +have hit on this charming coast as offering more than any other +for their comfort and enjoyment. The vogue of these sunny +shores dates from their annexation to France,—a price +Victor Emmanuel reluctantly paid for French help in his war with +Austria. Napoleon III.’s demand for Savoy and this +littoral, was first made known to Victor Emmanuel at a state ball +at Genoa. Savoy was his birthplace and his home! The +King broke into a wild temper, cursing the French Emperor and +making insulting allusions to his parentage, saying he had not +one drop of Bonaparte blood in his veins. The King’s +frightened courtiers tried to stop this outburst, showing him the +French Ambassador at his elbow. With a superhuman effort +Victor Emmanuel controlled himself, and turning to the +Ambassador, said:</p> +<p>“I fear my tongue ran away with me!” With a +smile and a bow the great French diplomatist remarked:</p> +<p>“<i>Sire</i>, I am so deaf I have not heard a word your +Majesty has been saying!”</p> +<p>The fashion of coming to the Riviera for health or for +amusement, dates from the sixties, when the Empress of Russia +passed a winter at Nice, as a last attempt to prolong the +existence of the dying Tsarewitsch, her son. There also the +next season the Duke of Edinburgh wooed and won her daughter +(then the greatest heiress in Europe) for his bride. The +world moves fast and a journey it required a matter of life and +death to decide on, then, is gayly undertaken now, that a prince +may race a yacht, or a princess try her luck at the gambling +tables. When one reflects that the “royal +caste,” in Europe alone, numbers some eight hundred people, +and that the East is beginning to send out its more enterprising +crowned heads to get a taste of the fun, that beyond drawing +their salaries, these good people have absolutely nothing to do, +except to amuse themselves, it is no wonder that this happy land +is crowded with royal pleasure-seekers.</p> +<p>After a try at Florence and Aix, “the Queen” has +been faithful to Cimiez, a charming site back of Nice. That +gay city is always <i>en fête</i> the day she arrives, as +her carriages pass surrounded by French cavalry, one can catch a +glimpse of her big face, and dowdy little figure, which +nevertheless she can make so dignified when occasion +requires. The stay here is, indeed, a holiday for this +record-breaking sovereign, who potters about her private grounds +of a morning in a donkey-chair, sunning herself and watching her +Battenberg grandchildren at play. In the afternoon, she +drives a couple of hours—in an open carriage—one +outrider in black livery alone distinguishing her turnout from +the others.</p> +<p>The Prince of Wales makes his headquarters at Cannes where he +has poor luck in sailing the Brittania, for which he consoles +himself with jolly dinners at Monte Carlo. You can see him +almost any evening in the <i>Restaurant de Paris</i>, surrounded +by his own particular set,—the Duchess of Devonshire (who +started a penniless German officer’s daughter, and became +twice a duchess); Lady de Grey and Lady Wolverton, both showing +near six feet of slender English beauty; at their side, and +lovelier than either, the Countess of Essex. The husbands +of these “Merry Wives” are absent, but do not seem to +be missed, as the ladies sit smoking and laughing over their +coffee, the party only breaking up towards eleven o’clock +to try its luck at <i>trente et quarante</i>, until a +“special” takes them back to Cannes.</p> +<p>He is getting sadly old and fat, is England’s heir, the +likeness to his mamma becoming more marked each year. His +voice, too, is oddly like hers, deep and guttural, more adapted +to the paternal German (which all this family speak when alone) +than to his native English. Hair, he has none, except a +little fringe across the back of his head, just above a fine +large roll of fat that blushes above his shirt-collar. Too +bad that this discovery of the microbe of baldness comes rather +late for him! He has a pleasant twinkle in his small eyes, +and an entire absence of <i>pose</i>, that accounts largely for +his immense and enduring popularity.</p> +<p>But the Hotel Cap Martin shelters quieter crowned heads. +The Emperor and Empress of Austria, who tramp about the hilly +roads, the King and Queen of Saxony and the fat Arch-duchess +Stephanie. Austria’s Empress looks sadly changed and +ill, as does another lady of whom one can occasionally catch a +glimpse, walking painfully with a crutch-stick in the shadow of +the trees near her villa. It is hard to believe that this +white-haired, bent old woman was once the imperial beauty who +from the salons of the Tuileries dictated the fashions of the +world! Few have paid so dearly for their brief hour of +splendor!</p> +<p>Cannes with its excellent harbor is the centre of interest +during the racing season when the Tsarewitsch comes on his yacht +Czaritza. At the Battle of Flowers, one is pretty sure to +see the Duke of Cambridge, his Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke +Michael, Prince Christian of Denmark, H.R.H. the Duke of Nassau, +H.I.H. the Archduke Ferdinand d’Este, their Serene +Highnesses of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, +also H.I.H. Marie Valérie and the Schleswig-Holsteins, +pelting each other and the public with <i>confetti</i> and +flowers. Indeed, half the <i>Almanach de Gotha</i>, that +continental “society list,” seems to be sunning +itself here and forgetting its cares, on bicycles or on board +yachts. It is said that the Crown Princess of Honolulu +(whoever she may be) honors Mentone with her presence, and the +newly deposed Queen “Ranavalo” of Madagascar is <i>en +route</i> to join in the fun.</p> +<p>This crowd of royalty reminds me of a story the old sea-dogs +who gather about the “Admirals’ corner” of the +Metropolitan Club in Washington, love to tell you. An +American cockswain, dazzled by a doubly royal visit, with +attending suites, on board the old “Constitution,” +came up to his commanding officer and touching his cap, said:</p> +<p>“Beg pardon, Admiral, but one of them kings has tumbled +down the gangway and broke his leg.”</p> +<p>It has become a much more amusing thing to wear a crown than +it was. Times have changed indeed since Marie Laczinska +lived the fifty lonely years of her wedded life and bore her many +children, in one bed-room at Versailles—a monotony only +broken by visits to Fontainebleau or Marly. +Shakespeare’s line no longer fits the case.</p> +<p>Beyond securing rich matches for their children, and keeping a +sharp lookout that the Radicals at home do not unduly cut down +their civil lists, these great ones have little but their +amusements to occupy them. Do they ever reflect, as they +rush about visiting each other and squabbling over precedence +when they meet, that some fine morning the tax-payers may wake +up, and ask each other why they are being crushed under such +heavy loads, that eight hundred or more quite useless people may +pass their lives in foreign watering-places, away from their +homes and their duties? It will be a bad day for them when +the long-suffering subjects say to them, “Since we get on +so exceedingly well during your many visits abroad, we think we +will try how it will work without you at all!”</p> +<p>The Prince of little Monaco seems to be about the only one up +to the situation, for he at least stays at home, and in +connection with two other gentlemen runs an exceedingly good +hotel and several restaurants on his estates, doing all he can to +attract money into the place, while making the strictest laws to +prevent his subjects gambling at the famous tables. Now if +other royalties instead of amusing themselves all the year round +would go in for something practical like this, they might become +useful members of the community. This idea of +Monaco’s Prince strikes one as most timely, and as opening +a career for other indigent crowned heads. Hotels are +getting so good and so numerous, that without some especial +“attraction” a new one can hardly succeed; but a +“Hohenzollern House” well situated in Berlin, with +William II. to receive the tourists at the door, and his fat wife +at the desk, would be sure to prosper. It certainly would +be pleasanter for him to spend money so honestly earned than the +millions wrested from half-starving peasants which form his +present income. Besides there is almost as much gold lace +on a hotel employee’s livery as on a court costume!</p> +<p>The numerous crowned heads one meets wandering about, can +hardly lull themselves over their “games” with the +flattering unction that they are of use, for, have they not +France before them (which they find so much to their taste) +stronger, richer, more respected than ever since she shook +herself free of such incumbrances? Not to mention our own +democratic country, which has managed to hold its own, in spite +of their many gleeful predictions to the contrary.</p> +<h2>No. 18—A Rock Ahead</h2> +<p>Having had occasion several times during this past season, to +pass by the larger stores in the vicinity of Twenty-third Street, +I have been struck more than ever, by the endless flow of +womankind that beats against the doors of those +establishments. If they were temples where a beneficent +deity was distributing health, learning, and all the good things +of existence, the rush could hardly have been greater. It +saddened me to realize that each of the eager women I saw was, on +the contrary, dispensing something of her strength and brain, as +well as the wearily earned stipend of the men of her family (if +not her own), for what could be of little profit to her.</p> +<p>It occurred to me that, if the people who are so quick to talk +about the elevating and refining influences of women, could take +an hour or two and inspect the centres in question, they might +not be so firm in their beliefs. For, reluctant as I am to +acknowledge it, the one great misfortune in this country, is the +unnatural position which has been (from some mistaken idea of +chivalry) accorded to women here. The result of placing +them on this pedestal, and treating them as things apart, has +been to make women in America poorer helpmeets to their husbands +than in any other country on the face of the globe, civilized or +uncivilized.</p> +<p>Strange as it may appear, this is not confined to the rich, +but permeates all classes, becoming more harmful in descending +the social scale, and it will bring about a disintegration of our +society, sooner than could be believed. The saying on which +we have all been brought up, viz., that you can gauge the point +of civilization attained in a nation by the position it accords +to woman, was quite true as long as woman was considered +man’s inferior. To make her his equal was perfectly +just; all the trouble begins when you attempt to make her +man’s superior, a something apart from his working life, +and not the companion of his troubles and cares, as she was +intended to be.</p> +<p>When a small shopkeeper in Europe marries, the next day you +will see his young wife taking her place at the desk in his +shop. While he serves his customers, his smiling spouse +keeps the books, makes change, and has an eye on the +employees. At noon they dine together; in the evening, +after the shop is closed, are pleased or saddened together over +the results of the day. The wife’s <i>dot</i> almost +always goes into the business, so that there is a community of +interest to unite them, and their lives are passed +together. In this country, what happens? The husband +places his new wife in a small house, or in two or three +furnished rooms, generally so far away that all idea of dining +with her is impossible. In consequence, he has a +“quick lunch” down town, and does not see his wife +between eight o’clock in the morning and seven in the +evening. His business is a closed book to her, in which she +can have no interest, for her weary husband naturally revolts +from talking “shop,” even if she is in a position to +understand him.</p> +<p>His false sense of shielding her from the rude world makes him +keep his troubles to himself, so she rarely knows his financial +position and sulks over his “meanness” to her, in +regard to pin-money; and being a perfectly idle person, her days +are apt to be passed in a way especially devised by Satan for +unoccupied hands. She has learned no cooking from her +mother; “going to market” has become a thing of the +past. So she falls a victim to the allurements of the +bargain-counter; returning home after hours of aimless wandering, +irritable and aggrieved because she cannot own the beautiful +things she has seen. She passes the evening in trying to +win her husband’s consent to some purchase he knows he +cannot afford, while it breaks his heart to refuse her—some +object, which, were she really his companion, she would not have +had the time to see or the folly to ask for.</p> +<p>The janitor in our building is truly a toiler. He rarely +leaves his dismal quarters under the sidewalk, but +“Madam” walks the streets clad in sealskin and silk, +a “Gainsborough” crowning her false +“bang.” I always think of Max +O’Rell’s clever saying, when I see her: “The +sweat of the American husband crystallizes into diamond ear-rings +for the American woman.” My janitress sports a +diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger +ones! Instead of “doing” the bachelor’s +rooms in the building as her husband’s helpmeet, she +“does” her spouse, and a char-woman works for +her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ebbs and +flows on Twenty-third Street—a discontented woman placed in +a false position by our absurd customs.</p> +<p>Go a little further up in the social scale and you will find +the same “detached” feeling. In a household I +know of only one horse and a <i>coupé</i> can be +afforded. Do you suppose it is for the use of the weary +breadwinner? Not at all. He walks from his home to +the “elevated.” The carriage is to take his +wife to teas or the park. In a year or two she will go +abroad, leaving him alone to turn the crank that produces the +income. As it is, she always leaves him for six months each +year in a half-closed house, to the tender mercies of a +caretaker. Two additional words could be advantageously +added to the wedding service. After “for richer for +poorer,” I should like to hear a bride promise to cling to +her husband “for winter for summer!”</p> +<p>Make another step up and stand in the entrance of a house at +two <span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, just as the cotillion is +commencing, and watch the couples leaving. The husband, who +has been in Wall Street all day, knows that he must be there +again at nine next morning. He is furious at the lateness +of the hour, and dropping with fatigue. His wife, who has +done nothing to weary her, is equally enraged to be taken away +just as the ball was becoming amusing. What a happy, united +pair they are as the footman closes the door and the carriage +rolls off home! Who is to blame? The husband is +vainly trying to lead the most exacting of double lives, that of +a business man all day and a society man all night. You can +pick him out at a glance in a ballroom. His eye shows you +that there is no rest for him, for he has placed his wife at the +head of an establishment whose working crushes him into the mud +of care and anxiety. Has he any one to blame but +himself?</p> +<p>In England, I am told, the man of a family goes up to London +in the spring and gets his complete outfit, down to the smallest +details of hat-box and umbrella. If there happens to be +money left, the wife gets a new gown or two: if not, she +“turns” the old ones and rejoices vicariously in the +splendor of her “lord.” I know one charming +little home over there, where the ladies cannot afford a +pony-carriage, because the three indispensable hunters eat up the +where-withal.</p> +<p>Thackeray was delighted to find one household (Major +Ponto’s) where the governess ruled supreme, and I feel a +fiendish pleasure in these accounts of a country where men have +been able to maintain some rights, and am moved to preach a +crusade for the liberation of the American husband, that the +poor, down-trodden creature may revolt from the slavery where he +is held and once more claim his birthright. If he be prompt +to act (and is successful) he may work such a reform that our +girls, on marrying, may feel that some duties and +responsibilities go with their new positions; and a state of +things be changed, where it is possible for a woman to be pitied +by her friends as a model of abnegation, because she has decided +to remain in town during the summer to keep her husband company +and make his weary home-coming brighter. Or where (as in a +story recently heard) a foreigner on being presented to an +American bride abroad and asking for her husband, could hear in +answer: “Oh, he could not come; he was too busy. I am +making my wedding-trip without him.”</p> +<h2>No. 19—The Grand Prix</h2> +<p>In most cities, it is impossible to say when the +“season” ends. In London and with us in New +York it dwindles off without any special finish, but in Paris it +closes like a trap-door, or the curtain on the last scene of a +pantomime, while the lights are blazing and the orchestra is +banging its loudest. The <i>Grand Prix</i>, which takes +place on the second Sunday in June, is the climax of the spring +gayeties. Up to that date, the social pace has been getting +faster and faster, like the finish of the big race itself, and +fortunately for the lives of the women as well as the horses, +ends as suddenly.</p> +<p>In 1897, the last steeple chase at Auteuil, which precedes the +<i>Grand Prix</i> by one week, was won by a horse belonging to an +actress of the <i>Théâtre Français</i>, a +lady who has been a great deal before the public already in +connection with the life and death of young Lebaudy. This +youth having had the misfortune to inherit an enormous fortune, +while still a mere boy, plunged into the wildest dissipation, and +became the prey of a band of sharpers and blacklegs. Mlle. +Marie Louise Marsy appears to have been the one person who had a +sincere affection for the unfortunate youth. When his +health gave way during his military service, she threw over her +engagement with the <i>Français</i>, and nursed her lover +until his death—a devotion rewarded by the gift of a +million.</p> +<p>At the present moment, four or five of the band of self-styled +noblemen who traded on the boy’s inexperience and +generosity, are serving out terms in the state prisons for +blackmailing, and the <i>Théâtre Français</i> +possesses the anomaly of a young and beautiful actress, who runs +a racing stable in her own name.</p> +<p>The <i>Grand Prix</i> dates from the reign of Napoleon III., +who, at the suggestion of the great railway companies, +inaugurated this race in 1862, in imitation of the English Derby, +as a means of attracting people to Paris. The city and the +railways each give half of the forty-thousand-dollar prize. +It is the great official race of the year. The President +occupies the central pavilion, surrounded by the members of the +cabinet and the diplomatic corps. On the tribunes and lawn +can be seen the <i>Tout Paris</i>—all the celebrities of +the great and half-world who play such an important part in the +life of France’s capital. The whole colony of the +<i>Rastaquouëres</i>, is sure to be there, +“<i>Rastas</i>,” as they are familiarly called by the +Parisians, who make little if any distinction in their minds +between a South American (blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes) +and our own select (?) colony. Apropos of this inability of +the Europeans to appreciate our fine social distinctions, I have +been told of a well-born New Yorker who took a French noblewoman +rather to task for receiving an American she thought unworthy of +notice, and said:</p> +<p>“How can you receive her? Her husband keeps a +hotel!”</p> +<p>“Is that any reason?” asked the French-woman; +“I thought all Americans kept hotels.”</p> +<p>For the <i>Grand Prix</i>, every woman not absolutely bankrupt +has a new costume, her one idea being a <i>création</i> +that will attract attention and eclipse her rivals. The +dressmakers have had a busy time of it for weeks before.</p> +<p>Every horse that can stand up is pressed into service for the +day. For twenty-four hours before, the whole city is <i>en +fête</i>, and Paris <i>en fête</i> is always a sight +worth seeing. The natural gayety of the Parisians, a +characteristic noticed (if we are to believe the historians) as +far back as the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar, breaks +out in all its amusing spontaneity. If the day is fine, the +entire population gives itself up to amusement. From early +morning the current sets towards the charming corner of the Bois +where the Longchamps race-course lies, picturesquely encircled by +the Seine (alive with a thousand boats), and backed by the woody +slopes of Suresnes and St. Cloud. By noon every corner and +vantage point of the landscape is seized upon, when, with a blare +of trumpets and the rattle of cavalry, the President arrives in +his turnout <i>à la Daumont</i>, two postilions in blue +and gold, and a <i>piqueur</i>, preceded by a detachment of the +showy <i>Gardes Républicains</i> on horseback, and takes +his place in the little pavilion where for so many years +Eugénie used to sit in state, and which has sheltered so +many crowned heads under its simple roof. Faure’s +arrival is the signal for the racing to begin, from that moment +the interest goes on increasing until the great +“event.” Then in an instant the vast throng of +human beings breaks up and flows homeward across the Bois, +filling the big Place around the Arc de Triomphe, rolling down +the Champs Elysées, in twenty parallel lines of +carriages. The sidewalks are filled with a laughing, +singing, uproarious crowd that quickly invades every restaurant, +<i>café</i>, or chop-house until their little tables +overflow on to the grass and side-walks, and even into the middle +of the streets. Later in the evening the open-air concerts +and theatres are packed, and every little square organizes its +impromptu ball, the musicians mounted on tables, and the crowd +dancing gayly on the wooden pavement until daybreak.</p> +<p>The next day, Paris becomes from a fashionable point of view, +“impossible.” If you walk through the richer +quarters, you will see only long lines of closed windows. +The approaches to the railway stations are blocked with cabs +piled with trunks and bicycles. The “great +world” is fleeing to the seashore or its +<i>châteaux</i>, and Paris will know it no more until +January, for the French are a country-loving race, and since +there has been no court, the aristocracy pass longer and longer +periods on their own estates each year, partly from choice and +largely to show their disdain for the republic and its +entertainments.</p> +<p>The shady drives in the park, which only a day or two ago were +so brilliant with smart traps and spring toilets, are become a +cool wilderness, where will meet, perhaps, a few maiden ladies +exercising fat dogs, uninterrupted except by the watering-cart or +by a few stray tourists in cabs. Now comes a delightful +time for the real amateur of Paris and the country around, which +is full of charming corners where one can dine at quiet little +restaurants, overhanging the water or buried among trees. +You are sure of getting the best of attention from the waiters, +and the dishes you order receive all the cook’s +attention. Of an evening the Bois is alive with a myriad of +bicycles, their lights twinkling among the trees like +many-colored fire-flies. To any one who knows how to live +there, Paris is at its best in the last half of June and +July. Nevertheless, in a couple of days there will not be +an American in Paris, London being the objective point; for we +love to be “in at the death,” and a coronation, a +musical festival, or a big race is sure to attract all our +floating population.</p> +<p>The Americans who have the hardest time in Paris are those who +try to “run with the deer and hunt with the hounds,” +as the French proverb has it, who would fain serve God and +Mammon. As anything especially amusing is sure to take +place on Sunday in this wicked capital, our friends go through +agonies of indecision, their consciences pulling one way, their +desire to amuse themselves the other. Some find a middle +course, it seems, for yesterday this conversation was overheard +on the steps of the American Church:</p> +<p><i>First American Lady</i>: “Are you going to stop for +the sermon?”</p> +<p><i>Second American Lady</i>: “I am so sorry I +can’t, but the races begin at one!”</p> +<h2>No. 20—“The Treadmill.”</h2> +<p>A half-humorous, half-pathetic epistle has been sent to me by +a woman, who explains in it her particular perplexity. Such +letters are the windfalls of our profession! For what is +more attractive than to have a woman take you for her lay +confessor, to whom she comes for advice in trouble? opening her +innocent heart for your inspection!</p> +<p>My correspondent complains that her days are not sufficiently +long, nor is her strength great enough, for the thousand and one +duties and obligations imposed upon her. “If,” +she says, “a woman has friends and a small place in the +world—and who has not in these days?—she must golf or +‘bike’ or skate a bit, of a morning; then she is apt +to lunch out, or have a friend or two in, to that meal. +After luncheon there is sure to be a ‘class’ of some +kind that she has foolishly joined, or a charity meeting, +matinée, or reception; but above all, there are her +‘duty’ calls. She must be home at five to make +tea, that she has promised her men friends, and they will not +leave until it is time for her to dress for dinner, +‘out’ or at home, with often the opera, a supper, or +a ball to follow. It is quite impossible,” she adds, +“under these circumstances to apply one’s self to +anything serious, to read a book or even open a periodical. +The most one can accomplish is a glance at a paper.”</p> +<p>Indeed, it would require an exceptional constitution to carry +out the above programme, not to mention the attention that a +woman must (however reluctantly) give to her house and her +family. Where are the quiet hours to be found for +self-culture, the perusal of a favorite author, or, perhaps, a +little timid “writing” on her own account? Nor +does this treadmill round fill a few months only of her +life. With slight variations of scene and costume, it +continues through the year.</p> +<p>A painter, I know, was fortunate enough to receive, a year or +two ago, the commission to paint a well-known beauty. He +was delighted with the idea and convinced that he could make her +portrait the best work of his life, one that would be the +stepping-stone to fame and fortune. This was in the +spring. He was naturally burning to begin at once, but +found to his dismay that the lady was just about starting for +Europe. So he waited, and at her suggestion installed +himself a couple of months later at the seaside city where she +had a cottage. No one could be more charming than she was, +inviting him to dine and drive daily, but when he broached the +subject of “sitting,” was “too busy just that +day.” Later in the autumn she would be quite at his +disposal. In the autumn, however, she was visiting, never +ten days in the same place. Early winter found her +“getting her house in order,” a mysterious rite +apparently attended with vast worry and fatigue. With +cooling enthusiasm, the painter called and coaxed and +waited. November brought the opera and the full swing of a +New York season. So far she has given him half a dozen +sittings, squeezed in between a luncheon, which made her +“unavoidably late,” for which she is charmingly +“sorry,” and a reception that she was forced to +attend, although “it breaks my heart to leave just as you +are beginning to work so well, but I really must, or the tiresome +old cat who is giving the tea will be saying all sorts of +unpleasant things about me.” So she flits off, +leaving the poor, disillusioned painter before his canvas, +knowing now that his dream is over, that in a month or two his +pretty sitter will be off again to New Orleans for the carnival, +or abroad, and that his weary round of waiting will +recommence. He will be fortunate if some day it does not +float back to him, in the mysterious way disagreeable things do +come to one, that she has been heard to say, “I fear dear +Mr. Palette is not very clever, for I have been sitting to him +for over a year, and he has really done nothing yet.”</p> +<p>He has been simply the victim of a state of affairs that +neither of them were strong enough to break through. It +never entered into Beauty’s head that she could lead a life +different from her friends. She was honestly anxious to +have a successful portrait of herself, but the sacrifice of any +of her habits was more than she could make.</p> +<p>Who among my readers (and I am tempted to believe they are all +more sensible than the above young woman) has not, during a +summer passed with agreeable friends, made a thousand pleasant +little plans with them for the ensuing winter,—the books +they were to read at the same time, the “exhibitions” +they were to see, the visits to our wonderful collections in the +Metropolitan Museum or private galleries, cosy little dinners, +etc.? And who has not found, as the winter slips away, that +few of these charming plans have been carried out? He and +his friends have unconsciously fallen back into their ruts of +former years, and the pleasant things projected have been brushed +aside by that strongest of tyrants, habit.</p> +<p>I once asked a very great lady, whose gracious manner was +never disturbed, who floated through the endless complications of +her life with smiling serenity, how she achieved this Olympian +calm. She was good enough to explain. “I make a +list of what I want to do each day. Then, as I find my day +passing, or I get behind, or tired, I throw over every other +engagement. I could have done them all with hurry and +fatigue. I prefer to do one-half and enjoy what I do. +If I go to a house, it is to remain and appreciate whatever +entertainment has been prepared for me. I never offer to +any hostess the slight of a hurried, <i>distrait</i> +‘call,’ with glances at my watch, and an +‘on-the-wing’ manner. It is much easier not to +go, or to send a card.”</p> +<p>This brings me around to a subject which I believe is one of +the causes of my correspondent’s dilemma. I fear that +she never can refuse anything. It is a peculiar trait of +people who go about to amuse themselves, that they are always +sure the particular entertainment they have been asked to last is +going to “be amusing.” It rarely is different +from the others, but these people are convinced, that to stay +away would be to miss something. A weary-looking girl about +1 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> (at a house-party) when asked +why she did not go to bed if she was so tired, answered, +“the nights I go to bed early, they always seem to do +something jolly, and then I miss it.”</p> +<p>There is no greater proof of how much this weary round wears +on women than the acts of the few who feel themselves strong +enough in their position to defy custom. They have thrown +off the yoke (at least the younger ones have) doubtless backed up +by their husbands, for men are much quicker to see the +aimlessness of this stupid social routine. First they broke +down the great New-Year-call “grind.” Men over +forty doubtless recall with a shudder, that awful custom which +compelled a man to get into his dress clothes at ten <span +class="smcap">a.m.</span>, and pass his day rushing about from +house to house like a postman. Out-of-town clubs and sport +helped to do away with that remnant of New Amsterdam. Next +came the male revolt from the afternoon “tea” or +“musical.” A black coat is rare now at either +of these functions, or if seen is pretty sure to be on a back +over fifty. Next, we lords of creation refused to call at +all, or leave our cards. A married woman now leaves her +husband’s card with her own, and sisters leave the +“pasteboard” of their brothers and often those of +their brothers’ friends. Any combination is good +enough to “shoot a card.”</p> +<p>In London the men have gone a step further. It is not +uncommon to hear a young man boast that he never owned a visiting +card or made a “duty” call in his life. Neither +there nor with us does a man count as a “call” a +quiet cup of tea with a woman he likes, and a cigarette and quiet +talk until dressing time. Let the young women have courage +and take matters into their own hands. (The older ones are +hopeless and will go on pushing this Juggernaut car over each +other’s weary bodies, until the end of the chapter.) +Let them have the courage occasionally to “refuse” +something, to keep themselves free from aimless engagements, and +bring this paste-board war to a close. If a woman is +attractive, she will be asked out all the same, never fear! +If she is not popular, the few dozen of “egg-shell +extra” that she can manage to slip in at the front doors of +her acquaintances will not help her much.</p> +<p>If this matter is, however, so vastly important in +women’s eyes, why not adopt the continental and diplomatic +custom and send cards by post or otherwise? There, if a +new-comer dines out and meets twenty-five people for the first +time, cards must be left the next day at their twenty-five +respective residences. How the cards get there is of no +importance. It is a diplomatic fiction that the new +acquaintance has called in person, and the call will be returned +within twenty-four hours. Think of the saving of time and +strength! In Paris, on New Year’s Day, people send +cards by post to everybody they wish to keep up. That does +for a year, and no more is thought about it. All the time +thus gained can be given to culture or recreation.</p> +<p>I have often wondered why one sees so few women one knows at +our picture exhibitions or flower shows. It is no longer a +mystery to me. They are all busy trotting up and down our +long side streets leaving cards. Hideous vision! +Should Dante by any chance reincarnate, he would find here the +material ready made to his hand for an eighth circle in his +<i>Inferno</i>.</p> +<h2>No. 21—“Like Master Like Man.”</h2> +<p>A frequent and naïve complaint one hears, is of the +unsatisfactoriness of servants generally, and their ingratitude +and astonishing lack of affection for their masters, in +particular. “After all I have done for them,” +is pretty sure to sum up the long tale of a housewife’s +griefs. Of all the delightful inconsistencies that grace +the female mind, this latter point of view always strikes me as +being the most complete. I artfully lead my fair friend on +to tell me all about her woes, and she is sure to be exquisitely +one-sided and quite unconscious of her position. +“They are so extravagant, take so little interest in my +things, and leave me at a moment’s notice, if they get an +idea I am going to break up. Horrid things! I wish I +could do without them! They cause me endless worry and +annoyance.” My friend is very nearly right,—but +with whom lies the fault?</p> +<p>The conditions were bad enough years ago, when servants were +kept for decades in the same family, descending like heirlooms +from father to son, often (abroad) being the foster sisters or +brothers of their masters, and bound to the household by an +hundred ties of sympathy and tradition. But in our day, and +in America, where there is rarely even a common language or +nationality to form a bond, and where households are broken up +with such facility, the relation between master and servant is +often so strained and so unpleasant that we risk becoming (what +foreigners reproach us with being), a nation of +hotel-dwellers. Nor is this class-feeling greatly to be +wondered at. The contrary would be astonishing. From +the primitive household, where a poor neighbor comes in as +“help,” to the “great” establishment +where the butler and housekeeper eat apart, and a group of +plush-clad flunkies imported from England adorn the +entrance-hall, nothing could be better contrived to set one class +against another than domestic service.</p> +<p>Proverbs have grown out of it in every language. +“No man is a hero to his valet,” and +“familiarity breeds contempt,” are clear +enough. Our comic papers are full of the misunderstandings +and absurdities of the situation, while one rarely sees a joke +made about the other ways that the poor earn their living. +Think of it for a moment! To be obliged to attend people at +the times of day when they are least attractive, when from +fatigue or temper they drop the mask that society glues to their +faces so many hours in the twenty-four; to see always the seamy +side of life, the small expedients, the aids to nature; to stand +behind a chair and hear an acquaintance of your master’s +ridiculed, who has just been warmly praised to his face; to see a +hostess who has been graciously urging her guests “not to +go so soon,” blurt out all her boredom and thankfulness +“that those tiresome So-and-So’s” are +“paid off at last,” as soon as the door is closed +behind them, must needs give a curious bent to a servant’s +mind. They see their employers insincere, and copy +them. Many a mistress who has been smilingly assured by her +maid how much her dress becomes her, and how young she is +looking, would be thunderstruck to hear herself laughed at and +criticised (none too delicately) five minutes later in that +servant’s talk.</p> +<p>Servants are trained from their youth up to conceal their true +feelings. A domestic who said what she thought would +quickly lose her place. Frankly, is it not asking a good +deal to expect a maid to be very fond of a lady who makes her sit +up night after night until the small hours to unlace her bodice +or take down her hair; or imagine a valet can be devoted to a +master he has to get into bed as best he can because he is too +tipsy to get there unaided? Immortal “Figaro” +is the type! Supple, liar, corrupt, intelligent,—he +aids his master and laughs at him, feathering his own nest the +while. There is a saying that “horses corrupt whoever +lives with them.” It would be more correct to say +that domestic service demoralizes alike both master and man.</p> +<p>Already we are obliged to depend on immigration for our +servants because an American revolts from the false position, +though he willingly accepts longer hours or harder work where he +has no one around him but his equals. It is the old story +of the free, hungry wolf, and the well-fed, but chained, +house-dog. The foreigners that immigration now brings us, +from countries where great class distinctions exist, find it +natural to “serve.” With the increase in +education and consequent self-respect, the difficulty of getting +efficient and contented servants will increase with us. It +has already become a great social problem in England. The +trouble lies beneath the surface. If a superior class +accept service at all, it is with the intention of quickly +getting money enough to do something better. With them +service is merely the means to an end. A first step on the +ladder!</p> +<p>Bad masters are the cause of so much suffering, that to +protect themselves, the great brother-hood of servants have +imagined a system of keeping run of “places,” and +giving them a “character” which an aspirant can find +out with little trouble. This organization is so complete, +and so well carried out, that a household where the lady has a +“temper,” where the food is poor, or which breaks up +often, can rarely get a first-class domestic. The +“place” has been boycotted, a good servant will +sooner remain idle than enter it. If circumstances are too +much for him and he accepts the situation, it is with his eyes +open, knowing infinitely more about his new employers and their +failings than they dream of, or than they could possibly find out +about him.</p> +<p>One thing never can be sufficiently impressed on people, viz.: +that we are forced to live with detectives, always behind us in +caps or dress-suits, ready to note every careless word, every +incautious criticism of friend or acquaintance—their money +matters or their love affairs—and who have nothing more +interesting to do than to repeat what they have heard, with +embroideries and additions of their own. Considering this, +and that nine people out of ten talk quite oblivious of their +servants’ presence, it is to be wondered at that so little +(and not that so much) trouble is made.</p> +<p>It always amuses me when I ask a friend if she is going abroad +in the spring, to have her say “Hush!” with a +frightened glance towards the door.</p> +<p>“I am; but I do not want the servants to know, or the +horrid things would leave me!”</p> +<p>Poor, simple lady! They knew it before you did, and had +discussed the whole matter over their “tea” while it +was an almost unuttered thought in your mind. If they have +not already given you notice, it is because, on the whole your +house suits them well enough for the present, while they look +about. Do not worry your simple soul, trying to keep +anything from them. They know the amount of your last +dressmaker’s bill, and the row your husband made over +it. They know how much you would have liked young +“Crœsus” for your daughter, and the little +tricks you played to bring that marriage about. They know +why you are no longer asked to dine at Mrs. Swell’s, which +is more than you know yourself. Mrs. Swell explained the +matter to a few friends over her lunch-table recently, and the +butler told your maid that same evening, who was laughing at the +story as she put on your slippers!</p> +<p>Before we blame them too much, however, let us remember that +they have it in their power to make great trouble if they +choose. And considering the little that is made in this +way, we must conclude that, on the whole, they are better than we +give them credit for being, and fill a trying situation with much +good humor and kindliness. The lady who is astonished that +they take so little interest in her, will perhaps feel +differently if she reflects how little trouble she has given +herself to find out their anxieties and griefs, their temptations +and heart-burnings; their material situation; whom they support +with their slowly earned wages, what claims they have on them +from outside. If she will also reflect on the number of +days in a year when she is “not herself,” when +headaches or disappointments ruffle her charming temper, she may +come to the conclusion that it is too much to expect all the +virtues for twenty dollars a month.</p> +<p>A little more human interest, my good friends, a little more +indulgence, and you will not risk finding yourself in the +position of the lady who wrote me that last summer she had been +obliged to keep open house for “‘Cook’ +tourists!”</p> +<h2>No. 22—An English Invasion of the Riviera</h2> +<p>When sixty years ago Lord Brougham, <i>en route</i> for Italy, +was thrown from his travelling berline and his leg was broken, +near the Italian hamlet of Cannes, the Riviera was as unknown to +the polite world as the centre of China. The <i>grand +tour</i> which every young aristocrat made with his tutor, on +coming of age, only included crossing from France into Italy by +the Alps. It was the occurrence of an unusually severe +winter in Switzerland that turned Brougham aside into the longer +and less travelled route <i>via</i> the Corniche, the marvellous +Roman road at that time fallen into oblivion, and little used +even by the local peasantry.</p> +<p>During the tedious weeks while his leg was mending, Lord +Brougham amused himself by exploring the surrounding country in +his carriage, and was quick to realize the advantages of the +climate, and appreciate the marvellous beauty of that +coast. Before the broken member was whole again, he had +bought a tract of land and begun a villa. Small seed, to +furnish such a harvest! To the traveller of to-day the +Riviera offers an almost unbroken chain of beautiful residences +from Marseilles to Genoa.</p> +<p>A Briton willingly follows where a lord leads, and Cannes +became the centre of English fashion, a position it holds to-day +in spite of many attractive rivals, and the defection of Victoria +who comes now to Cimiez, back of Nice, being unwilling to visit +Cannes since the sudden death there of the Duke of Albany. +A statue of Lord Brougham, the “discoverer” of the +littoral, has been erected in the sunny little square at Cannes, +and the English have in many other ways, stamped the city for +their own.</p> +<p>No other race carry their individuality with them as they +do. They can live years in a country and assimilate none of +its customs; on the contrary, imposing habits of their own. +It is just this that makes them such wonderful colonizers, and +explains why you will find little groups of English people +drinking ale and playing golf in the shade of the Pyramids or +near the frozen slopes of Foosiyama. The real inwardness of +it is that they are a dull race, and, like dull people despise +all that they do not understand. To differ from them is to +be in the wrong. They cannot argue with you; they simply +know, and that ends the matter.</p> +<p>I had a discussion recently with a Briton on the pronunciation +of a word. As there is no “Institute,” as in +France, to settle matters of this kind, I maintained that we +Americans had as much authority for our pronunciation of this +particular word as the English. The answer was +characteristic.</p> +<p>“I know I am right,” said my Island friend, +“because that is the way I pronounce it!”</p> +<p>Walking along the principal streets of Cannes to-day, you +might imagine yourself (except for the climate) at Cowes or +Brighton, so British are the shops and the crowd that passes +them. Every restaurant advertises “afternoon +tea” and Bass’s ale, and every other sign bears a +London name. This little matter of tea is particularly +characteristic of the way the English have imposed a taste of +their own on a rebellious nation. Nothing is further from +the French taste than tea-drinking, and yet a Parisian lady will +now invite you gravely to “five o’clocker” with +her, although I can remember when that beverage was abhorred by +the French as a medicine; if you had asked a Frenchman to take a +cup of tea, he would have answered:</p> +<p>“Why? I am not ill!”</p> +<p>Even Paris (that supreme and undisputed arbiter of taste) has +submitted to English influence; tailor-made dresses and +low-heeled shoes have become as “good form” in France +as in London. The last two Presidents of the French +Republic have taken the oath of office dressed in frock-coats +instead of the dress clothes to which French officials formerly +clung as to the sacraments.</p> +<p>The municipalities of the little Southern cities were quick to +seize their golden opportunity, and everything was done to detain +the rich English wandering down towards Italy. Millions +were spent in transforming their cramped, dirty, little +towns. Wide boulevards bordered with palm and eucalyptus +spread their sunny lines in all directions, being baptized +<i>Promenade des Anglais</i> or <i>Boulevard Victoria</i>, in +artful flattery. The narrow mountain roads were widened, +casinos and theatres built and carnival <i>fêtes</i> +organized, the cities offering “cups” for yacht- or +horse-races, and giving grounds for tennis and golf clubs. +Clever Southern people! The money returned to them a +hundredfold, and they lived to see their wild coast become the +chosen residence of the wealthiest aristocracy in Europe, and the +rocky hillsides blossom into terrace above terrace of villa +gardens, where palm and rose and geranium vie with the olive and +the mimosa to shade the white villas from the sun. To-day, +no little town on the coast is without its English chapel, +British club, tennis ground, and golf links. On a fair day +at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the prevailing conversation is +in English, and the handsome, well-dressed sons of Albion lounge +along beside their astonishing womankind as thoroughly at home as +on Bond Street.</p> +<p>Those wonderful English women are the source of unending +marvel and amusement to the French. They can never +understand them, and small wonder, for with the exception of the +small “set” that surrounds the Prince of Wales, who +are dressed in the Parisian fashion, all English women seem to be +overwhelmed with regret at not being born men, and to have spent +their time and ingenuity since, in trying to make up for +nature’s mistake. Every masculine garment is twisted +by them to fit the female figure; their conversation, like that +of their brothers, is about horses and dogs; their hats and +gloves are the same as the men’s; and when with their fine, +large feet in stout shoes they start off, with that particular +swinging gait that makes the skirt seem superfluous, for a stroll +of twenty miles or so, Englishwomen do seem to the uninitiated to +have succeeded in their ambition of obliterating the difference +between the sexes.</p> +<p>It is of an evening, however, when concealment is no longer +possible, that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon +standing declared in all her plainness. Strong is the +contrast here, where they are placed side by side with all that +Europe holds of elegant, and well-dressed Frenchwomen, whether of +the “world” or the “half-world,” are +invariably marvels of fitness and freshness, the simplest +materials being converted by their skilful touch into toilettes, +so artfully adapted to the wearer’s figure and complexion, +as to raise such “creations” to the level of a fine +art.</p> +<p>An artist feels, he must fix on canvas that particular +combination of colors or that wonderful line of bust and +hip. It is with a shudder that he turns to the British +matron, for she has probably, for this occasion, draped herself +in an “art material,”—principally +“Liberty” silks of dirty greens and blues +(æsthetic shades!). He is tempted to cry out in his +disgust: “Oh, Liberty! Liberty! How many crimes +are committed in thy name!” It is one of the oddest +things in the world that the English should have elected to live +so much in France, for there are probably nowhere two peoples so +diametrically opposed on every point, or who so persistently and +wilfully misunderstand each other, as the English and the +French.</p> +<p>It has been my fate to live a good deal on both sides of the +Channel, and nothing is more amusing than to hear the absurdities +that are gravely asserted by each of their neighbors. To a +Briton, a Frenchman will always be “either tiger or +monkey” according to Voltaire; while to the French mind +English gravity is only hypocrisy to cover every vice. +Nothing pleases him so much as a great scandal in England; he +will gleefully bring you a paper containing the account of it, to +prove how true is his opinion. It is quite useless to +explain to the British mind, as I have often tried to do, that +all Frenchmen do not pass their lives drinking absinthe on the +boulevards; and as Englishmen seem to leave their morals in a +valise at Dover when off for a visit to Paris, to be picked up on +their return, it is time lost to try to make a Gaul understand +what good husbands and fathers the sons of Albion are.</p> +<p>These two great nations seem to stand in the relation to each +other that Rome and Greece held. The English are the +conquerors of the world, and its great colonizers; with a vast +capital in which wealth and misery jostle each other on the +streets; a hideous conglomeration of buildings and monuments, +without form and void, very much as old Rome must have been under +the Cæsars, enormous buildings without taste, and enormous +wealth. The French have inherited the temperament of the +Greeks. The drama, painting, and sculpture are the +preoccupation of the people. The yearly exhibitions are, +for a month before they open, the unique subject of conversation +in drawing-room or club. The state protects the artist and +buys his work. Their <i>conservatoires</i> form the +singers, and their schools the painters and architects of Europe +and America.</p> +<p>The English copy them in their big way, just as the Romans +copied the masterpieces of Greek art, while they despised the +authors. It is rare that a play succeeds in Paris which is +not instantly translated and produced in London, often with the +adapter’s name printed on the programme in place of the +author’s, the Frenchman, who only wrote it, being +ignored. Just as the Greeks faded away and disappeared +before their Roman conquerors, it is to be feared that in our day +this people of a finer clay will succumb. The +“defects of their qualities” will be their +ruin. They will stop at home, occupied with literature and +art, perfecting their dainty cities; while their tougher +neighbors are dominating the globe, imposing their language and +customs on the conquered peoples or the earth. One feels +this on the Riviera. It reminds you of the cuckoo who, once +installed in a robin’s nest, that seems to him convenient +and warmly located in the sunshine, ends by kicking out all the +young robins.</p> +<h2>No. 23—A Common Weakness</h2> +<p>Governments may change and all the conditions of life be +modified, but certain ambitions and needs of man remain +immutable. Climates, customs, centuries, have in no way +diminished the craving for consideration, the desire to be +somebody, to bear some mark indicating to the world that one is +not as other men.</p> +<p>For centuries titles supplied the want. This +satisfaction has been denied to us, so ambitious souls are +obliged to seek other means to feed their vanity.</p> +<p>Even before we were born into the world of nations, an attempt +was made amongst the aristocratically minded court surrounding +our chief magistrate, to form a society that should (without the +name) be the beginning of a class apart.</p> +<p>The order of the Cincinnati was to have been the nucleus of an +American nobility. The tendencies of this society are +revealed by the fact that primogeniture was its fundamental +law. Nothing could have been more opposed to the spirit of +the age, nor more at variance with the declaration of our +independence, than the insertion of such a clause. This +fact was discovered by the far-seeing eye of Washington, and the +society was suppressed in the hope (shared by almost all +contemporaries) that with new forms of government the nature of +man would undergo a transformation and rise above such puerile +ambitions.</p> +<p>Time has shown the fallacy of these dreams. All that has +been accomplished is the displacement of the objective point; the +desire, the mania for a handle to one’s name is as +prevalent as ever. Leave the centres of civilization and +wander in the small towns and villages of our country. +Every other man you meet is introduced as the Colonel or the +Judge, and you will do well not to inquire too closely into the +matter, nor to ask to see the title-deeds to such +distinctions. On the other hand, to omit his prefix in +addressing one of these local magnates, would be to offend him +deeply. The women-folk were quick to borrow a little of +this distinction, and in Washington to-day one is gravely +presented to Mrs. Senator Smith or Mrs. Colonel Jones. The +climax being reached by one aspiring female who styles herself on +her visiting cards, “Mrs. Acting-Assistant-Paymaster +Robinson.” If by any chance it should occur to any +one to ask her motive in sporting such an unwieldy handle, she +would say that she did it “because one can’t be going +about explaining that one is not just ordinary Mrs. Robinson or +Thompson, like the thousand others in town.” A woman +who cannot find an excuse for assuming such a prefix will +sometime have recourse to another stratagem, to particularize an +ordinary surname. She remembers that her husband, who ever +since he was born has been known to everybody as Jim, is the +proud possessor of the middle name Ivanhoe, or Pericles (probably +the result of a romantic mother’s reading); so one fine day +the young couple bloom out as Mr. and Mrs. J. Pericles Sparks, to +the amusement of their friends, their own satisfaction, and the +hopeless confusion of their tradespeople.</p> +<p>Not long ago a Westerner, who went abroad with a travelling +show, was received with enthusiasm in England because it was +thought “The Honorable” which preceded his name on +his cards implied that although an American he was somehow the +son of an earl. As a matter of fact he owed this title to +having sat, many years before in the Senate of a far-western +State. He will cling to that “Honorable” and +print it on his cards while life lasts. I was told the +other day of an American carpet warrior who appeared at court +function abroad decorated with every college badge, and football +medal in his possession, to which he added at the last moment a +brass trunk check, to complete the brilliancy of the +effect. This latter decoration attracted the attention of +the Heir Apparent, who inquired the meaning of the mystic +“416” upon it. This would have been a +“facer” to any but a true son of Uncle Sam. +Nothing daunted, however, our “General” replied +“That, Sir, is the number of pitched battles I have +won.”</p> +<p>I have my doubts as to the absolute veracity of this +tale. But that the son of one of our generals, appeared not +long ago at a public reception abroad, wearing his father’s +medals and decorations, is said to be true. Decorations on +the Continent are official badges of distinction conferred and +recognized by the different governments. An American who +wears, out of his own country, an army or college badge which has +no official existence, properly speaking, being recognized by no +government, but which is made intentionally to look as much as +possible like the “Légion d’Honneur,” is +deliberately imposing on the ignorance of foreigners, and is but +little less of a pretentious idiot than the owners of the trunk +check and the borrowed decorations.</p> +<p>There seems no end to the ways a little ambitious game can be +played. One device much in favor is for the wife to attach +her own family name to that of her husband by means of a +hyphen. By this arrangement she does not entirely lose her +individuality; as a result we have a splendid assortment of +hybrid names, such as Van Cortland-Smith and Beekman-Brown. +Be they never so incongruous these double-barrelled cognomens +serve their purpose and raise ambitious mortals above the level +of other Smiths and Browns. Finding that this arrangement +works well in their own case, it is passed on to the next +generation. There are no more Toms and Bills in these +aspiring days. The little boys are all Cadwalladers or +Carrolls. Their school-fellows, however, work sad havoc +with these high-sounding titles and quickly abbreviate them into +humble “Cad” or “Rol.”</p> +<p>It is surprising to notice what a number of middle-aged +gentlemen have blossomed out of late with decorations in their +button-holes according to the foreign fashion. On inquiry I +have discovered that these ornaments designate members of the +G.A.R., the Loyal Legion, or some local Post, for the rosettes +differ in form and color. When these gentlemen travel +abroad, to reduce their waists or improve their minds, the +effects on the hotel waiters and cabmen must be immense. +They will be charged three times the ordinary tariff instead of +only the double which is the stranger’s usual fate at the +hands of simple-minded foreigners. The satisfaction must be +cheap, however, at that price.</p> +<p>Even our wise men and sages do not seem to have escaped the +contagion. One sees professors and clergymen (who ought to +set a better example) trailing half a dozen letters after their +names, initials which to the initiated doubtless mean something, +but which are also intended to fill the souls of the ignorant +with envy. I can recall but one case of a foreign +decoration being refused by a compatriot. He was a genius +and we all know that geniuses are crazy. This gentleman had +done something particularly gratifying to an Eastern potentate, +who in return offered him one of his second-best orders. It +was at once refused. When urged on him a second time our +countryman lost his temper and answered, “If you want to +give it to somebody, present it to my valet. He is most +anxious to be decorated.” And it was done!</p> +<p>It does not require a deeply meditative mind to discover the +motives of ambitious struggles. The first and strongest +illusion of the human mind is to believe that we are different +from our fellows, and our natural impulse is to try and impress +this belief upon others.</p> +<p>Pride of birth is but one of the manifestations of the +universal weakness—invariably taking stronger and stronger +hold of the people, who from the modest dimension of their +income, or other untoward circumstances, can find no outward and +visible form with which to dazzle the world. You will find +that a desire to shine is the secret of most of the tips and +presents that are given while travelling or visiting, for they +can hardly be attributed to pure spontaneous generosity.</p> +<p>How many people does one meet who talk of their poor and +unsuccessful relatives while omitting to mention rich and +powerful connections? We are told that far from blaming +such a tendency we are to admire it. That it is proper +pride to put one’s best foot forward and keep an offending +member well out of sight, that the man who wears a rosette in the +button-hole of his coat and has half the alphabet galloping after +his name, is an honor to his family.</p> +<p>Far be it from me to deride this weakness in others, for in my +heart I am persuaded that if I lived in China, nothing would +please me more than to have my cap adorned with a coral button, +while if fate had cast my life in the pleasant places of central +Africa, a ring in my nose would doubtless have filled my soul +with joy. The fact that I share this weakness does not, +however, prevent my laughing at such folly in others.</p> +<h2>No. 24—Changing Paris</h2> +<p>Paris is beginning to show signs of the coming +“Exhibition of 1900,” and is in many ways going +through a curious stage of transformation, socially as well as +materially. The <i>Palais De l’Industrie</i>, +familiar to all visitors here, as the home of the <i>Salons</i>, +the Horse Shows, and a thousand gay <i>fêtes</i> and +merry-makings, is being torn down to make way for the new avenue +leading, with the bridge Alexander III., from the Champs +Elysées to the Esplanade des Invalides. This +thoroughfare with the gilded dome of Napoleon’s tomb to +close its perspective is intended to be the feature of the coming +“show.”</p> +<p>Curious irony of things in this world! The <i>Palais De +l’Industrie</i> was intended to be the one permanent +building of the exhibition of 1854. An old +“Journal” I often read tells how the writer saw the +long line of gilded coaches (borrowed from Versailles for the +occasion), eight horses apiece, led by footmen—horses and +men blazing in embroidered trappings—leave the Tuileries +and proceed at a walk to the great gateway of the now +disappearing palace. Victoria and Albert who were on an +official visit to the Emperor were the first to alight; then +Eugénie in the radiance of her perfect beauty stepped from +the coach (sad omen!) that fifty years before had taken Josephine +in tears to Malmaison.</p> +<p>It may interest some ladies to know how an Empress was dressed +on that spring morning forty-four years ago. She wore +rose-colored silk with an over-dress (I think that is what it is +called) of black lace flounces, immense hoops, and a black +<i>Chantilly</i> lace shawl. Her hair, a brilliant golden +auburn, was dressed low on the temples, covering the ears, and +hung down her back in a gold net almost to her waist; at the +extreme back of her head was placed a black and rose-colored +bonnet; open “flowing” sleeves showed her bare arms, +one-buttoned, straw-colored gloves, and ruby bracelets; she +carried a tiny rose-colored parasol not a foot in diameter.</p> +<p>How England’s great sovereign was dressed the writer of +the journal does not so well remember, for in those days +Eugénie was the cynosure of all eyes, and people rarely +looked at anything else when they could get a glimpse of her +lovely face.</p> +<p>It appears, however, that the Queen sported an India shawl, +hoops, and a green bonnet, which was not particularly becoming to +her red face. She and Napoleon entered the building first; +the Empress (who was in delicate health) was carried in an open +chair, with Prince Albert walking at her side, a marvellously +handsome couple to follow the two dowdy little sovereigns who +preceded them. The writer had by bribery succeeded in +getting places in an <i>entresol</i> window under the archway, +and was greatly impressed to see those four great ones laughing +and joking together over Eugénie’s trouble in +getting her hoops into the narrow chair!</p> +<p>What changes have come to that laughing group! Two are +dead, one dying in exile and disgrace; and it would be hard to +find in the two rheumatic old ladies whom one sees pottering +about the Riviera now, any trace of those smiling wives. In +France it is as if a tidal wave had swept over Napoleon’s +court. Only the old palace stood severely back from the +Champs Elysées, as if guarding its souvenirs. The +pick of the mason has brought down the proud gateway which its +imperial builder fondly imagined was to last for ages. The +Tuileries preceded it into oblivion. The Alpha and Omega of +that gorgeous pageant of the fifties vanished like a mirage!</p> +<p>It is not here alone one finds Paris changing. A railway +is being brought along the quais with its dépôt at +the Invalides. Another is to find its terminus opposite the +Louvre, where the picturesque ruin of the Cour des Comptes has +stood half-hidden by the trees since 1870. A line of +electric cars crosses the Rond Point, in spite of the opposition +of all the neighborhood, anxious to keep, at least that fine +perspective free from such desecration. And, last but not +least, there is every prospect of an immense system of elevated +railways being inaugurated in connection with the coming +world’s fair. The direction of this kind of +improvement is entirely in the hands of the Municipal Council, +and that body has become (here in Paris) extremely radical, not +to say communistic; and takes pleasure in annoying the +inhabitants of the richer quarters of the city, under pretext of +improvements and facilities of circulation.</p> +<p>It is easy to see how strong the feeling is against the +aristocratic class. Nor is it much to be wondered at! +The aristocracy seem to try to make themselves unpopular. +They detest the republic, which has shorn them of their splendor, +and do everything in their power (socially and diplomatically +their power is still great) to interfere with and frustrate the +plans of the government. Only last year they seized an +opportunity at the funerals of the Duchesse +d’Alençon and the Duc d’Aumale to make a +royalist manifestation of the most pronounced character. +The young Duchesse d’Orleans was publicly spoken of and +treated as the “Queen of France;” at the private +receptions given during her stay in Paris the same ceremonial was +observed as if she had been really on the throne. The young +Duke, her husband, was not present, being in exile as a +pretender, but armorial bearings of the “reigning +family,” as their followers insist on calling them, were +hung around the Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the +illustrious dead.</p> +<p>The government is singularly lenient to the aristocrats. +If a poor man cries “Long live the Commune!” in the +street, he is arrested. The police, however, stood quietly +by and let a group of the old nobility shout “Long live the +Queen!” as the train containing the young Duchesse +d’Orleans moved out of the station. The secret of +this leniency toward the “pretenders” to the throne, +is that they are very little feared. If it amuses a set of +wealthy people to play at holding a court, the strong government +of the republic cares not one jot. The Orleans family have +never been popular in France, and the young pretender’s +marriage to an Austrian Archduchess last year has not improved +matters.</p> +<p>It is the fashion in the conservative Faubourg St. Germain, to +ridicule the President, his wife and their bourgeois +surroundings, as forty years ago the parents of these aristocrats +affected to despise the imperial <i>parvenus</i>. The +swells amused themselves during the official visit of the Emperor +and Empress of Russia last year (which was gall and wormwood to +them) by exaggerating and repeating all the small slips in +etiquette that the President, an intelligent, but simple-mannered +gentleman, was supposed to have made during the sojourn of his +imperial guests.</p> +<p>Both M. and Mme. Faure are extremely popular with the people, +and are heartily cheered whenever they are seen in public. +The President is the despair of the lovers of routine and +etiquette, walking in and out of his Palais of the Elysée, +like a private individual, and breaking all rules and +regulations. He is fond of riding, and jogs off to the Bois +of a morning with no escort, and often of an evening drops in at +the theatres in a casual way. The other night at the +Français he suddenly appeared in the <i>foyer des +artistes</i> (a beautiful greenroom, hung with historical +portraits of great actors and actresses, one of the prides of the +theatre) in this informal manner. Mme. Bartet, who happened +to be there alone at the time, was so impressed at such an +unprecedented event that she fainted, and the President had to +run for water and help revive her. The next day he sent the +great actress a beautiful vase of Sèvres china, full of +water, in souvenir.</p> +<p>To a lover of old things and old ways any changes in the Paris +he has known and loved are a sad trial. Henri Drumont, in +his delightful <i>Mon Vieux Paris</i>, deplores this modern mania +for reform which has done such good work in the new quarters but +should, he thinks, respect the historic streets and shady +squares.</p> +<p>One naturally feels that the sights familiar in youth lose by +being transformed and doubts the necessity of such +improvements.</p> +<p>The Rome of my childhood is no more! Half of Cairo was +ruthlessly transformed in sixty-five into a hideous caricature of +modern Paris. Milan has been remodelled, each city losing +in charm as it gained in convenience.</p> +<p>So far Paris has held her own. The spirit of the city +has not been lost, as in the other capitals. The fair +metropolis of France, in spite of many transformations, still +holds her admirers with a dominating sway. She pours out +for them a strong elixir that once tasted takes the flavor out of +existence in other cities and makes her adorers, when in exile, +thirst for another draught of the subtle nectar.</p> +<h2>No. 25—Contentment</h2> +<p>As the result of certain ideal standards adopted among us when +this country was still in long clothes, a time when the equality +of man was the new “fad” of many nations, and the +prizes of life first came within the reach of those fortunate or +unscrupulous enough to seize them, it became the fashion (and has +remained so down to our day) to teach every little boy attending +a village school to look upon himself as a possible future +President, and to assume that every girl was preparing herself +for the position of first lady in the land. This is very +well in theory, and practice has shown that, as Napoleon said, +“Every private may carry a marshal’s baton in his +knapsack.” Alongside of the good such incentive may +produce, it is only fair, however, to consider also how much harm +may lie in this way of presenting life to a child’s +mind.</p> +<p>As a first result of such tall talking we find in America, +more than in any other country, an inclination among all classes +to leave the surroundings where they were born and bend their +energies to struggling out of the position in life occupied by +their parents. There are not wanting theorists who hold +that this is a quality in a nation, and that it leads to great +results. A proposition open to discussion.</p> +<p>It is doubtless satisfactory to designate first magistrates +who have raised themselves from humble beginnings to that proud +position, and there are times when it is proper to recall such +achievements to the rising generation. But as youth is +proverbially over-confident it might also be well to point out, +without danger of discouraging our sanguine youngsters, that for +one who has succeeded, about ten million confident American +youths, full of ambition and lofty aims, have been obliged to +content themselves with being honest men in humble positions, +even as their fathers before them. A sad humiliation, I +grant you, for a self-respecting citizen, to end life just where +his father did; often the case, nevertheless, in this hard world, +where so many fine qualities go unappreciated,—no societies +having as yet been formed to seek out “mute, inglorious +Miltons,” and ask to crown them!</p> +<p>To descend abruptly from the sublime, to very near the +ridiculous,—I had need last summer of a boy to go with a +lady on a trap and help about the stable. So I applied to a +friend’s coachman, a hard-working Englishman, who was +delighted to get the place for his nephew—an American-born +boy—the child of a sister, in great need. As the +boy’s clothes were hardly presentable, a simple livery was +made for him; from that moment he pined, and finally announced he +was going to leave. In answer to my surprised inquiries, I +discovered that a friend of his from the same tenement-house in +which he had lived in New York had appeared in the village, and +sooner than be seen in livery by his play-fellow he preferred +abandoning his good place, the chance of being of aid to his +mother, and learning an honorable way to earn his living. +Remonstrances were in vain; to the wrath of his uncle, he +departed. The boy had, at his school, heard so much about +everybody being born equal and every American being a gentleman +by right of inheritance, that he had taken himself seriously, and +despised a position his uncle was proud to hold, preferring +elegant leisure in his native tenement-house to the humiliation +of a livery.</p> +<p>When at college I had rooms in a neat cottage owned by an +American family. The father was a butcher, as were his +sons. The only daughter was exceedingly pretty. The +hard-worked mother conceived high hopes for this favorite +child. She was sent to a boarding-school, from which she +returned entirely unsettled for life, having learned little +except to be ashamed of her parents and to play on the +piano. One of these instruments of torture was bought, and +a room fitted up as a parlor for the daughter’s use. +As the family were fairly well-to-do, she was allowed to dress +out of all keeping with her parents’ position, and, egged +on by her mother, tried her best to marry a rich +“student.” Failing in this, she became +discontented, unhappy, and finally there was a scandal, this poor +victim of a false ambition going to swell the vast tide of a +city’s vice. With a sensible education, based on the +idea that her father’s trade was honorable and that her +mission in life was to aid her mother in the daily work until she +might marry and go to her husband, prepared by experience to cook +his dinner and keep his house clean, and finally bring up her +children to be honest men and women, this girl would have found a +happy future waiting for her, and have been of some good in her +humble way.</p> +<p>It is useless to multiply illustrations. One has but to +look about him in this unsettled country of ours. The other +day in front of my door the perennial ditch was being dug for +some gas-pipe or other. Two of the gentlemen who had +consented to do this labor wore frock-coats and top hats—or +what had once been those articles of attire—instead of +comfortable and appropriate overalls. Why? Because, +like the stable-boy, to have worn any distinctive dress would +have been in their minds to stamp themselves as belonging to an +inferior class, and so interfered with their chances of +representing this country later at the Court of St. James, or +presiding over the Senate,—positions (to judge by their +criticism of the present incumbents) they feel no doubt as to +their ability to fill.</p> +<p>The same spirit pervades every trade. The youth who +shaves me is not a barber; he has only accepted this position +until he has time to do something better. The waiter who +brings me my chop at a down-town restaurant would resign his +place if he were requested to shave his flowing mustache, and is +secretly studying law. I lose all patience with my +countrymen as I think over it! Surely we are not such a +race of snobs as not to recognize that a good barber is more to +be respected than a poor lawyer; that, as a French saying goes, +<i>Il n’y a pas de sot métier</i>. It is only +the fool who is ashamed of his trade.</p> +<p>But enough of preaching. I had intended—when I +took up my pen to-day—to write on quite another form of +this modern folly, this eternal struggle upward into circles for +which the struggler is fitted neither by his birth nor his +education; the above was to have been but a preface to the matter +I had in mind, viz., “social climbers,” those +scourges of modern society, the people whom no rebuffs will +discourage and no cold shoulder chill, whose efforts have done so +much to make our countrymen a byword abroad.</p> +<p>As many philosophers teach that trouble only is positive, +happiness being merely relative; that in any case trouble is +pretty equally distributed among the different conditions of +mankind; that, excepting the destitute and physically afflicted, +all God’s creatures have a share of joy in their lives, +would it not be more logical, as well as more conducive to the +general good, if a little more were done to make the young +contented with their lot in life, instead of constantly +suggesting to a race already prone to be unsettled, that nothing +short of the top is worthy of an American citizen?</p> +<h2>No. 26—The Climber</h2> +<p>That form of misplaced ambition, which is the subject of the +preceding chapter, can only be regarded seriously when it occurs +among simple and sincere people, who, however derided, honestly +believe that they are doing their duty to themselves and their +families when they move heaven and earth to rise a few steps in +the world. The moment we find ambition taking a purely +social form, it becomes ridiculous. The aim is so paltry in +comparison with the effort, and so out of proportion with the +energy-exerted to attain it, that one can only laugh and +wonder! Unfortunately, signs of this puerile spirit +(peculiar to the last quarter of the nineteenth century) can be +seen on all hands and in almost every society.</p> +<p>That any man or woman should make it the unique aim and object +of existence to get into a certain “set,” not from +any hope of profit or benefit, nor from the belief that it is +composed of brilliant and amusing people, but simply because it +passes for being exclusive and difficult of access, does at first +seem incredible.</p> +<p>That humble young painters or singers should long to know +personally the great lights of their professions, and should +strive to be accepted among them is easily understood, since the +aspirants can reap but benefit, present and future, from such +companionship. That a rising politician should deem it +all-important to be on friendly terms with the +“bosses” is not astonishing, for those magnates have +it in their power to make or mar his fortune. But in a +<i>milieu</i> as fluctuating as any social circle must +necessarily be, shading off on all sides and changing as +constantly as light on water, the end can never be considered as +achieved or the goal attained.</p> +<p>Neither does any particular result accompany success, more +substantial than the moral one which lies in +self-congratulation. That, however, is enough for a climber +if she is bitten with the “ascending” madness. +(I say “she,” because this form of ambition is more +frequent among women, although by no means unknown to the sterner +sex.)</p> +<p>It amuses me vastly to sit in my corner and watch one of these +<i>fin-de-siècle</i> diplomatists work out her little +problem. She generally comes plunging into our city from +outside, hot for conquest, making acquaintances right and left, +indiscriminately; thus falling an easy prey to the wolves that +prowl around the edges of society, waiting for just such lambs to +devour. Her first entertainments are worth attending for +she has ingeniously contrived to get together all the people she +should have left out, and failed to attract the social lights and +powers of the moment. If she be a quick-witted lady, she +soon sees the error of her ways and begins a process of +“weeding”—as difficult as it is unwise, each +rejected “weed” instantly becoming an enemy for life, +not to speak of the risk she, in her ignorance, runs of mistaking +for “detrimentals” the <i>fines fleurs</i> of the +worldly parterre. Ah! the way of the Climber is hard; she +now begins to see that her path is not strewn with flowers.</p> +<p>One tactful person of this kind, whose gradual +“unfolding” was watched with much amusement and +wonder by her acquaintances, avoided all these errors by going in +early for a “dear friend.” Having, after mature +reflection, chosen her guide among the most exclusive of the +young matrons, she proceeded quietly to pay her court <i>en +règle</i>. Flattering little notes, boxes of candy, +and bunches of flowers were among the forms her devotion +took. As a natural result, these two ladies became +inseparable, and the most hermetically sealed doors opened before +the new arrival.</p> +<p>A talent for music or acting is another aid. A few years +ago an entire family were floated into the desired haven on the +waves of the sister’s voice, and one young couple achieved +success by the husband’s aptitude for games and +sports. In the latter case it was the man of the family who +did the work, dragging his wife up after him. A polo pony +is hardly one’s idea of a battle-horse, but in this case it +bore its rider on to success.</p> +<p>Once climbers have succeeded in installing themselves in the +stronghold of their ambitions, they become more exclusive than +their new friends ever dreamed of being, and it tries one’s +self-restraint to hear these new arrivals deploring “the +levelling tendencies of the age,” or wondering “how +nice people can be beginning to call on those horrid +So-and-Sos. Their father sold shoes, you know.” +This ultra-exclusiveness is not to be wondered at. The only +attraction the circle they have just entered has for the climbers +is its exclusiveness, and they do not intend that it shall lose +its market value in their hands. Like Baudelaire, they +believe that “it is only the small number saved that makes +the charm of Paradise.” Having spent hard cash in +this investment, they have every intention of getting their +money’s worth.</p> +<p>In order to give outsiders a vivid impression of the footing +on which they stand with the great of the world, all the women +they have just met become Nellys and Jennys, and all the men +Dicks and Freds—behind their backs, <i>bien +entendu</i>—for Mrs. “Newcome” has not yet +reached that point of intimacy which warrants using such +abbreviations directly to the owners.</p> +<p>Another amiable weakness common to the climber is that of +knowing everybody. No name can be mentioned at home or +abroad but Parvenu happens to be on the most intimate terms with +the owner, and when he is conversing, great names drop out of his +mouth as plentifully as did the pearls from the pretty lips of +the girl in the fairy story. All the world knows how such a +gentleman, being asked on his return from the East if he had seen +“the Dardanelles,” answered, “Oh, dear, +yes! I dined with them several times!” thus settling +satisfactorily his standing in the Orient!</p> +<p>Climbing, like every other habit, soon takes possession of the +whole nature. To abstain from it is torture. +Napoleon, we are told, found it impossible to rest contented on +his successes, but was impelled onward by a force stronger than +his volition. In some such spirit the ambitious souls here +referred to, after “the Conquest of America” and the +discovery that the fruit of their struggles was not worth very +much, victory having brought the inevitable satiety in its wake, +sail away in search of new fields of adventure. They have +long ago left behind the friends and acquaintances of their +childhood. Relations they apparently have none, which +accounts for the curious phenomenon that a parvenu is never in +mourning. As no friendships bind them to their new circle, +the ties are easily loosened. Why should they care for one +city more than for another, unless it offer more of the sport +they love? This continent has become tame, since there is +no longer any struggle, while over the sea vast hunting grounds +and game worthy of their powder, form an irresistible +temptation—old and exclusive societies to be besieged, and +contests to be waged compared to which their American experiences +are but light skirmishes. As the polo pony is supposed to +pant for the fray, so the hearts of social conquerors warm within +them at the prospect of more brilliant victories.</p> +<p>The pleasure of following them on their hunting parties abroad +will have to be deferred, so vast is the subject, so full of +thrilling adventure and, alas! also of humiliating defeat.</p> +<h2>No. 27—The Last of the Dandies</h2> +<p>So completely has the dandy disappeared from among us, that +even the word has an old-time look (as if it had strayed out of +some half-forgotten novel or “keepsake”), raising in +our minds the picture of a slender, clean-shaven youth, in very +tight unmentionables strapped under his feet, a dark green +frock-coat with a collar up to the ears and a stock whose folds +cover his chest, butter-colored gloves, and a hat—oh! a hat +that would collect a crowd in two minutes in any +neighborhood! A gold-headed stick, and a quizzing glass, +with a black ribbon an inch wide, complete the toilet. In +such a rig did the swells of the last generation stroll down Pall +Mall or drive their tilburys in the Bois.</p> +<p>The recent illness of the Prince de Sagan has made a strange +and sad impression in many circles in Paris, for he has always +been a favorite, and is the last surviving type of a now extinct +species. He is the last Dandy! No understudy will be +found to fill his rôle—the dude and the swell are +whole generations away from the dandy, of which they are but +feeble reflections—the comedy will have to be continued +now, without its leading gentleman. With his head of +silvery hair, his eye-glass and his wonderful waistcoats, he held +the first place in the “high life” of the French +capital.</p> +<p>No first night or ball was complete without him, Sagan. +The very mention of his name in their articles must have kept the +wolf from the door of needy reporters. No +<i>débutante</i>, social or theatrical, felt sure of her +success until it had received the hall-mark of his +approval. When he assisted at a dress rehearsal, the actors +and the managers paid him more attention than Sarcey or Sardou, +for he was known to be the real arbiter of their fate. His +word was law, the world bowed before it as before the will of an +autocrat. Mature matrons received his dictates with the +same reverence that the Old Guard evinced for Napoleon’s +orders. Had he not led them on to victory in their +youth?</p> +<p>On the boulevards or at a race-course, he was the one person +always known by sight and pointed out. “There goes +Sagan!” He had become an institution. One does +not know exactly how or why he achieved the position, which made +him the most followed, flattered, and copied man of his +day. It certainly was unique!</p> +<p>The Prince of Sagan is descended from Maurice de Saxe (the +natural son of the King of Saxony and Aurora of +Kœnigsmark), who in his day shone brilliantly at the French +court and was so madly loved by Adrienne Lecouvreur. From +his great ancestor, Sagan inherited the title of Grand Duke Of +Courland (the estates have been absorbed into a neighboring +empire). Nevertheless, he is still an R.H., and when +crowned heads visit Paris they dine with him and receive him on a +footing of equality. He married a great fortune, and the +daughter of the banker Selliere. Their house on the +Esplanade des Invalides has been for years the centre of +aristocratic life in Paris; not the most exclusive circle, but +certainly the gayest of this gay capital, and from the days of +Louis Philippe he has given the keynote to the fast set.</p> +<p>Oddly enough, he has always been a great favorite with the +lower classes (a popularity shared by all the famous dandies of +history). The people appear to find in them the +personification of all aspirations toward the elegant and the +ideal. Alcibiades, Buckingham, the Duc de Richelieu, Lord +Seymour, Comte d’Orsay, Brummel, Grammont-Caderousse, +shared this favor, and have remained legendary characters, to +whom their disdain for everything vulgar, their worship of their +own persons, and many costly follies gave an ephemeral +empire. Their power was the more arbitrary and despotic in +that it was only nominal and undefined, allowing them to rule +over the fashions, the tastes, and the pastimes of their +contemporaries with undivided sway, making them envied, obeyed, +loved, but rarely overthrown.</p> +<p>It has been asserted by some writers that dandies are +necessary and useful to a nation (Thackeray admired them and +pointed out that they have a most difficult and delicate +rôle to play, hence their rarity), and that these +butterflies, as one finds them in the novels of that day, the de +Marsys, the Pelhams, the Maxime de Trailles, are indispensable to +the perfection of society. It is a great misfortune to a +country to have no dandies, those supreme virtuosos of taste and +distinction. Germany, which glories in Mozart and Kant, +Goethe and Humboldt, the country of deep thinkers and brave +soldiers, never had a great dandy, and so has remained behind +England or France in all that constitutes the graceful side of +life, the refinements of social intercourse, and the art of +living. France will perceive too late, after he has +disappeared, the loss she has sustained when this Prince, Grand +Seigneur, has ceased to embellish by his presence her +race-courses and “first nights.” A reputation +like his cannot be improvised in a moment, and he has no +pupils.</p> +<p>Never did the aristocracy of a country stand in greater need +of such a representation, than in these days of tramcars and +“fixed-price” restaurants. An entire +“art” dies with him. It has been whispered that +he has not entirely justified his reputation, that the accounts +of his exploits as a <i>haut viveur</i> have gained in the +telling. Nevertheless he dominated an epoch, rising above +the tumultuous and levelling society of his day, a tardy Don +Quixote, of the knighthood of pleasures, <i>fêtes</i>, +loves and prodigalities, which are no longer of our time. +His great name, his grand manner, his elderly graces, his serene +carelessness, made him a being by himself. No one will +succeed this master of departed elegances. If he does not +recover from his attack, if the paralysis does not leave that +poor brain, worn out with doing nothing, we can honestly say that +he is the last of his kind.</p> +<p>An original and independent thinker has asserted that +civilizations, societies, empires, and republics go down to +posterity typified for the admiration of mankind, each under the +form of some hero. Emerson would have given a place in his +Pantheon to Sagan. For it is he who sustained the +traditions and became the type of that distinguished and +frivolous society, which judged that serious things were of no +importance, enthusiasm a waste of time, literature a bore; that +nothing was interesting and worthy of occupying their attention +except the elegant distractions that helped to pass their +days-and nights! He had the merit (?) in these days of the +practical and the commonplace, of preserving in his gracious +person all the charming uselessness of a courtier in a country +where there was no longer a court.</p> +<p>What a strange sight it would be if this departing dandy +could, before he leaves for ever the theatre of so many triumphs, +take his place at some street corner, and review the shades of +the companions his long life had thrown him with, the endless +procession of departed belles and beaux, who, in their youth, +had, under his rule, helped to dictate the fashions and lead the +sports of a world.</p> +<h2>No. 28—A Nation on the Wing</h2> +<p>On being taken the other day through a large and costly +residence, with the thoroughness that only the owner of a new +house has the cruelty to inflict on his victims, not allowing +them to pass a closet or an electric bell without having its +particular use and convenience explained, forcing them to look up +coal-slides, and down air-shafts and to visit every secret place, +from the cellar to the fire-escape, I noticed that a peculiar +arrangement of the rooms repeated itself on each floor, and +several times on a floor. I remarked it to my host.</p> +<p>“You observe it,” he said, with a blush of pride, +“it is my wife’s idea! The truth is, my +daughters are of a marrying age, and my sons starting out for +themselves; this house will soon be much too big for two old +people to live in alone. We have planned it so that at any +time it can be changed into an apartment house at a nominal +expense. It is even wired and plumbed with that end in +view!”</p> +<p>This answer positively took my breath away. I looked at +my host in amazement. It was hard to believe that a man +past middle age, who after years of hardest toil could afford to +put half a million into a house for himself and his children, and +store it with beautiful things, would have the courage to look so +far into the future as to see all his work undone, his home +turned to another use and himself and his wife afloat in the +world without a roof over their wealthy old heads.</p> +<p>Surely this was the Spirit of the Age in its purest +expression, the more strikingly so that he seemed to feel pride +rather than anything else in his ingenious combination.</p> +<p>He liked the city he had built in well enough now, but nothing +proved to him that he would like it later. He and his wife +had lived in twenty cities since they began their brave fight +with Fortune, far away in a little Eastern town. They had +since changed their abode with each ascending rung of the ladder +of success, and beyond a faded daguerreotype or two of their +children and a few modest pieces of jewelry, stored away in +cotton, it is doubtful if they owned a single object belonging to +their early life.</p> +<p>Another case occurs to me. Near the village where I pass +my summers, there lived an elderly, childless couple on a +splendid estate combining everything a fastidious taste could +demand. One fine morning this place was sold, the important +library divided between the village and their native city, the +furniture sold or given away,—everything went; at the end +the things no one wanted were made into a bon-fire and +burned.</p> +<p>A neighbor asking why all this was being done was told by the +lady, “We were tired of it all and have decided to be +‘Bohemians’ for the rest of our lives.” +This couple are now wandering about Europe and half a dozen +trunks contain their belongings.</p> +<p>These are, of course, extreme cases and must be taken for what +they are worth; nevertheless they are straws showing which way +the wind blows, signs of the times that he who runs may +read. I do not run, but I often saunter up our principal +avenue, and always find myself wondering what will be the future +of the splendid residences that grace that thoroughfare as it +nears the Park; the ascending tide of trade is already circling +round them and each year sees one or more crumble away and +disappear.</p> +<p>The finer buildings may remain, turned into clubs or +restaurants, but the greater part of the newer ones are so +ill-adapted to any other use than that for which they are built +that their future seems obscure.</p> +<p>That fashion will flit away from its present haunts there can +be little doubt; the city below the Park is sure to be given up +to business, and even the fine frontage on that green space will +sooner or later be occupied by hotels, if not stores; and he who +builds with any belief in the permanency of his surroundings must +indeed be of a hopeful disposition.</p> +<p>A good lady occupying a delightful corner on this same avenue, +opposite a one-story florist’s shop, said:</p> +<p>“I shall remain here until they build across the way; +then I suppose I shall have to move.”</p> +<p>So after all the man who is contented to live in a future +apartment house, may not be so very far wrong.</p> +<p>A case of the opposite kind is that of a great millionaire, +who, dying, left his house and its collections to his eldest son +and his grandson after him, on the condition that they should +continue to live in it.</p> +<p>Here was an attempt to keep together a home with its memories +and associations. What has been the result? The +street that was a charming centre for residences twenty years ago +has become a “slum;” the unfortunate heirs find +themselves with a house on their hands that they cannot live in +and are forbidden to rent or sell. As a final result the +will must in all probability be broken and the matter ended.</p> +<p>Of course the reason for a great deal of this is the +phenomenal growth of our larger cities. Hundreds of +families who would gladly remain in their old homes are fairly +pushed out of them by the growth of business.</p> +<p>Everything has its limits and a time must come when our cities +will cease to expand or when centres will be formed as in London +or Paris, where generations may succeed each other in the same +homes. So far, I see no indications of any such +crystallization in this our big city; we seem to be condemned +like the “Wandering Jew” or poor little +“Joe” to be perpetually “moving on.”</p> +<p>At a dinner of young people not long ago a Frenchman visiting +our country, expressed his surprise on hearing a girl speak of +“not remembering the house she was born in.” +Piqued by his manner the young lady answered:</p> +<p>“We are twenty-four at this table. I do not +believe there is one person here living in the house in which he +or she was born.” This assertion raised a murmur of +dissent around the table; on a census being taken it proved, +however, to be true.</p> +<p>How can one expect, under circumstances like these, to find +any great respect among young people for home life or the +conservative side of existence? They are born as it were on +the wing, and on the wing will they live.</p> +<p>The conditions of life in this country, although contributing +largely to such a state of affairs, must not be held, however, +entirely responsible. Underlying our civilization and +culture, there is still strong in us a wild nomadic strain +inherited from a thousand generations of wandering ancestors, +which breaks out so soon as man is freed from the restraint +incumbent on bread-winning for his family. The moment there +is wealth or even a modest income insured, comes the inclination +to cut loose from the dull routine of business and duty, +returning instinctively to the migratory habits of primitive +man.</p> +<p>We are not the only nation that has given itself up to +globe-trotting; it is strong in the English, in spite of their +conservative education, and it is surprising to see the number of +formerly stay-at-home French and Germans one meets wandering in +foreign lands.</p> +<p>In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he had conceived of +taking some people over to visit the International Exhibition in +Paris. For a fixed sum paid in advance he offered to +provide everything and act as courier to the party, and succeeded +with the greatest difficulty in getting together ten +people. From this modest beginning has grown the vast +undertaking that to-day covers the globe with tourists, from the +frozen seas where they “do” the midnight sun, to the +deserts three thousand miles up the Nile.</p> +<p>As I was returning a couple of years ago <i>via</i> Vienna +from Constantinople, the train was filled with a party of our +compatriots conducted by an agency of this kind—simple +people of small means who, twenty years ago, would as soon have +thought of leaving their homes for a trip in the East as they +would of starting off in balloons en route for the inter-stellar +spaces.</p> +<p>I doubted at the time as to the amount of information and +appreciation they brought to bear on their travels, so I took +occasion to draw one of the thin, unsmiling women into +conversation, asking her where they intended stopping next.</p> +<p>“At Buda-Pesth,” she answered. I said in +some amusement:</p> +<p>“But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so carefully +yesterday.”</p> +<p>“Oh, was it,” she replied, without any visible +change on her face, “I thought we had not got there +yet.” Apparently it was enough for her to be +travelling; the rest was of little importance. Later in the +day, when asked if she had visited a certain old city in Germany, +she told me she had but would never go there again: “They +gave us such poor coffee at the hotel.” Again later +in speaking to her husband, who seemed a trifle vague as to +whether he had seen Nuremberg or not, she said:</p> +<p>“Why, you remember it very well; it was there you bought +those nice overshoes!”</p> +<p>All of which left me with some doubts in my mind as to the +cultivating influences of foreign travel on their minds.</p> +<p>You cannot change a leopard’s spots, neither can you +alter the nature of a race, and one of the strongest +characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon, is the nomadic +instinct. How often one hears people say:</p> +<p>“I am not going to sit at home and take care of my +furniture. I want to see something of the world before I am +too old.” Lately, a sprightly maiden of uncertain +years, just returned from a long trip abroad, was asked if she +intended now to settle down.</p> +<p>“Settle down, indeed! I’m a butterfly and I +never expect to settle down.”</p> +<p>There is certainly food here for reflection. Why should +we be more inclined to wander than our neighbors? Perhaps +it is in a measure due to our nervous, restless temperament, +which is itself the result of our climate; but whatever the cause +is, inability to remain long in one place is having a most +unfortunate influence on our social life. When everyone is +on the move or longing to be, it becomes difficult to form any +but the most superficial ties; strong friendships become +impossible, the most intimate family relations are loosened.</p> +<p>If one were of a speculative frame of mind and chose to take +as the basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between +1855, when the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number +“personally conducted” over land and sea to-day, and +then glance forward at what the future will be if this ratio of +increase is maintained the result would be something too awful +for words. For if ten have become a million in forty years, +what will be the total in 1955? Nothing less than entire +nations given over to sight-seeing, passing their lives and +incomes in rushing aimlessly about.</p> +<p>If the facilities of communication increase as they +undoubtedly will with the demand, the prospect becomes nearer the +idea of a “Walpurgis Night” than anything else. +For the earth and the sea will be covered and the air filled with +every form of whirling, flying, plunging device to get men +quickly from one place to another.</p> +<p>Every human being on the globe will be flying South for the +cold months and North for the hot season.</p> +<p>As personally conducted tours have been so satisfactory, +agencies will be started to lead us through all the stages of +existence. Parents will subscribe on the birth of their +children to have them personally conducted through life and +everything explained as it is done at present in the galleries +abroad; food, lodging and reading matter, husbands and wives will +be provided by contract, to be taken back and changed if +unsatisfactory, as the big stores do with their goods. +Delightful prospect! Homes will become superfluous, parents +and children will only meet when their “tours” happen +to cross each other. Our great-grandchildren will float +through life freed from every responsibility and more perfectly +independent than even that delightful dreamer, Bellamy, ventured +to predict.</p> +<h2>No. 29—Husks</h2> +<p>Among the Protestants driven from France by that astute and +liberal-minded sovereign Louis XIV., were a colony of weavers, +who as all the world knows, settled at Spitalfields in England, +where their descendants weave silk to this day.</p> +<p>On their arrival in Great Britain, before the looms could be +set up and a market found for their industry, the exiles were +reduced to the last extremity of destitution and hunger. +Looking about them for anything that could be utilized for food, +they discovered that the owners of English slaughter-houses threw +away as worthless, the tails of the cattle they killed. +Like all the poor in France, these wanderers were excellent +cooks, and knew that at home such caudal appendages were highly +valued for the tenderness and flavor of the meat. To the +amazement and disgust of the English villagers the new arrivals +proceeded to collect this “refuse” and carry it home +for food. As the first principle of French culinary art is +the <i>pot-au-feu</i>, the tails were mostly converted into soup, +on which the exiles thrived and feasted.</p> +<p>Their neighbors, envious at seeing the despised French +indulging daily in savory dishes, unknown to English palates, and +tempted like “Jack’s” giant by the smell of +“fresh meat,” began to inquire into the matter, and +slowly realized how, in their ignorance, they had been throwing +away succulent and delicate food. The news of this +discovery gradually spreading through all classes, +“ox-tail” became and has remained the national +English soup.</p> +<p>If this veracious tale could be twisted into a metaphor, it +would serve marvellously to illustrate the position of the entire +Anglo-Saxon race, and especially that of their American +descendants as regards the Latin peoples. For foolish +prodigality and reckless, ignorant extravagance, however, we +leave our English cousins far behind.</p> +<p>Two American hotels come to my mind, as different in their +appearance and management as they are geographically +asunder. Both are types and illustrations of the wilful +waste that has recently excited Mr. Ian Maclaren’s comment, +and the woeful want (of good food) that is the result. At +one, a dreary shingle construction on a treeless island, off our +New England coast, where the ideas of the landlord and his guests +have remained as unchanged and primitive as the island itself, I +found on inquiry that all articles of food coming from the first +table were thrown into the sea; and I have myself seen chickens +hardly touched, rounds of beef, trays of vegetables, and every +variety of cake and dessert tossed to the fish.</p> +<p>While we were having soups so thin and tasteless that they +would have made a French house-wife blush, the ingredients +essential to an excellent “stock” were cast +aside. The boarders were paying five dollars a day and +appeared contented, the place was packed, the landlord coining +money, so it was foolish to expect any improvement.</p> +<p>The other hotel, a vast caravansary in the South, where a +fortune had been lavished in providing every modern convenience +and luxury, was the “fad” of its wealthy owner. +I had many talks with the manager during my stay, and came to +realize that most of the wastefulness I saw around me was not his +fault, but that of the public, to whose taste he was obliged to +cater. At dinner, after receiving your order, the waiter +would disappear for half an hour, and then bring your entire meal +on one tray, the over-cooked meats stranded in lakes of +coagulated gravy, the entrees cold and the ices warm. He +had generally forgotten two or three essentials, but to send back +for them meant to wait another half-hour, as his other clients +were clamoring to be served. So you ate what was before you +in sulky disgust, and got out of the room as quickly as +possible.</p> +<p>After one of these gastronomic races, being hungry, flustered, +and suffering from indigestion, I asked mine host if it had never +occurred to him to serve a <i>table d’hôte</i> dinner +(in courses) as is done abroad, where hundreds of people dine at +the same moment, each dish being offered them in turn accompanied +by its accessories.</p> +<p>“Of course, I have thought of it,” he +answered. “It would be the greatest improvement that +could be introduced into American hotel-keeping. No one +knows better than I do how disastrous the present system is to +all parties. Take as an example of the present way, the +dinner I am going to give you to-morrow, in honor of +Christmas. Glance over this <i>menu</i>. You will see +that it enumerates every costly and delicate article of food +possible to procure and a long list of other dishes, the greater +part of which will not even be called for. As no number of +<i>chefs</i> could possibly oversee the proper preparation of +such a variety of meats and sauces, all will be carelessly +cooked, and as you know by experience, poorly served.</p> +<p>“People who exact useless variety,” he added, +“are sure in some way to be the sufferers; in their anxiety +to try everything, they will get nothing worth eating. Yet +that meal will cost me considerably more than my guests pay for +their twenty-four hours’ board and lodging.”</p> +<p>“Why do it, you ask? Because it is the custom, and +because it will be an advertisement. These bills of fare +will be sown broadcast over the country in letters to friends and +kept as souvenirs. If, instead of all this senseless +superfluity, I were allowed to give a <i>table +d’hôte</i> meal to-morrow, with the <i>chef</i> I +have, I could provide an exquisite dinner, perfect in every +detail, served at little tables as deftly and silently as in a +private house. I could also discharge half of my waiters, +and charge two dollars a day instead of five dollars, and the +hotel would become (what it has never been yet) a paying +investment, so great would he the saving.”</p> +<p>“Only this morning,” he continued, warming to his +subject, “while standing in the dining room, I saw a young +man order and then send away half the dishes on the +<i>menu</i>. A chicken was broiled for him and rejected; a +steak and an omelette fared no better. How much do you +suppose a hotel gains from a guest like that?”</p> +<p>“The reason Americans put up with such poor viands in +hotels is, that home cooking in this country is so rudimentary, +consisting principally of fried dishes, and hot breads. So +little is known about the proper preparation of food that +to-morrow’s dinner will appear to many as the <i>ne plus +ultra</i> of delicate living. One of the charms of a hotel +for people who live poorly at home, lies in this power to order +expensive dishes they rarely or never see on their own +tables.”</p> +<p>“To be served with a quantity of food that he has but +little desire to eat is one of an American citizen’s +dearest privileges, and a right he will most unwillingly +relinquish. He may know as well as you and I do, that what +he calls for will not be worth eating; that is of secondary +importance, he has it before him, and is contented.”</p> +<p>“The hotel that attempted limiting the liberty of its +guests to the extent of serving them a <i>table +d’hôte</i> dinner, would be emptied in a +week.”</p> +<p>“A crowning incongruity, as most people are delighted to +dine with friends, or at public functions, where the meal is +invariably served <i>à la russe</i> (another name for a +<i>table d’hôte</i>), and on these occasions are only +too glad to have their <i>menu</i> chosen for them. The +present way, however, is a remnant of ‘old times’ and +the average American, with all his love of change and novelty, is +very conservative when it comes to his table.”</p> +<p>What this manager did not confide to me, but what I discovered +later for myself, was that to facilitate the service, and avoid +confusion in the kitchens, it had become the custom at all the +large and most of the small hotels in this country, to carve the +joints, cut up the game, and portion out vegetables, an hour or +two before meal time. The food, thus arranged, is placed in +vast steam closets, where it simmers gayly for hours, in its own, +and fifty other vapors.</p> +<p>Any one who knows the rudiments of cookery, will recognize +that with this system no viand can have any particular flavor, +the partridges having a taste of their neighbor the roast beef, +which in turn suggests the plum pudding it has been +“chumming” with.</p> +<p>It is not alone in a hotel that we miss the good in grasping +after the better. Small housekeeping is apparently run on +the same lines.</p> +<p>A young Frenchman, who was working in my rooms, told me in +reply to a question regarding prices, that every kind of food was +cheaper here than abroad, but the prejudice against certain +dishes was so strong in this country that many of the best things +in the markets were never called for. Our nation is no +longer in its “teens” and should cease to act like a +foolish boy who has inherited (what appears to him) a limitless +fortune; not for fear of his coming, like his prototype in the +parable, to live on “husks” for he is doing that +already, but lest like the dog of the fable, in grasping after +the shadow of a banquet he miss the simple meal that is within +his reach.</p> +<p>One of the reasons for this deplorable state of affairs lies +in the foolish education our girls receive. They learn so +little housekeeping at home, that when married they are obliged +to begin all over again, unless they prefer, like a majority of +their friends, to let things as go at the will and discretion of +the “lady” below stairs.</p> +<p>At both hotels I have referred to, the families of the men +interested considered it beneath them to know what was taking +place. The “daughter” of the New England house +went semi-weekly to Boston to take violin lessons at ten dollars +each, although she had no intention of becoming a professional, +while the wife wrote poetry and ignored the hotel side of her +life entirely.</p> +<p>The “better half” of the Florida establishment +hired a palace in Rome and entertained ambassadors. Hotels +divided against themselves are apt to be establishments where you +pay for riotous living and are served only with husks.</p> +<p>We have many hard lessons ahead of us, and one of the hardest +will be for our nation to learn humbly from the thrifty emigrants +on our shores, the great art of utilizing the “tails” +that are at this moment being so recklessly thrown away.</p> +<p>As it is, in spite of markets overflowing with every fish, +vegetable, and tempting viand, we continue to be the worst fed, +most meagrely nourished of all the wealthy nations on the face of +the earth. We have a saying (for an excellent reason +unknown on the Continent) that Providence provides us with food +and the devil sends the cooks! It would be truer to say +that the poorer the food resources of a nation, the more +restricted the choice of material, the better the cooks; a small +latitude when providing for the table forcing them to a hundred +clever combinations and mysterious devices to vary the monotony +of their cuisine and tempt a palate, by custom staled.</p> +<p>Our heedless people, with great variety at their disposition, +are unequal to the situation, wasting and discarding the best, +and making absolutely nothing of their advantages.</p> +<p>If we were enjoying our prodigality by living on the fat of +the land, there would be less reason to reproach ourselves, for +every one has a right to live as he pleases. But as it is, +our foolish prodigals are spending their substance, while eating +the husks!</p> +<h2>No. 30—The Faubourg of St. Germain</h2> +<p>There has been too much said and written in the last dozen +years about breaking down the “great wall” behind +which the aristocrats of the famous Faubourg, like the +Celestials, their prototypes, have ensconced themselves. +The Chinese speak of outsiders as “barbarians.” +The French ladies refer to such unfortunates as being +“beyond the pale.” Almost all that has been +written is arrant nonsense; that imaginary barrier exists to-day +on as firm a foundation, and is guarded by sentinels as vigilant +as when, forty years ago, Napoleon (third of the name) and his +Spanish spouse mounted to its assault.</p> +<p>Their repulse was a bitter humiliation to the <i>parvenue</i> +Empress, whose resentment took the form (along with many other +curious results) of opening the present Boulevard St. Germain, +its line being intentionally carried through the heart of that +quarter, teeming with historic “Hotels” of the old +aristocracy, where beautiful constructions were mercilessly torn +down to make way for the new avenue. The cajoleries which +Eugénie first tried and the blows that followed were alike +unavailing. Even her worship of Marie Antoinette, between +whom and herself she found imaginary resemblances, failed to warm +the stony hearts of the proud old ladies, to whom it was as gall +and wormwood to see a nobody crowned in the palace of their +kings. Like religious communities, persecution only drew +this old society more firmly together and made them stand by each +other in their distress. When the Bois was remodelled by +Napoleon and the lake with its winding drive laid out, the new +Court drove of an afternoon along this water front. That +was enough for the old swells! They retired to the remote +“Allée of the Acacias,” and solemnly took +their airing away from the bustle of the new world, incidentally +setting a fashion that has held good to this day; the lakeside +being now deserted, and the “Acacias” crowded of an +afternoon, by all that Paris holds of elegant and inelegant.</p> +<p>Where the brilliant Second Empire failed, the Republic had +little chance of success. With each succeeding year the +“Old Faubourg” withdrew more and more into its shell, +going so far, after the fall of Mac Mahon, as to change its +“season” to the spring, so that the balls and +<i>fêtes</i> it gave should not coincide with the +“official” entertainments during the winter.</p> +<p>The next people to have a “shy” at the “Old +Faubourg’s” Gothic battlements were the Jews, who +were victorious in a few light skirmishes and succeeded in +capturing one or two illustrious husbands for their +daughters. The wily Israelites, however, discovered that +titled sons-in-law were expensive articles and often turned out +unsatisfactorily, so they quickly desisted. The English, +the most practical of societies, have always left the Faubourg +alone. It has been reserved for our countrywomen to lay the +most determined siege yet recorded to that untaken +stronghold.</p> +<p>It is a characteristic of the American temperament to be +unable to see a closed door without developing an intense +curiosity to know what is behind; or to read “No Admittance +to the Public” over an entrance without immediately +determining to get inside at any price. So it is easy to +understand the attraction an hermetically sealed society would +have for our fair compatriots. Year after year they have +flung themselves against its closed gateways. Repulsed, +they have retired only to form again for the attack, but are as +far away to-day from planting their flag in that citadel as when +they first began. It does not matter to them what is +inside; there may be (as in this case) only mouldy old halls and +a group of people with antiquated ideas and ways. It is +enough for a certain type of woman to know that she is not wanted +in an exclusive circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get +there. This point of view reminds one of Mrs. Snob’s +saying about a new arrival at a hotel: “I am sure she must +be ‘somebody’ for she was so rude to me when I spoke +to her;” and her answer to her daughter when the girl said +(on arriving at a watering-place) that she had noticed a very +nice family “who look as if they wanted to know us, +Mamma:”</p> +<p>“Then, my dear,” replied Mamma Snob, “they +certainly are not people we want to meet!”</p> +<p>The men in French society are willing enough to make +acquaintance with foreigners. You may see the youth of the +Faubourg dancing at American balls in Paris, or running over for +occasional visits to this country. But when it comes to +taking their women-kind with them, it is a different +matter. Americans who have known well-born Frenchmen at +school or college are surprised, on meeting them later, to be +asked (cordially enough) to dine <i>en garçon</i> at a +restaurant, although their Parisian friend is married. An +Englishman’s or American’s first word would be on a +like occasion:</p> +<p>“Come and dine with me to-night. I want to +introduce you to my wife.” Such an idea would never +cross a Frenchman’s mind!</p> +<p>One American I know is a striking example of this. He +was born in Paris, went to school and college there, and has +lived in that city all his life. His sister married a +French nobleman. Yet at this moment, in spite of his +wealth, his charming American wife, and many beautiful +entertainments, he has not one warm French friend, or the +<i>entrée</i> on a footing of intimacy to a single Gallic +house.</p> +<p>There is no analogy between the English aristocracy and the +French nobility, except that they are both antiquated +institutions; the English is the more harmful on account of its +legislative power, the French is the more pretentious. The +House of Lords is the most open club in London, the payment of an +entrance-fee in the shape of a check to a party fund being an +all-sufficient sesame. In France, one must be born in the +magic circle. The spirit of the Emigration of 1793 is not +yet extinct. The nobles live in their own world (how +expressive the word is, seeming to exclude all the rest of +mankind), pining after an impossible <i>restauration</i>, alien +to the present day, holding aloof from politics for fear of +coming in touch with the masses, with whom they pride themselves +on having nothing in common.</p> +<p>What leads many people astray on this subject is that there +has formed around this ancient society a circle composed of rich +“outsiders,” who have married into good families; and +of eccentric members of the latter, who from a love of excitement +or for interested motives have broken away from their +traditions. Newly arrived Americans are apt to mistake this +“world” for the real thing. Into this circle it +is not difficult for foreigners who are rich and anxious to see +something of life to gain admission. To be received by the +ladies of this outer circle, seems to our compatriots to be an +achievement, until they learn the real standing of their new +acquaintances.</p> +<p>No gayer houses, however, exist than those of the new +set. At their city or country houses, they entertain +continually, and they are the people one meets toward five +o’clock, on the grounds of the Polo Club, in the Bois, at +<i>fêtes</i> given by the Island Club of Puteaux, attending +the race meetings, or dining at American houses. As far as +amusement and fun go, one might seek much further and fare +worse.</p> +<p>It is very, very rare that foreigners get beyond this +circle. Occasionally there is a marriage between an +American girl and some Frenchman of high rank. In these +cases the girl is, as it were, swallowed up. Her family see +little of her, she rarely appears in general society, and, little +by little, she is lost to her old friends and relations. I +know of several cases of this kind where it is to be doubted if a +dozen Americans outside of the girls’ connections know that +such women exist. The fall in rents and land values has +made the French aristocracy poor; it is only by the greatest +economy (and it never entered into an American mind to conceive +of such economy as is practised among them) that they succeed in +holding on to their historical châteaux or beautiful city +residences; so that pride plays a large part in the isolation in +which they live.</p> +<p>The fact that no titles are recognized officially by the +French government (the most they can obtain being a +“courtesy” recognition) has placed these people in a +singularly false position. An American girl who has married +a Duke is a good deal astonished to find that she is legally only +plain “Madame So and So;” that when her husband does +his military service there is no trace of the high-sounding title +to be found in his official papers. Some years ago, a +colonel was rebuked because he allowed the Duc +d’Alençon to be addressed as +“Monseigneur” by the other officers of his +regiment. This ought to make ambitious papas reflect, when +they treat themselves to titled sons-in-law. They should at +least try and get an article recognized by the law.</p> +<p>Most of what is written here is perfectly well known to +resident Americans in Paris, and has been the cause of gradually +splitting that once harmonious settlement into two perfectly +distinct camps, between which no love is lost. The members +of one, clinging to their countrymen’s creed of having the +best or nothing, have been contented to live in France and know +but few French people, entertaining among themselves and marrying +their daughters to Americans. The members of the other, who +have “gone in” for French society, take what they can +get, and, on the whole, lead very jolly lives. It often +happens (perhaps it is only a coincidence) that ladies who have +not been very successful at home are partial to this circle, +where they easily find guests for their entertainments and the +recognition their souls long for.</p> +<p>What the future of the “Great Faubourg” will be, +it is hard to say. All hope of a possible +<i>restauration</i> appears to be lost. Will the proud +necks that refused to bend to the Orleans dynasty or the two +“empires” bow themselves to the republican +yoke? It would seem as if it must terminate in this way, +for everything in this world must finish. But the end is +not yet; one cannot help feeling sympathy for people who are +trying to live up to their traditions and be true to such +immaterial idols as “honor” and “family” +in this discouragingly material age, when everything goes down +before the Golden Calf. Nor does one wonder that men who +can trace their ancestors back to the Crusades should hesitate to +ally themselves with the last rich <i>parvenu</i> who has raised +himself from the gutter, or resent the ardor with which the +latest importation of American ambition tries to chum with them +and push its way into their life.</p> +<h2>No. 31—Men’s Manners</h2> +<p>Nothing makes one feel so old as to wake up suddenly, as it +were, and realize that the conditions of life have changed, and +that the standards you knew and accepted in your youth have been +raised or lowered. The young men you meet have somehow +become uncomfortably polite, offering you armchairs in the club, +and listening with a shade of deference to your stories. +They are of another generation; their ways are not your ways, nor +their ambitions those you had in younger days. One is +tempted to look a little closer, to analyze what the change is, +in what this subtle difference consists, which you feel between +your past and their present. You are surprised and a little +angry to discover that, among other things, young men have better +manners than were general among the youths of fifteen years +ago.</p> +<p>Anyone over forty can remember three epochs in men’s +manners. When I was a very young man, there were still +going about in society a number of gentlemen belonging to what +was reverently called the “old school,” who had +evidently taken Sir Charles Grandison as their model, read Lord +Chesterfield’s letters to his son with attention, and been +brought up to commence letters to their fathers, “Honored +Parent,” signing themselves “Your humble servant and +respectful son.” There are a few such old gentlemen +still to be found in the more conservative clubs, where certain +windows are tacitly abandoned to these elegant-mannered +fossils. They are quite harmless unless you happen to find +them in a reminiscent mood, when they are apt to be a little +tiresome; it takes their rusty mental machinery so long to get +working! Washington possesses a particularly fine +collection among the retired army and navy officers and +ex-officials. It is a fact well known that no one drawing a +pension ever dies.</p> +<p>About 1875, a new generation with new manners began to make +its appearance. A number of its members had been educated +at English universities, and came home burning to upset old ways +and teach their elders how to live. They broke away from +the old clubs and started smaller and more exclusive circles +among themselves, principally in the country. This was a +period of bad manners. True to their English model, they +considered it “good form” to be uncivil and to make +no effort towards the general entertainment when in +society. Not to speak more than a word or two during a +dinner party to either of one’s neighbors was the supreme +<i>chic</i>. As a revolt from the twice-told tales of their +elders they held it to be “bad form” to tell a story, +no matter how fresh and amusing it might be. An unfortunate +outsider who ventured to tell one in their club was crushed by +having his tale received in dead silence. When it was +finished one of the party would “ring the bell,” and +the circle order drinks at the expense of the man who had dared +to amuse them. How the professional story-teller must have +shuddered—he whose story never was ripe until it had been +told a couple of hundred times, and who would produce a certain +tale at a certain course as surely as clock-work.</p> +<p>That the story-telling type was a bore, I grant. To be +grabbed on entering your club and obliged to listen to +Smith’s last, or to have the conversation after dinner +monopolized by Jones and his eternal “Speaking of coffee, I +remember once,” etc. added an additional hardship to +existence. But the opposite pose, which became the fashion +among the reformers, was hardly less wearisome. To sit +among a group of perfectly mute men, with an occasional word +dropping into the silence like a stone in a well, was surely +little better.</p> +<p>A girl told me she had once sat through an entire cotillion +with a youth whose only remark during the evening had been (after +absorbed contemplation of the articles in question), “How +do you like my socks?”</p> +<p>On another occasion my neighbor at table said to me:</p> +<p>“I think the man on my right has gone to sleep. He +is sitting with his eyes closed!” She was +mistaken. He was practising his newly acquired +“repose of manner,” and living up to the standard of +his set.</p> +<p>The model young man of that period had another offensive +habit, his pose of never seeing you, which got on the nerves of +his elders to a considerable extent. If he came into a +drawing-room where you were sitting with a lady, he would shake +hands with her and begin a conversation, ignoring your existence, +although you may have been his guest at dinner the night before, +or he yours. This was also a tenet of his creed borrowed +from trans-Atlantic cousins, who, by the bye, during the time I +speak of, found America, and especially our Eastern states, a +happy hunting-ground,—all the clubs, country houses, and +society generally opening their doors to the “sesame” +of English nationality. It took our innocent youths a good +ten years to discover that there was no reciprocity in the +arrangement; it was only in the next epoch (the list of the three +referred to) that our men recovered their self-respect, and +assumed towards foreigners in general the attitude of polite +indifference which is their manner to us when abroad. +Nothing could have been more provincial and narrow than the ideas +of our “smart” men at that time. They +congregated in little cliques, huddling together in public, and +cracking personal old jokes; but were speechless with <i>mauvaise +honte</i> if thrown among foreigners or into other circles of +society. All this is not to be wondered at considering the +amount of their general education and reading. One charming +little custom then greatly in vogue among our <i>jeunesse +dorée</i> was to remain at a ball, after the other guests +had retired, tipsy, and then break anything that came to +hand. It was so amusing to throw china, glass, or valuable +plants, out of the windows, to strip to the waist and box or bait +the tired waiters.</p> +<p>I look at the boys growing up around me with sincere +admiration, they are so superior to their predecessors in +breeding, in civility, in deference to older people, and in a +thousand other little ways that mark high-bred men. The +stray Englishman, of no particular standing at home no longer +finds our men eager to entertain him, to put their best +“hunter” at his disposition, to board, lodge, and +feed him indefinitely, or make him honorary member of all their +clubs. It is a constant source of pleasure to me to watch +this younger generation, so plainly do I see in them the +influence of their mothers—women I knew as girls, and who +were so far ahead of their brothers and husbands in refinement +and culture. To have seen these girls marry and bring up +their sons so well has been a satisfaction and a compensation for +many disillusions. Woman’s influence will always +remain the strongest lever that can be brought to bear in raising +the tone of a family; it is impossible not to see about these +young men a reflection of what we found so charming in their +mothers. One despairs at times of humanity, seeing +vulgarity and snobbishness riding triumphantly upward; but where +the tone of the younger generation is as high as I have lately +found it, there is still much hope for the future.</p> +<h2>No. 32—An Ideal Hostess</h2> +<p>The saying that “One-half of the world ignores how the +other half lives” received for me an additional +confirmation this last week, when I had the good fortune to meet +again an old friend, now for some years retired from the stage, +where she had by her charm and beauty, as well as by her singing, +held all the Parisian world at her pretty feet.</p> +<p>Our meeting was followed on her part by an invitation to take +luncheon with her the next day, “to meet a few friends, and +talk over old times.” So half-past twelve (the +invariable hour for the “second breakfast,” in +France) the following day found me entering a shady drawing-room, +where a few people were sitting in the cool half-light that +strayed across from a canvas-covered balcony furnished with +plants and low chairs. Beyond one caught a glimpse of +perhaps the gayest picture that the bright city of Paris +offers,—the sweep of the Boulevard as it turns to the Rue +Royale, the flower market, gay with a thousand colors in the +summer sunshine, while above all the color and movement, rose, +cool and gray, the splendid colonnade of the Madeleine. The +rattle of carriages, the roll of the heavy omnibuses and the +shrill cries from the street below floated up, softened into a +harmonious murmur that in no way interfered with our +conversation, and is sweeter than the finest music to those who +love their Paris.</p> +<p>Five or six rooms <i>en suite</i> opening on the street, and +as many more on a large court, formed the apartment, where +everything betrayed the <i>artiste</i> and the singer. The +walls, hung with silk or tapestry, held a collection of original +drawings and paintings, a fortune in themselves; the dozen +portraits of our hostess in favorite rôles were by men +great in the art world; a couple of pianos covered with well-worn +music and numberless photographs signed with names that would +have made an autograph-fiend’s mouth water.</p> +<p>After a gracious, cooing welcome, more whispered than spoken, +I was presented to the guests I did not know. Before this +ceremony was well over, two maids in black, with white caps, +opened a door into the dining-room and announced luncheon. +As this is written on the theme that “people know too +little how their neighbors live,” I give the +<i>menu</i>. It may amuse my readers and serve, perhaps, as +a little object lesson to those at home who imagine that quantity +and not quality is of importance.</p> +<p>Our gracious hostess had earned a fortune in her profession +(and I am told that two <i>chefs</i> preside over her simple +meals); so it was not a spirit of economy which dictated this +simplicity. At first, <i>hors d’œuvres</i> were +served,—all sorts of tempting little things,—very +thin slices of ham, spiced sausages, olives and caviar, and +eaten—not merely passed and refused. Then came the +one hot dish of the meal. “One!” I think +I hear my reader exclaim. Yes, my friend, but that one was +a marvel in its way. Chicken <i>a l’espagnole</i>, +boiled, and buried in rice and tomatoes cooked whole—a dish +to be dreamed of and remembered in one’s prayers and +thanksgivings! After at least two helpings each to this +<i>chef-d’œuvre</i>, cold larded fillet and a meat +<i>pâté</i> were served with the salad. Then a +bit of cheese, a beaten cream of chocolate, fruit, and +bon-bons. For a drink we had the white wine from which +champagne is made (by a chemical process and the addition of many +injurious ingredients); in other words, a pure <i>brut</i> +champagne with just a suggestion of sparkle at the bottom of your +glass. All the party then migrated together into the +smoking-room for cigarettes, coffee, and a tiny glass of +<i>liqueur</i>.</p> +<p>These details have been given at length, not only because the +meal seemed to me, while I was eating it, to be worthy of whole +columns of print, but because one of the besetting sins of our +dear land is to serve a profusion of food no one wants and which +the hostess would never have dreamed of ordering had she been +alone.</p> +<p>Nothing is more wearisome than to sit at table and see course +after course, good, bad, and indifferent, served, after you have +eaten what you want. And nothing is more vulgar than to +serve them; for either a guest refuses a great deal of the food +and appears uncivil, or he must eat, and regret it +afterwards. If we ask people to a meal, it should be to +such as we eat, as a general thing, ourselves, and such as they +would have at home. Otherwise it becomes ostentation and +vulgarity. Why should one be expelled to eat more than +usual because a friend has been nice enough to ask one to take +one’s dinner with him, instead of eating it alone? It +is the being among friends that tempts, not the food; the fact at +skilful waiters have been able to serve a dozen varieties of +fish, flesh, and fowl during the time you were at table has added +little to any one’s pleasure. On the contrary! +Half the time one eats from pure absence of mind, a number of +most injurious mixtures and so prepares an awful to-morrow and +the foundation of many complicated diseases.</p> +<p>I see Smith and Jones daily at the club, where we dine +cheerfully together on soup, a cut of the joint, a dessert, and +drink a pint of claret. But if either Mrs. Smith or Mrs. +Jones asks me to dinner, we have eight courses and half as many +wines, and Smith will say quite gravely to me, “Try this +’75 ‘Perrier Jouët’,” as if he were +in the habit of drinking it daily. It makes me smile, for +he would as soon think of ordering a bottle of that wine at the +club as he would think of ordering a flask of nectar.</p> +<p>But to return to our “mutton.” As we had +none of us eaten too much (and so become digesting machines), we +were cheerful and sprightly. A little music followed and an +author repeated some of his poetry. I noticed that during +the hour before we broke up our hostess contrived to have a +little talk with each of her guests, which she made quite +personal, appearing for the moment as though the rest of the +world did not exist for her, than which there is no more subtle +flattery, and which is the act of a well-bred and appreciative +woman. Guests cannot be treated <i>en masse</i> any more +than food; to ask a man to your house is not enough. He +should be made to feel, if you wish him to go away with a +pleasant remembrance of the entertainment, that his presence has +in some way added to it and been a personal pleasure to his +host.</p> +<p>A good soul that all New York knew a few years ago, whose +entertainments were as though the street had been turned into a +<i>salon</i> for the moment, used to go about among her guests +saying, “There have been one hundred and seventy-five +people here this Thursday, ten more than last week,” with +such a satisfied smile, that you felt that she had little left to +wish for, and found yourself wondering just which number you +represented in her mind. When you entered she must have +murmured a numeral to herself as she shook your hand.</p> +<p>There is more than one house in New York where I have grave +doubts if the host and hostess are quite sure of my name when I +dine there; after an abstracted welcome, they rarely put +themselves out to entertain their guests. Black coats and +evening dresses alternate in pleasing perspective down the long +line of their table. Their gold plate is out, and the +<i>chef</i> has been allowed to work his own sweet will, so they +give themselves no further trouble.</p> +<p>Why does not some one suggest to these amphitrions to send +fifteen dollars in prettily monogrammed envelopes to each of +their friends, requesting them to expend it on a dinner. +The compliment would be quite as personal, and then the guests +might make up little parties to suit themselves, which would be +much more satisfactory than going “in” with some one +chosen at hazard from their host’s visiting list, and less +fatiguing to that gentleman and his family.</p> +<h2>No. 33—The Introducer</h2> +<p>We all suffer more or less from the perennial +“freshness” of certain acquaintances—tiresome +people whom a misguided Providence has endowed with over-flowing +vitality and an irrepressible love of their fellowmen, and who, +not content with looking on life as a continual +“spree,” insist on making others happy in spite of +themselves. Their name is legion and their presence +ubiquitous, but they rarely annoy as much as when disguised under +the mask of the “Introducer.” In his clutches +one is helpless. It is impossible to escape from such +philanthropic tyranny. He, in his freshness, imagines that +to present human beings to each other is his mission in this +world and moves through life making these platonic unions, +oblivious, as are other match-makers, of the misery he +creates.</p> +<p>If you are out for a quiet stroll, one of these genial +gentlemen is sure to come bounding up, and without notice or +warning present you to his “friend,”—the +greater part of the time a man he has met only an hour before, +but whom he endows out of the warehouse of his generous +imagination with several talents and all the virtues. In +order to make the situation just one shade more uncomfortable, +this kindly bore proceeds to sing a hymn of praise concerning +both of you to your faces, adding, in order that you may both +feel quite friendly and pleasant:</p> +<p>“I know you two will fancy each other, you are so +alike,”—a phrase neatly calculated to nip any +conversation in the bud. You detest the unoffending +stranger on the spot and would like to kill the bore. Not +to appear an absolute brute you struggle through some commonplace +phrases, discovering the while that your new acquaintance is no +more anxious to know you, than you are to meet him; that he has +not the slightest idea who you are, neither does he desire to +find out. He classes you with the bore, and his one idea, +like your own, is to escape. So that the only result of the +Introducer’s good-natured interference has been to make two +fellow-creatures miserable.</p> +<p>A friend was telling me the other day of the martyrdom he had +suffered from this class. He spoke with much feeling, as he +is the soul of amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and +afflicted with a hopelessly bad memory for faces. For the +last few years, he has been in the habit of spending one or two +of the winter months in Washington, where his friends put him up +at one club or another. Each winter on his first appearance +at one of these clubs, some kindly disposed old fogy is sure to +present him to a circle of the members, and he finds himself +indiscriminately shaking hands with Judges and Colonels. As +little or no conversation follows these introductions to fix the +individuality of the members in his mind, he unconsciously cuts +two-thirds of his newly acquired circle the next afternoon, and +the following winter, after a ten-months’ absence, he +innocently ignores the other third. So hopelessly has he +offended in this way, that last season, on being presented to a +club member, the latter peevishly blurted out:</p> +<p>“This is the fourth time I have been introduced to Mr. +Blank, but he never remembers me,” and glared coldly at +him, laying it all down to my friend’s snobbishness and to +the airs of a New Yorker when away from home. If instead of +being sacrificed to the introducer’s mistaken zeal my poor +friend had been left quietly to himself, he would in good time +have met the people congenial to him and avoided giving offence +to a number of kindly gentlemen.</p> +<p>This introducing mania takes an even more aggressive form in +the hostess, who imagines that she is lacking in hospitality if +any two people in her drawing-room are not made known to each +other. No matter how interested you may be in a chat with a +friend, you will see her bearing down upon you, bringing in tow +the one human being you have carefully avoided for years. +Escape seems impossible, but as a forlorn hope you fling yourself +into conversation with your nearest neighbor, trying by your +absorbed manner to ward off the calamity. In vain! +With a tap on your elbow your smiling hostess introduces you and, +having spoiled your afternoon, flits off in search of other +prey.</p> +<p>The question of introductions is one on which it is impossible +to lay down any fixed rules. There must constantly occur +situations where one’s acts must depend upon a kindly +consideration for other people’s feelings, which after all, +is only another name for tact. Nothing so plainly shows the +breeding of a man or woman as skill in solving problems of this +kind without giving offence.</p> +<p>Foreigners, with their greater knowledge of the world, rarely +fall into the error of indiscriminate introducing, appreciating +what a presentation means and what obligations it entails. +The English fall into exactly the contrary error from ours, and +carry it to absurd lengths. Starting with the assumption +that everybody knows everybody, and being aware of the general +dread of meeting “detrimentals,” they avoid the +difficulty by making no introductions. This may work well +among themselves, but it is trying to a stranger whom they have +been good enough to ask to their tables, to sit out the meal +between two people who ignore his presence and converse across +him; for an Englishman will expire sooner than speak to a person +to whom he has not been introduced.</p> +<p>The French, with the marvellous tact that has for centuries +made them the law-givers on all subjects of etiquette and +breeding, have another way of avoiding useless +introductions. They assume that two people meeting in a +drawing-room belong to the same world and so chat pleasantly with +those around them. On leaving the <i>salon</i> the +acquaintance is supposed to end, and a gentleman who should at +another time or place bow or speak to the lady who had offered +him a cup of tea and talked pleasantly to him over it at a +friend’s reception, would commit a gross breach of +etiquette.</p> +<p>I was once present at a large dinner given in Cologne to the +American Geographical Society. No sooner was I seated than +my two neighbors turned towards me mentioning their names and +waiting for me to do the same. After that the conversation +flowed on as among friends. This custom struck me as +exceedingly well-bred and calculated to make a foreigner feel at +his ease.</p> +<p>Among other curious types, there are people so constituted +that they are unhappy if a single person can be found in the room +to whom they have not been introduced. It does not matter +who the stranger may be or what chance there is of finding him +congenial. They must be presented; nothing else will +content them. If you are chatting with a friend you feel a +pull at your sleeve, and in an audible aside, they ask for an +introduction. The aspirant will then bring up and present +the members of his family who happen to be near. After that +he seems to be at ease, and having absolutely nothing to say will +soon drift off. Our public men suffer terribly from +promiscuous introductions; it is a part of a political career; a +good memory for names and faces and a cordial manner under fire +have often gone a long way in floating a statesman on to +success.</p> +<p>Demand, we are told, creates supply. During a short stay +in a Florida hotel last winter, I noticed a curious little man +who looked like a cross between a waiter and a musician. As +he spoke to me several times and seemed very officious, I asked +who he was. The answer was so grotesque that I could not +believe my ears. I was told that he held the position of +official “introducer,” or master of ceremonies, and +that the guests under his guidance became known to each other, +danced, rode, and married to their own and doubtless to his +satisfaction. The further west one goes the more pronounced +this mania becomes. Everybody is introduced to everybody on +all imaginable occasions. If a man asks you to take a +drink, he presents you to the bar-tender. If he takes you +for a drive, the cab-driver is introduced. +“Boots” makes you acquainted with the chambermaid, +and the hotel proprietor unites you in the bonds of friendship +with the clerk at the desk. Intercourse with one’s +fellows becomes one long debauch of introduction. In this +country where every liberty is respected, it is a curious fact +that we should be denied the most important of all rights, that +of choosing our acquaintances.</p> +<h2>No. 34—A Question and an Answer</h2> +<blockquote><p>DEAR IDLER:</p> +<p>I have been reading your articles in <i>The Evening +Post</i>. They are really most amusing! You do know +such a lot about people and things, that I am tempted to write +and ask you a question on a subject that is puzzling me. +What is it that is necessary to succeed—socially? +There! It is out! Please do not laugh at me. +Such funny people get on and such clever, agreeable ones fail, +that I am all at sea. Now do be nice and answer me, and you +will have a very grateful</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Admirer</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The above note, in a rather juvenile feminine hand, and +breathing a faint perfume of <i>violette de Parme</i>, was part +of the morning’s mail that I found lying on my desk a few +days ago, in delightful contrast to the bills and advertisements +which formed the bulk of my correspondence. It would +suppose a stoicism greater than I possess, not to have felt a +thrill of satisfaction in its perusal. There was, then, +some one who read with pleasure what I wrote, and who had been +moved to consult me on a question (evidently to her) of +importance. I instantly decided to do my best for the +edification of my fair correspondent (for no doubt entered my +head that she was both young and fair), the more readily because +that very question had frequently presented itself to my own mind +on observing the very capricious choice of Dame +“Fashion” in the distribution of her favors.</p> +<p>That there are people who succeed brilliantly and move from +success to success, amid an applauding crowd of friends and +admirers, while others, apparently their superiors in every way, +are distanced in the race, is an undeniable fact. You have +but to glance around the circle of your acquaintances and +relations to be convinced of this anomaly. To a reflecting +mind the question immediately presents itself, Why is this? +General society is certainly cultivated enough to appreciate +intelligence and superior endowments. How then does it +happen that the social favorites are so often lacking in the +qualities which at a first glance would seem indispensable to +success?</p> +<p>Before going any further let us stop a moment, and look at the +subject from another side, for it is more serious than appears to +be on the surface. To be loved by those around us, to stand +well in the world, is certainly the most legitimate as well as +the most common of ambitions, as well as the incentive to most of +the industry and perseverance in life. Aside from science, +which is sometimes followed for itself alone, and virtue, which +we are told looks for no other reward, the hope which inspires a +great deal of the persistent efforts we see, is generally that of +raising one’s self and those one loves by one’s +efforts into a sphere higher than where cruel fate had placed +them; that they, too, may take their place in the sunshine and +enjoy the good things of life. This ambition is often +purely disinterested; a life of hardest toil is cheerfully borne, +with the hope (for sole consolation) that dear ones will profit +later by all the work, and live in a circle the patient toiler +never dreams of entering. Surely he is a stern moralist who +would deny this satisfaction to the breadwinner of a family.</p> +<p>There are doubtless many higher motives in life, more elevated +goals toward which struggling humanity should strive. If +you examine the average mind, however, you will be pretty sure to +find that success is the touchstone by which we judge our fellows +and what, in our hearts, we admire the most. That is not to +be wondered at, either, for we have done all we can to implant it +there. From a child’s first opening thought, it is +impressed upon him that the great object of existence is to +succeed. Did a parent ever tell a child to try and stand +last in his class? And yet humility is a virtue we admire +in the abstract. Are any of us willing to step aside and +see our inferiors pass us in the race? That is too much to +ask of poor humanity. Were other and higher standards to be +accepted, the structure of civilization as it exists to-day would +crumble away and the great machine run down.</p> +<p>In returning to my correspondent and her perfectly legitimate +desire to know the road to success, we must realize that to a +large part of the world social success is the only kind they +understand. The great inventors and benefactors of mankind +live too far away on a plane by themselves to be the object of +jealousy to any but a very small circle; on the other hand, in +these days of equality, especially in this country where caste +has never existed, the social world seems to hold out alluring +and tangible gifts to him who can enter its enchanted +portals. Even politics, to judge by the actions of some of +our legislators, of late, would seem to be only a stepping-stone +to its door!</p> +<p>“But my question,” I hear my fair interlocutor +saying. “You are not answering it!”</p> +<p>All in good time, my dear. I am just about to do +so. Did you ever hear of Darwin and his theory of +“selection?” It would be a slight to your +intelligence not to take it for granted that you had. Well, +my observations in the world lead me to believe that we follow +there unconsciously, the same rules that guide the wild beasts in +the forest. Certain individuals are endowed by nature with +temperaments which make them take naturally to a social life and +shine there. In it they find their natural element. +They develop freely just where others shrivel up and +disappear. There is continually going on unseen a +“natural selection,” the discarding of unfit +material, the assimilation of new and congenial elements from +outside, with the logical result of a survival of the +fittest. Aside from this, you will find in “the +world,” as anywhere else, that the person who succeeds is +generally he who has been willing to give the most of his +strength and mind to that one object, and has not allowed the +flowers on the hillside to distract him from his path, +remembering also that genius is often but the “capacity for +taking infinite pains.”</p> +<p>There are people so constituted that they cheerfully give the +efforts of a lifetime to the attainment of a brilliant social +position. No fatigue is too great, and no snubs too bitter +to be willingly undergone in pursuit of the cherished +object. You will never find such an individual, for +instance, wandering in the flowery byways that lead to art or +letters, for that would waste his time. If his family are +too hard to raise, he will abandon the attempt and rise without +them, for he cannot help himself. He is but an atom working +as blindly upward as the plant that pushes its mysterious way +towards the sun. Brains are not necessary. Good looks +are but a trump the more in the “hand.” Manners +may help, but are not essential. The object can be and is +attained daily without all three. Wealth is but the oil +that makes the machinery run more smoothly. The +all-important factor is the desire to succeed, so strong that it +makes any price seem cheap, and that can pay itself by a step +gained, for mortification and weariness and heart-burnings.</p> +<p>There, my dear, is the secret of success! I stop because +I feel myself becoming bitter, and that is a frame of mind to be +carefully avoided, because it interferes with the digestion and +upsets one’s gentle calm! I have tried to answer your +question. The answer resolves itself into these two things; +that it is necessary to be born with qualities which you may not +possess, and calls for sacrifices you would doubtless be +unwilling to make. It remains with you to decide if the +little game is worth the candle. The delightful common +sense I feel quite sure you possess reassures me as to your +answer.</p> +<p>Take gayly such good things as may float your way, and profit +by them while they last. Wander off into all the +cross-roads that tempt you. Stop often to lend a helping +hand to a less fortunate traveller. Rest in the heat of the +day, as your spirit prompts you. Sit down before the sunset +and revel in its beauty and you will find your voyage through +life much more satisfactory to look back to and full of far +sweeter memories than if by sacrificing any of these pleasures +you had attained the greatest of “positions.”</p> +<h2>No. 35—Living on your Friends</h2> +<p>Thackeray devoted a chapter in “Vanity Fair” to +the problem “How to Live Well on Nothing a +Year.” It was neither a very new nor a very ingenious +expedient that “Becky” resorted to when she +discounted her husband’s position and connection to fleece +the tradespeople and cheat an old family servant out of a +year’s rent. The author might more justly have used +his clever phrase in describing “Major +Pendennis’s” agreeable existence. We have made +great progress in this, as in almost every other mode of living, +in the latter half of the Victorian era; intelligent individuals +of either sex, who know the ropes, can now as easily lead the +existence of a multi-millionaire (with as much satisfaction to +themselves and their friends) as though the bank account, with +all its attendant worries, stood in their own names. This +subject is so vast, its ramifications so far-reaching and +complicated, that one hesitates before launching into an analysis +of it. It will be better simply to give a few interesting +examples, and a general rule or two, for the enlightenment and +guidance of ingenious souls.</p> +<p>Human nature changes little; all that our educational and +social training has accomplished is a smoothing of the +surface. One of the most striking proofs of this is, that +here in our primitive country, as soon as accumulation of capital +allowed certain families to live in great luxury, they returned +to the ways of older aristocracies, and, with other wants, felt +the necessity of a court about them, ladies and gentlemen in +waiting, pages and jesters. Nature abhors a vacuum, so a +class of people immediately felt an irresistible impulse to rush +in and fill the void. Our aristocrats were not even obliged +to send abroad to fill these vacancies, as they were for their +footmen and butlers; the native article was quite ready and +willing and, considering the little practice it could have had, +proved wonderfully adapted to the work.</p> +<p>When the mania for building immense country houses and yachts +(the owning of opera boxes goes a little further back) first +attacked this country, the builders imagined that, once +completed, it would be the easiest, as well as the most +delightful task to fill them with the pick of their friends, that +they could get all the talented and agreeable people they wanted +by simply making a sign. To their astonishment, they +discovered that what appeared so simple was a difficult, as well +as a thankless labor. I remember asking a lady who had +owned a “proscenium” at the old Academy, why she had +decided not to take a box in the (then) new opera-house.</p> +<p>“Because, having passed thirty years of my life inviting +people to sit in my box, I intend now to rest.” It is +very much the same thing with yachts. A couple who had +determined to go around the world, in their lately finished boat, +were dumbfounded to find their invitations were not eagerly +accepted. After exhausting the small list of people they +really wanted, they began with others indifferent to them, and +even then filled out their number with difficulty. A +hostess who counts on a series of house parties through the +autumn months, must begin early in the summer if she is to have +the guests she desires.</p> +<p>It is just here that the “professional,” if I may +be allowed to use such an expression, comes to the front. +He is always available. It is indifferent to him if he +starts on a tour around the world or for a winter spree to +Montreal. He is always amusing, good-humored, and can be +counted on at the last moment to fill any vacant place, without +being the least offended at the tardy invitation, for he belongs +to the class who have discovered “how to live well on +nothing a year.” Luxury is as the breath of his +nostrils, but his means allow of little beyond necessities. +The temptation must be great when everything that he appreciates +most (and cannot afford) is urged upon him. We should not +pose as too stern moralists, and throw stones at him; for there +may enter more “best French plate” into the +composition of our own houses than we imagine.</p> +<p>It is here our epoch shows its improvement over earlier and +cruder days. At present no toad-eating is connected with +the acceptance of hospitality, or, if occasionally a small +“batrachian” is offered, it is so well disguised by +an accomplished <i>chef</i>, and served on such exquisite old +Dresden, that it slips down with very little effort. Even +this rarely occurs, unless the guest has allowed himself to +become the inmate of a residence or yacht. Then he takes +his chance with other members of the household, and if the host +or hostess happens to have a bad temper as a set-off to their +good table, it is apt to fare ill with our friend.</p> +<p>So far, I have spoken of this class in the masculine, which is +an error, as the art is successfully practised by the weaker sex, +with this shade of difference. As an unmarried woman is in +less general demand, she is apt to attach herself to one dear +friend, always sure to be a lady in possession of fine country +and city houses and other appurtenances of wealth, often of +inferior social standing; so that there is give and take, the +guest rendering real service to an ambitious hostess. The +feminine aspirant need not be handsome. On the contrary, an +agreeable plainness is much more acceptable, serving as a +foil. But she must be excellent in all games, from golf to +piquet, and willing to play as often and as long as +required. She must also cheerfully go in to dinner with the +blue ribbon bore of the evening, only asked on account of his +pretty wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty is so often +flanked by the Beast?), and sit between him and the “second +prize” bore. These two worthies would have been the +portion of the hostess fifteen years ago; she would have +considered it her duty to absorb them and prevent her other +guests suffering. <i>Mais nous avons changé tout +cela</i>. The lady of the house now thinks first of amusing +herself, and arranges to sit between two favorites.</p> +<p>Society has become much simpler, and especially less +expensive, for unmarried men than it used to be. Even if a +hostess asks a favor in return for weeks of hospitality, the +sacrifice she requires of a man is rarely greater than a +cotillion with an unattractive débutante whom she is +trying to launch; or the sitting through a particularly dull +opera in order to see her to the carriage, her lord and master +having slipped off early to his club and a quiet game of +pool. Many people who read these lines are old enough to +remember that prehistoric period when unmarried girls went to the +theatre and parties, alone with the men they knew. This +custom still prevails in our irrepressible West. It was an +arrangement by which all the expenses fell on the +man—theatre tickets, carriages if it rained, and often a +bit of supper after. If a youth asked a girl to dance the +cotillion, he was expected to send a bouquet, sure to cost +between twenty and twenty-five dollars. What a blessed +change for the impecunious swell when all this went out of +fashion! New York is his paradise now; in other parts of +the world something is still expected of him. In France it +takes the form of a handsome bag of bon-bons on New Year’s +Day, if he has accepted hospitality during the past year. +While here he need do absolutely nothing (unless he wishes to), +the occasional leaving of a card having been suppressed of late +by our <i>jeunesse dorée</i>, five minutes of their +society in an opera box being estimated (by them) as ample return +for a dinner or a week in a country house.</p> +<p>The truth of it is, there are so few men who “go +out” (it being practically impossible for any one working +at a serious profession to sit up night after night, even if he +desired), and at the same time so many women insist on +entertaining to amuse themselves or better their position, that +the men who go about get spoiled and almost come to consider the +obligation conferred, when they dine out. There is no more +amusing sight than poor paterfamilias sitting in the club between +six and seven <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> pretending to read +the evening paper, but really with his eve on the door; he has +been sent down by his wife to “get a man,” as she is +one short for her dinner this evening. He must be one who +will fit in well with the other guests; hence papa’s +anxious look, and the reason the editorial gets so little of his +attention! Watch him as young “professional” +lounges in. There is just his man—if he only happens +to be disengaged! You will see “Pater” cross +the room and shake hands, then, after a few minutes’ +whispered conversation, he will walk down to his coupé +with such a relieved look on his face. Young +“professional,” who is in faultless evening dress, +will ring for a cocktail and take up the discarded evening paper +to pass the time till eight twenty-five.</p> +<p>Eight twenty-five, advisedly, for he will be the last to +arrive, knowing, clever dog, how much <i>éclat</i> it +gives one to have a room full of people asking each other, +“Whom are we waiting for?” when the door opens, and +he is announced. He will stay a moment after the other +guests have gone and receive the most cordial pressures of the +hand from a grateful hostess (if not spoken words of thanks) in +return for eating an exquisitely cooked dinner, seated between +two agreeable women, drinking irreproachable wine, smoking a +cigar, and washing the whole down with a glass of 1830 brandy, or +some priceless historic madeira.</p> +<p>There is probably a moral to be extracted from all this. +But frankly my ethics are so mixed that I fail to see where the +blame lies, and which is the less worthy individual, the +ostentatious axe-grinding host or the interested guest. One +thing, however, I see clearly, viz., that life is very agreeable +to him who starts in with few prejudices, good manners, a large +amount of well-concealed “cheek” and the happy +faculty of taking things as they come.</p> +<h2>No. 36—American Society in Italy</h2> +<p>The phrase at the head of this chapter and other sentences, +such as “American Society in Paris,” or London, are +constantly on the lips of people who should know better. In +reality these societies do not exist. Does my reader pause, +wondering if he can believe his eyes? He has doubtless +heard all his life of these delightful circles, and believes in +them. He may even have dined, <i>en passant</i>, at the +“palace” of some resident compatriot in Rome or +Florence, under the impression that he was within its mystic +limits. Illusion! An effect of mirage, making that +which appears quite tangible and solid when viewed from a +distance dissolve into thin air as one approaches; like the +mirage, cheating the weary traveller with a vision of what he +most longs for.</p> +<p>Forty, even fifty years ago, there lived in Rome a group of +very agreeable people; Story and the two Greenoughs and Crawford, +the sculptor (father of the brilliant novelist of to-day); +Charlotte Cushman (who divided her time between Rome and +Newport), and her friend Miss Stebbins, the sculptress, to whose +hands we owe the bronze fountain on the Mall in our Park; Rogers, +then working at the bronze doors of our capitol, and many other +cultivated and agreeable people. Hawthorne passed a couple +of winters among them, and the tone of that society is reflected +in his “Marble Faun.” He took Story as a model +for his “Kenyon,” and was the first to note the +exotic grace of an American girl in that strange setting. +They formed as transcendental and unworldly a group as ever +gathered about a “tea” table. Great things were +expected of them and their influence, but they disappointed the +world, and, with the exception of Hawthorne, are being fast +forgotten.</p> +<p>Nothing could be simpler than life in the papal capital in +those pleasant days. Money was rare, but living as +delightfully inexpensive. It was about that time, if I do +not mistake, that a list was published in New York of the +citizens worth one hundred thousand dollars; and it was not a +long one! The Roman colony took “tea” +informally with each other, and “received” on stated +evenings in their studios (when mulled claret and cakes were the +only refreshment offered; very bad they were, too), and migrated +in the summer to the mountains near Rome or to Sorrento. In +the winter months their circle was enlarged by a contingent from +home. Among wealthy New Yorkers, it was the fashion in the +early fifties to pass a winter in Rome, when, together with his +other dissipations, paterfamilias would sit to one of the +American sculptors for his bust, which accounts for the horrors +one now runs across in dark corners of country +houses,—ghostly heads in “chin whiskers” and +Roman draperies.</p> +<p>The son of one of these pioneers, more rich than cultivated, +noticed the other day, while visiting a friend of mine, an +exquisite eighteenth-century bust of Madame de Pompadour, the +pride of his hostess’s drawing-room. +“Ah!” said Midas, “are busts the fashion +again? I have one of my father, done in Rome in 1850. +I will bring it down and put it in my parlor.”</p> +<p>The travellers consulted the residents in their purchases of +copies of the old masters, for there were fashions in these +luxuries as in everything else. There was a run at that +time on the “Madonna in the Chair;” and +“Beatrice Cenci” was long prime favorite. +Thousands of the latter leering and winking over her everlasting +shoulder, were solemnly sent home each year. No one ever +dreamed of buying an original painting! The tourists also +developed a taste for large marble statues, “Nydia, the +Blind Girl of Pompeii” (people read Bulwer, Byron and the +Bible then) being in such demand that I knew one block in lower +Fifth Avenue that possessed seven blind Nydias, all life-size, in +white marble,—a form of decoration about as well adapted to +those scanty front parlors as a steam engine or a carriage and +pair would have been. I fear Bulwer’s heroine is at a +discount now, and often wonder as I see those old residences +turning into shops, what has become of the seven white elephants +and all their brothers and sisters that our innocent parents +brought so proudly back from Italy! I have succeeded in +locating two statues evidently imported at that time. They +grace the back steps of a rather shabby villa in the +country,—Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary, +funereal memorials of the follies of our fathers.</p> +<p>The simple days we have been speaking of did not, however, +outlast the circle that inaugurated them. About 1867 a few +rich New Yorkers began “trying to know the Italians” +and go about with them. One family, “up to +snuff” in more senses than one, married their daughter to +the scion of a princely house, and immediately a large number of +her compatriots were bitten with the madness of going into +Italian society.</p> +<p>In 1870, Rome became the capital of united Italy. The +court removed there. The “improvements” +began. Whole quarters were remodelled, and the dear old +Rome of other days, the Rome of Hawthorne and Madame de +Staël, was swept away. With this new state of things +came a number of Americo-Italian marriages more or less +successful; and anything like an American society, properly +so-called, disappeared. To-day families of our compatriots +passing the winter months in Rome are either tourists who live in +hotels, and see sights, or go (as far as they can) into Italian +society.</p> +<p>The Queen of Italy, who speaks excellent English, developed a +<i>penchant</i> for Americans, and has attached several who +married Italians to her person in different court capacities; +indeed, the old “Black” society, who have remained +true to the Pope, when they wish to ridicule the new +“White” or royal circle, call it the “American +court!” The feeling is bitter still between the +“Blacks” and “Whites,” and an American +girl who marries into one of these circles must make up her mind +to see nothing of friends or relatives in the opposition +ranks. It is said that an amalgamation is being brought +about, but it is slow work; a generation will have to die out +before much real mingling of the two courts will take +place. As both these circles are poor, very little +entertainment goes on. One sees a little life in the +diplomatic world, and the King and Queen give a ball or two +during the winter, but since the repeated defeats of the Italian +arms in Africa, and the heavy financial difficulties (things +these sovereigns take very seriously to heart), there has not +been much “go” in the court entertainments.</p> +<p>The young set hope great things of the new Princess of Naples, +the bride of the heir-apparent, a lady who is credited with being +full of fun and life; it is fondly imagined that she will set the +ball rolling again. By the bye, her first lady-in-waiting, +the young Duchess del Monte of Naples, was an American girl, and +a very pretty one, too. She enjoyed for some time the +enviable distinction of being the youngest and handsomest duchess +in Europe, until Miss Vanderbilt married Marlborough and took the +record from her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at +their Neapolitan capital, and will not do much to help things in +Rome. Besides which he is very delicate and passes for not +being any too fond of the world.</p> +<p>What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly +“land poor,” and even the richer ones burned their +fingers in the craze for speculation that turned all Rome upside +down in the years following 1870 and Italian unity, when they +naïvely imagined their new capital was to become again after +seventeen centuries the metropolis of the world. Whole +quarters of new houses were run up for a population that failed +to appear; these houses now stand empty and are fast going to +ruin. So that little in the way of entertaining is to be +expected from the bankrupts. They are a genial race, these +Italian nobles, and welcome rich strangers and marry them with +much enthusiasm—just a shade too much, perhaps—the +girl counting for so little and her <i>dot</i> for so much in the +matrimonial scale. It is only necessary to keep open house +to have the pick of the younger ones as your guests. They +will come to entertainments at American houses and bring all +their relations, and dance, and dine, and flirt with great good +humor and persistency; but if there is not a good solid fortune +in the background, in the best of securities, the prettiest +American smiles never tempt them beyond flirtation; the season +over, they disappear up into their mountain villas to wait for a +new importation from the States.</p> +<p>In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, there are, of +course, still to be found Americans in some numbers (where on the +Continent will you not find them?), living quietly for study or +economy. But they are not numerous or united enough to form +a society; and are apt to be involved in bitter strife among +themselves.</p> +<p>Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel among themselves?</p> +<p>Some years ago I was passing the summer months on the Rhine at +a tiny German watering-place, principally frequented by English, +who were all living together in great peace and harmony, until +one fatal day, when an Earl appeared. He was a poor Irish +Earl, very simple and unoffending, but he brought war into that +town, heart-burnings, envy, and backbiting. The English +colony at once divided itself into two camps, those who knew the +Earl and those who did not. And peace fled from our little +society. You will find in every foreign capital among the +resident Americans, just such a state of affairs as convulsed +that German spa. The native “swells” have come +to be the apple of discord that divides our good people among +themselves. Those who have been successful in knowing the +foreigners avoid their compatriots and live with their new +friends, while the other group who, from laziness, +disinclination, or principle (?) have remained true to their +American circle, cannot resist calling the others snobs, and +laughing (a bit enviously, perhaps) at their upward +struggles.</p> +<p>It is the same in Florence. The little there was left of +an American society went to pieces on that rock. Our +parents forty years ago seem to me to have been much more +self-respecting and sensible. They knew perfectly well that +there was nothing in common between themselves and the Italian +nobility, and that those good people were not going to put +themselves out to make the acquaintance of a lot of strangers, +mostly of another religion, unless it was to be materially to +their advantage. So they left them quietly alone. I +do not pretend to judge any one’s motives, but confess I +cannot help regarding with suspicion a foreigner who leaves his +own circle to mingle with strangers. It resembles too +closely the amiabilities of the wolf for the lamb, or the sudden +politeness of a school-boy to a little girl who has received a +box of candies.</p> +<h2>No. 37—The Newport of the Past</h2> +<p>Few of the “carriage ladies and gentlemen” who +disport themselves in Newport during the summer months, yachting +and dancing through the short season, then flitting away to fresh +fields and pastures new, realize that their daintily shod feet +have been treading historic ground, or care to cast a thought +back to the past. Oddly enough, to the majority of people +the past is a volume rarely opened. Not that it bores them +to read it, but because they, like children, want some one to +turn over its yellow leaves and point out the pictures to +them. Few of the human motes that dance in the rays of the +afternoon sun as they slant across the little Park, think of the +fable which asserts that a sea-worn band of adventurous men, +centuries before the Cabots or the Genoese discoverer thought of +crossing the Atlantic, had pushed bravely out over untried seas +and landed on this rocky coast. Yet one apparent evidence +of their stay tempts our thoughts back to the times when it is +said to have been built as a bower for a king’s +daughter. Longfellow, in the swinging verse of his +“Skeleton in Armor,” breathing of the sea and the +Norseman’s fatal love, has thrown such a glamour of poetry +around the tower, that one would fain believe all he +relates. The hardy Norsemen, if they ever came here, +succumbed in their struggle with the native tribes, or, +discouraged by death and hardships, sailed away, leaving the +clouds of oblivion to close again darkly around this continent, +and the fog of discussion to circle around the “Old +Mill.”</p> +<p>The little settlement of another race, speaking another +tongue, that centuries later sprang up in the shadow of the +tower, quickly grew into a busy and prosperous city, which, like +New York, its rival, was captured and held by the English. +To walk now through some of its quaint, narrow streets is to step +back into Revolutionary days. Hardly a house has changed +since the time when the red coats of the British officers +brightened the prim perspectives, and turned loyal young heads as +they passed.</p> +<p>At the corner of Spring and Pelham Streets, still stands the +residence of General Prescott, who was carried away prisoner by +his opponents, they having rowed down in whale-boats from +Providence for the attack. Rochambeau, our French ally, +lodged lower down in Mary Street. In the tower of Trinity, +one can read the epitaph of the unfortunate Chevalier de Ternay, +commander of the sea forces, whose body lies near by. Many +years later his relative, the Duc de Noailles, when Minister to +this country, had this simple tablet repaired and made a visit to +the spot.</p> +<p>A long period of prosperity followed the Revolution, during +which Newport grew and flourished. Our pious and +God-fearing “forbears,” having secured personal and +religious liberty, proceeded to inaugurate a most successful and +remunerative trade in rum and slaves. It was a triangular +transaction and yielded a three-fold profit. The simple +population of that day, numbering less than ten thousand souls, +possessed twenty distilleries; finding it a physical +impossibility to drink <i>all</i> the rum, they conceived the +happy thought of sending the surplus across to the coast of +Africa, where it appears to have been much appreciated by the +native chiefs, who eagerly exchanged the pick of their loyal +subjects for that liquid. These poor brutes were taken to +the West Indies and exchanged for sugar, laden with which, the +vessels returned to Newport.</p> +<p>Having introduced the dusky chieftains to the charms of +delirium tremens and their subjects to life-long slavery, one can +almost see these pious deacons proceeding to church to offer up +thanks for the return of their successful vessels. Alas! +even “the best laid schemes of mice and men” come to +an end. The War of 1812, the opening of the Erie Canal and +sundry railways struck a blow at Newport commerce, from which it +never recovered. The city sank into oblivion, and for over +thirty years not a house was built there.</p> +<p>It was not until near 1840 that the Middletons and Izzards and +other wealthy and aristocratic Southern families were tempted to +Newport by the climate and the facilities it offered for bathing, +shooting and boating. A boarding-house or two sufficed for +the modest wants of the new-comers, first among which stood the +Aquidneck, presided over by kind Mrs. Murray. It was not +until some years later, when New York and Boston families began +to appreciate the place, that the first hotels were +built,—the Atlantic on the square facing the old mill, the +Bellevue and Fillmore on Catherine Street, and finally the +original Ocean House, destroyed by fire in 1845 and rebuilt as we +see it to-day. The croakers of the epoch considered it much +too far out of town to be successful, for at its door the open +fields began, a gate there separating the town from the country +across which a straggling, half-made road, closed by innumerable +gates, led along the cliffs and out across what is now the Ocean +Drive. The principal roads at that time led inland; any one +wishing to drive seaward had to descend every two or three +minutes to open a gate. The youth of the day discovered a +source of income in opening and closing these for pennies.</p> +<p>Fashion had decreed that the correct hour for dancing was 11 +<span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, and <i>matinées +dansantes</i> were regularly given at the hotels, our +grandmothers appearing in <i>décolleté</i> muslin +frocks adorned with broad sashes, and disporting themselves gayly +until the dinner hour. Low-neck dresses were the rule, not +only for these informal entertainments, but as every-day wear for +young girls,—an old lady only the other day telling me she +had never worn a “high-body” until after her +marriage. Two o’clock found all the beauties and +beaux dining. How incredulously they would have laughed if +any one had prophesied that their grandchildren would prefer +eight forty-five as a dinner hour!</p> +<p>The opening of Bellevue Avenue marked another epoch in the +history of Newport. About that time Governor Lawrence +bought the whole of Ochre Point farm for fourteen thousand +dollars, and Mr. de Rham built on the newly opened road the first +“cottage,” which stands to-day modestly back from the +avenue opposite Perry Street. If houses have souls, as +Hawthorne averred, and can remember and compare, what curious +thoughts must pass through the oaken brain of this simple +construction as it sees its marble neighbors rearing their vast +facades among trees. The trees, too, are an innovation, for +when the de Rham cottage was built and Mrs. Cleveland opened her +new house at the extreme end of Rough Point (the second summer +residence in the place) it is doubtful if a single tree broke the +rocky monotony of the landscape from the Ocean House to +Bateman’s Point.</p> +<p>Governor Lawrence, having sold one acre of his Ochre Point +farm to Mr. Pendleton for the price he himself had paid for the +whole, proceeded to build a stone wall between the two properties +down to the water’s edge. The population of Newport +had been accustomed to take their Sunday airings and moonlight +rambles along “the cliffs,” and viewed this +obstruction of their favorite walk with dismay. So strong +was their feeling that when the wall was completed the young men +of the town repaired there in the night and tore it down. +It was rebuilt, the mortar being mixed with broken glass. +This infuriated the people to such an extent that the whole +populace, in broad daylight, accompanied by the summer visitors, +destroyed the wall and threw the materials into the sea. +Lawrence, bent on maintaining what he considered his rights, +called the law to his aid. It was then discovered that an +immemorial riverain right gave the fishermen and the public +generally, access to the shore for fishing, and also to collect +seaweed,—a right of way that no one could obstruct.</p> +<p>This was the beginning of the long struggle between the +cliff-dwellers and the townspeople; each new property-owner, +disgusted at the idea that all the world can stroll at will +across his well-kept lawns, has in turn tried his hand at +suppressing the now famous “walk.” Not only do +the public claim the liberty to walk there, but also the right to +cross any property to get to the shore. At this moment the +city fathers and the committee of the new buildings at +Bailey’s Beach are wrangling as gayly as in Governor +Lawrence’s day over a bit of wall lately constructed across +the end of Bellevue Avenue. A new expedient has been hit +upon by some of the would-be exclusive owners of the cliffs; they +have lowered the “walk” out of sight, thus insuring +their own privacy and in no way interfering with the rights of +the public.</p> +<p>Among the gentlemen who settled in Newport about Governor +Lawrence’s time was Lord Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he +preferred to call himself), who remained there until his +death. He was shy of referring to his English peerage, but +would willingly talk of his descent through his mother from Peter +Paul Rubens, from whom had come down to him a château in +Holland and several splendid paintings. The latter hung in +the parlor of the modest little dwelling, where I was taken to +see them and their owner many years ago. My introducer on +this occasion was herself a lady of no ordinary birth, being the +daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait painter. I have +passed many quiet hours in the quaint studio (the same her father +had used), hearing her prattle—as she loved to do if she +found a sympathetic listener—of her father, of Washington +and his pompous ways, and the many celebrities who had in turn +posed before Stuart’s easel. She had been her +father’s companion and aid, present at the sittings, +preparing his brushes and colors, and painting in backgrounds and +accessories; and would willingly show his palette and explain his +methods and theories of color, his predilection for scrumbling +shadows thinly in black and then painting boldly in with body +color. Her lessons had not profited much to the gentle, +kindly old lady, for the productions of her own brush were far +from resembling her great parent’s work. She, +however, painted cheerfully on to life’s close, surrounded +by her many friends, foremost among whom was Charlotte Cushman, +who also passed the last years of her life in Newport. Miss +Stuart was over eighty when I last saw her, still full of spirit +and vigor, beginning the portrait of a famous beauty of that day, +since the wife and mother of dukes.</p> +<p>Miss Stuart’s death seems to close one of the chapters +in the history of this city, and to break the last connecting +link with its past. The world moves so quickly that the +simple days and modest amusements of our fathers and grandfathers +have already receded into misty remoteness. We look at +their portraits and wonder vaguely at their graceless +costumes. We know they trod these same streets, and laughed +and flirted and married as we are doing to-day, but they seem to +us strangely far away, like inhabitants of another sphere!</p> +<p>It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, shall have become +the ancestors of a new and careless generation; fresh faces will +replace our faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look at +our portraits hanging in dark corners, wondering who we were, and +(criticising the apparel we think so artistic and appropriate) +how we could ever have made such guys of ourselves.</p> +<h2>No. 38—A Conquest of Europe</h2> +<p>The most important event in modern history is the discovery of +Europe by the Americans. Before it, the peoples of the Old +World lived happy and contented in their own countries, +practising the patriarchal virtues handed down to them from +generations of forebears, ignoring alike the vices and benefits +of modern civilization, as understood on this side of the +Atlantic. The simple-minded Europeans remained at home, +satisfied with the rank in life where they had been born, and +innocent of the ways of the new world.</p> +<p>These peoples were, on the whole, not so much to be pitied, +for they had many pleasing crafts and arts unknown to the +invaders, which had enabled them to decorate their capitals with +taste in a rude way; nothing really great like the lofty +buildings and elevated railway structures, executed in American +cities, but interesting as showing what an ingenious race, +deprived of the secrets of modern science, could accomplish.</p> +<p>The more æsthetic of the newcomers even affected to +admire the antiquated places of worship and residences they +visited abroad, pointing out to their compatriots that in many +cases marble, bronze and other old-fashioned materials had been +so cleverly treated as to look almost like the superior cast-iron +employed at home, and that some of the old paintings, preserved +with veneration in the museums, had nearly the brilliancy of +modern chromos. As their authors had, however, neglected to +use a process lending itself to rapid reproduction, they were of +no practical value. In other ways, the continental races, +when discovered, were sadly behind the times. In business, +they ignored the use of “corners,” that backbone of +American trade, and their ideas of advertising were but little in +advance of those known among the ancient Greeks.</p> +<p>The discovery of Europe by the Americans was made about 1850, +at which date the first bands of adventurers crossed the seas in +search of amusement. The reports these pioneers brought +back of the <i>naïveté</i>, politeness, and +gullibility of the natives, and the cheapness of existence in +their cities, caused a general exodus from the western to the +eastern hemisphere. Most of the Americans who had used up +their credit at home and those whose incomes were insufficient +for their wants, immediately migrated to these happy hunting +grounds, where life was inexpensive and credit unlimited.</p> +<p>The first arrivals enjoyed for some twenty years unique +opportunities. They were able to live in splendor for a +pittance that would barely have kept them in necessaries on their +own side of the Atlantic, and to pick up valuable specimens of +native handiwork for nominal sums. In those happy days, to +belong to the invading race was a sufficient passport to the good +graces of the Europeans, who asked no other guarantees before +trading with the newcomers, but flocked around them, offering +their services and their primitive manufactures, convinced that +Americans were all wealthy.</p> +<p>Alas! History ever repeats itself. As Mexicans and +Peruvians, after receiving their conquerors with confidence and +enthusiasm, came to rue the day they had opened their arms to +strangers, so the European peoples, before a quarter of a century +was over, realized that the hordes from across the sea who were +over-running their lands, raising prices, crowding the native +students out of the schools, and finally attempting to force an +entrance into society, had little to recommend them or justify +their presence except money. Even in this some of the +intruders were unsatisfactory. Those who had been received +into the “bosom” of hotels often forgot to settle +before departing. The continental women who had provided +the wives of discoverers with the raiment of the country (a +luxury greatly affected by those ladies) found, to their disgust, +that their new customers were often unable or unwilling to offer +any remuneration.</p> +<p>In consequence of these and many other disillusions, Americans +began to be called the “Destroyers,” especially when +it became known that nothing was too heavy or too bulky to be +carried away by the invaders, who tore the insides from the +native houses, the paintings from the walls, the statues from the +temples, and transported this booty across the seas, much in the +same way as the Romans had plundered Greece. Elaborate +furniture seemed especially to attract the new arrivals, who +acquired vast quantities of it.</p> +<p>Here, however, the wily natives (who were beginning to +appreciate their own belongings) had revenge. Immense +quantities of worthless imitations were secretly manufactured and +sold to the travellers at fabulous prices. The same +artifice was used with paintings, said to be by great masters, +and with imitations of old stuffs and bric-a-brac, which the +ignorant and arrogant invaders pretended to appreciate and +collect.</p> +<p>Previous to our arrival there had been an invasion of the +Continent by the English about the year 1812. One of their +historians, called Thackeray, gives an amusing account of this in +the opening chapters of his “Shabby Genteel +Story.” That event, however, was unimportant in +comparison with the great American movement, although both were +characterized by the same total disregard of the feelings and +prejudices of indigenous populations. The English then +walked about the continental churches during divine service, +gazing at the pictures and consulting their guide-books as +unconcernedly as our compatriots do to-day. They also +crowded into theatres and concert halls, and afterwards wrote to +the newspapers complaining of the bad atmosphere of those +primitive establishments and of the long +<i>entr’actes</i>.</p> +<p>As long as the invaders confined themselves to such trifles, +the patient foreigners submitted to their overbearing and uncouth +ways because of the supposed benefit to trade. The natives +even went so far as to build hotels for the accommodation and +delight of the invaders, abandoning whole quarters to their +guests.</p> +<p>There was, however, a point at which complacency +stopped. The older civilizations had formed among +themselves restricted and exclusive societies, to which access +was almost impossible to strangers. These sanctuaries +tempted the immigrants, who offered their fairest virgins and +much treasure for the privilege of admission. The +indigenous aristocrats, who were mostly poor, yielded to these +offers and a few Americans succeeded in forcing an +entrance. But the old nobility soon became frightened at +the number and vulgarity of the invaders, and withdrew severely +into their shells, refusing to accept any further bribes either +in the form of females or finance.</p> +<p>From this moment dates the humiliation of the +discoverers. All their booty and plunder seemed worthless +in comparison with the Elysian delights they imagined were +concealed behind the closed doors of those holy places, visions +of which tortured the women from the western hemisphere and +prevented their taking any pleasure in other victories. To +be received into those inner circles became their chief +ambition. With this end in view they dressed themselves in +expensive costumes, took the trouble to learn the +“lingo” spoken in the country, went to the extremity +of copying the ways of the native women by painting their faces, +and in one or two cases imitated the laxity of their morals.</p> +<p>In spite of these concessions, our women were not received +with enthusiasm. On the contrary, the very name of an +American became a byword and an abomination in every continental +city. This prejudice against us abroad is hardly to be +wondered at on reflecting what we have done to acquire it. +The agents chosen by our government to treat diplomatically with +the conquered nations, owe their selection to political motives +rather than to their tact or fitness. In the large majority +of cases men are sent over who know little either of the habits +or languages prevailing in Europe.</p> +<p>The worst elements always follow in the wake of +discovery. Our settlements abroad gradually became the +abode of the compromised, the divorced, the socially and +financially bankrupt.</p> +<p>Within the last decade we have found a way to revenge the +slights put upon us, especially those offered to Americans in the +capital of Gaul. Having for the moment no playwrights of +our own, the men who concoct dramas, comedies, and burlesques for +our stage find, instead of wearying themselves in trying to +produce original matter, that it is much simpler to adapt from +French writers. This has been carried to such a length that +entire French plays are now produced in New York signed by +American names.</p> +<p>The great French playwrights can protect themselves by taking +out American copyright, but if one of them omits this formality, +the “conquerors” immediately seize upon his work and +translate it, omitting intentionally all mention of the real +author on their programmes. This season a play was produced +of which the first act was taken from Guy de Maupassant, the +second and third “adapted” from Sardou, with episodes +introduced from other authors to brighten the mixture. The +piece thus patched together is signed by a well-known Anglo-Saxon +name, and accepted by our moral public, although the original of +the first act was stopped by the Parisian police as too immoral +for that gay capital.</p> +<p>Of what use would it be to “discover” a new +continent unless the explorers were to reap some such +benefits? Let us take every advantage that our proud +position gives us, plundering the foreign authors, making penal +settlements of their capitals, and ignoring their foolish customs +and prejudices when we travel among them! In this way shall +we effectually impress on the inferior races across the Atlantic +the greatness of the American nation.</p> +<h2>No. 39—A Race of Slaves</h2> +<p>It is all very well for us to have invaded Europe, and +awakened that somnolent continent to the lights and delights of +American ways; to have beautified the cities of the old world +with graceful trolleys and illuminated the catacombs at Rome with +electricity. Every true American must thrill with +satisfaction at these achievements, and the knowledge that he +belongs to a dominating race, before which the waning +civilization of Europe must fade away and disappear.</p> +<p>To have discovered Europe and to rule as conquerors abroad is +well, but it is not enough, if we are led in chains at +home. It is recorded of a certain ambitious captain whose +“Commentaries” made our school-days a burden, that +“he preferred to be the first in a village rather than +second at Rome.” Oddly enough, <i>we</i> are +contented to be slaves in our villages while we are conquerors in +Rome. Can it be that the struggles of our ancestors for +freedom were fought in vain? Did they throw off the yoke of +kings, cross the Atlantic, found a new form of government on a +new continent, break with traditions, and sign a declaration of +independence, only that we should succumb, a century later, +yielding the fruits of their hard-fought battles with craven +supineness into the hands of corporations and municipalities; +humbly bowing necks that refuse to bend before anointed +sovereigns, to the will of steamboat subordinates, the insolence +of be-diamonded hotel-clerks, and the captious conductor?</p> +<p>Last week my train from Washington arrived in Jersey City on +time. We scurried (like good Americans) to the ferry-boat, +hot and tired and anxious to get to our destination; a hope +deferred, however, for our boat was kept waiting forty long +minutes, because, forsooth, another train from somewhere in the +South was behind time. Expostulations were in vain. +Being only the paying public, we had no rights that those +autocrats, the officials, were bound to respect. The +argument that if they knew the southern train to be so much +behind, the ferry-boat would have plenty of time to take us +across and return, was of no avail, so, like a cargo of +“moo-cows” (as the children say), we submitted +meekly. In order to make the time pass more pleasantly for +the two hundred people gathered on the boat, a dusky potentate +judged the moment appropriate to scrub the cabin floors. +So, aided by a couple of subordinates, he proceeded to deluge the +entire place in floods of water, obliging us to sit with our feet +tucked up under us, splashing the ladies’ skirts and our +wraps and belongings.</p> +<p>Such treatment of the public would have raised a riot anywhere +but in this land of freedom. Do you suppose any one +murmured? Not at all. The well-trained public had the +air of being in church. My neighbors appeared astonished at +my impatience, and informed me that they were often detained in +that way, as the company was short of boats, but they hoped to +have a new one in a year or two. This detail did not +prevent that corporation advertising our train to arrive in New +York at three-thirteen, instead of which we landed at four +o’clock. If a similar breach of contract had happened +in England, a dozen letters would have appeared in the +“Times,” and the grievance been well aired.</p> +<p>Another infliction to which all who travel in America are +subjected is the brushing atrocity. Twenty minutes before a +train arrives at its destination, the despot who has taken no +notice of any one up to this moment, except to snub them, becomes +suspiciously attentive and insists on brushing everybody. +The dirt one traveller has been accumulating is sent in clouds +into the faces of his neighbors. When he is polished off +and has paid his “quarter” of tribute, the next man +gets up, and the dirt is then brushed back on to number one, with +number two’s collection added.</p> +<p>Labiche begins one of his plays with two servants at work in a +salon. “Dusting,” says one of them, “is +the art of sending the dirt from the chair on the right over to +the sofa on the left.” I always think of that remark +when I see the process performed in a parlor car, for when it is +over we are all exactly where we began. If a man should +shampoo his hair, or have his boots cleaned in a salon, he would +be ejected as a boor; yet the idea apparently never enters the +heads of those who soil and choke their fellow-passengers that +the brushing might be done in the vestibule.</p> +<p>On the subject of fresh air and heat we are also in the hands +of officials, dozens of passengers being made to suffer for the +caprices of one of their number, or the taste of some captious +invalid. In other lands the rights of minorities are often +ignored. With us it is the contrary. One sniffling +school-girl who prefers a temperature of 80 degrees can force a +car full of people to swelter in an atmosphere that is death to +them, because she refuses either to put on her wraps or to have a +window opened.</p> +<p>Street railways are torture-chambers where we slaves are made +to suffer in another way. You must begin to reel and plunge +towards the door at least two blocks before your destination, so +as to leap to the ground when the car slows up; otherwise the +conductor will be offended with you, and carry you several +squares too far, or with a jocose “Step lively,” will +grasp your elbow and shoot you out. Any one who should sit +quietly in his place until the vehicle had come to a full stop, +would be regarded by the slave-driver and his cargo as a +<i>poseur</i> who was assuming airs.</p> +<p>The idea that cars and boats exist for the convenience of the +public was exploded long ago. We are made, dozens of times +a day, to feel that this is no longer the case. It is, on +the contrary, brought vividly home to us that such conveyances +are money making machines in the possession of powerful +corporations (to whom we, in our debasement, have handed over the +freedom of our streets and rivers), and are run in the interest +and at the discretion of their owners.</p> +<p>It is not only before the great and the powerful that we bow +in submission. The shop-girl is another tyrant who has +planted her foot firmly on the neck of the nation. She +respects neither sex nor age. Ensconced behind the bulwark +of her counter, she scorns to notice humble aspirants until they +have performed a preliminary penance; a time she fills up in +cheerful conversation addressed to other young tyrants, only +deciding to notice customers when she sees their last grain of +patience is exhausted. She is often of a merry mood, and if +anything about your appearance or manner strikes her critical +sense as amusing, will laugh gayly with her companions at your +expense.</p> +<p>A French gentleman who speaks our language correctly but with +some accent, told me that he found it impossible to get served in +our stores, the shop-girls bursting with laughter before he could +make his wants known.</p> +<p>Not long ago I was at the Compagnie Lyonnaise in Paris with a +stout American lady, who insisted on tipping her chair forward on +its front legs as she selected some laces. Suddenly the +chair flew from under her, and she sat violently on the polished +floor in an attitude so supremely comic that the rest of her +party were inwardly convulsed. Not a muscle moved in the +faces of the well-trained clerks. The proprietor assisted +her to rise as gravely as if he were bowing us to our +carriage.</p> +<p>In restaurants American citizens are treated even worse than +in the shops. You will see cowed customers who are anxious +to get away to their business or pleasure sitting mutely patient, +until a waiter happens to remember their orders. I do not +know a single establishment in this city where the waiters take +any notice of their customers’ arrival, or where the +proprietor comes, toward the end of the meal, to inquire if the +dishes have been cooked to their taste. The interest so +general on the Continent or in England is replaced here by the +same air of being disturbed from more important occupations, that +characterizes the shop-girl and elevator boy.</p> +<p>Numbers of our people live apparently in awe of their servants +and the opinion of the tradespeople. One middle-aged lady +whom I occasionally take to the theatre, insists when we arrive +at her door on my accompanying her to the elevator, in order that +the youth who presides therein may see that she has an escort, +the opinion of this subordinate apparently being of supreme +importance to her. One of our “gilded youths” +recently told me of a thrilling adventure in which he had +figured. At the moment he was passing under an awning on +his way to a reception, a gust of wind sent his hat gambolling +down the block. “Think what a situation,” he +exclaimed. “There stood a group of my friends’ +footmen watching me. But I was equal to the situation and +entered the house as if nothing had happened!” Sir +Walter Raleigh sacrificed a cloak to please a queen. This +youth abandoned a new hat, fearing the laughter of a half-dozen +servants.</p> +<p>One of the reasons why we have become so weak in the presence +of our paid masters is that nowhere is the individual allowed to +protest. The other night a friend who was with me at a +theatre considered the acting inferior, and expressed his opinion +by hissing. He was promptly ejected by a policeman. +The man next me was, on the contrary, so pleased with the piece +that he encored every song. I had paid to see the piece +once, and rebelled at being obliged to see it twice to suit my +neighbor. On referring the matter to the box-office, the +caliph in charge informed me that the slaves he allowed to enter +his establishment (like those who in other days formed the court +of Louis XIV.) were permitted to praise, but were suppressed if +they murmured dissent. In his <i>Mémoires</i>, +Dumas, <i>père</i>, tells of a “first night” +when three thousand people applauded a play of his and one +spectator hissed. “He was the only one I +respected,” said Dumas, “for the piece was bad, and +that criticism spurred me on to improve it.”</p> +<p>How can we hope for any improvement in the standard of our +entertainments, the manners of our servants or the ways of +corporations when no one complains? We are too much in a +hurry to follow up a grievance and have it righted. +“It doesn’t pay,” “I haven’t got +the time,” are phrases with which all such subjects are +dismissed. We will sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely +cooked food, put up with insolence from subordinates, because it +is too much trouble to assert our rights. Is the spirit +that prompted the first shots on Lexington Common becoming +extinct? Have the floods of emigration so diluted our +Anglo-Saxon blood that we no longer care to fight for +liberty? Will no patriot arise and lead a revolt against +our tyrants?</p> +<p>I am prepared to follow such a leader, and have already marked +my prey. First, I will slay a certain miscreant who sits at +the receipt of customs in the box-office of an up-town +theatre. For years I have tried to propitiate that satrap +with modest politeness and feeble little jokes. He has +never been softened by either, but continues to +“chuck” the worst places out to me (no matter how +early I arrive, the best have always been given to the +speculators), and to frown down my attempts at +self-assertion.</p> +<p>When I have seen this enemy at my feet, I shall start down +town (stopping on the way to brain the teller at my bank, who is +perennially paring his nails, and refuses to see me until that +operation is performed), to the office of a night-boat line, +where the clerk has so often forced me, with hundreds of other +weary victims, to stand in line like convicts, while he chats +with a “lady friend,” his back turned to us and his +leg comfortably thrown over the arm of his chair. Then I +will take my blood-stained way—but, no! It is better +not to put my victims on their guard, but to abide my time in +silence! Courage, fellow-slaves, our day will come!</p> +<h2>Chapter 40—Introspection <a name="citation276"></a><a +href="#footnote276" class="citation">[276]</a></h2> +<p>The close of a year must bring even to the careless and the +least inclined toward self-inspection, an hour of thoughtfulness, +a desire to glance back across the past, and set one’s +mental house in order, before starting out on another stage of +the journey for that none too distant bourne toward which we all +are moving.</p> +<p>Our minds are like solitary dwellers in a vast residence, whom +habit has accustomed to live in a few only of the countless +chambers around them. We have collected from other parts of +our lives mental furniture and bric-à-brac that time and +association have endeared to us, have installed these meagre +belongings convenient to our hand, and contrived an entrance +giving facile access to our living-rooms, avoiding the effort of +a long detour through the echoing corridors and disused salons +behind. No acquaintances, and but few friends, penetrate +into the private chambers of our thoughts. We set aside a +common room for the reception of visitors, making it as cheerful +as circumstances will allow and take care that the conversation +therein rarely turns on any subject more personal than the view +from the windows or the prophecies of the barometer.</p> +<p>In the old-fashioned brick palace at Kensington, a little +suite of rooms is carefully guarded from the public gaze, swept, +garnished and tended as though the occupants of long ago were +hourly expected to return. The early years of +England’s aged sovereign were passed in these simple +apartments and by her orders they have been kept unchanged, the +furniture and decorations remaining to-day as when she inhabited +them. In one corner, is assembled a group of dolls, dressed +in the quaint finery of 1825. A set of miniature cooking +utensils stands near by. A child’s scrap-books and +color-boxes lie on the tables. In one sunny chamber stands +the little white-draped bed where the heiress to the greatest +crown on earth dreamed her childish dreams, and from which she +was hastily aroused one June morning to be saluted as +Queen. So homelike and livable an air pervades the place, +that one almost expects to see the lonely little girl of seventy +years ago playing about the unpretending chambers.</p> +<p>Affection for the past and a reverence for the memory of the +dead have caused the royal wife and mother to preserve with the +same care souvenirs of her passage in other royal +residences. The apartments that sheltered the first happy +months of her wedded life, the rooms where she knew the joys and +anxieties of maternity, have become for her consecrated +sanctuaries, where the widowed, broken old lady comes on certain +anniversaries to evoke the unforgotten past, to meditate and to +pray.</p> +<p>Who, as the year is drawing to its close, does not open in +memory some such sacred portal, and sit down in the familiar +rooms to live over again the old hopes and fears, thrilling anew +with the joys and temptations of other days? Yet, each year +these pilgrimages into the past must become more and more lonely +journeys; the friends whom we can take by the hand and lead back +to our old homes become fewer with each decade. It would be +a useless sacrilege to force some listless acquaintance to +accompany us. He would not hear the voices that call to us, +or see the loved faces that people the silent passages, and would +wonder what attraction we could find in the stuffy, old-fashioned +quarters.</p> +<p>Many people have such a dislike for any mental privacy that +they pass their lives in public, or surrounded only by sporting +trophies and games. Some enjoy living in their pantries, +composing for themselves succulent dishes, and interested in the +doings of the servants, their companions. Others have +turned their salons into nurseries, or feel a predilection for +the stable and the dog-kennels. Such people soon weary of +their surroundings, and move constantly, destroying, when they +leave old quarters, all the objects they had collected.</p> +<p>The men and women who have thus curtailed their belongings +are, however, quite contented with themselves. No doubts +ever harass them as to the commodity or appropriateness of their +lodgements and look with pity and contempt on friends who remain +faithful to old habitations. The drawback to a migratory +existence, however, is the fact that, as a French saying has put +it, <i>Ceux qui se refusent les pensées sérieuses +tombent dans les idées noires</i>. These people are +surprised to find as the years go by that the futile amusements +to which they have devoted themselves do not fill to their +satisfaction all the hours of a lifetime. Having provided +no books nor learned to practise any art, the time hangs heavily +on their hands. They dare not look forward into the future, +so blank and cheerless does it appear. The past is even +more distasteful to them. So, to fill the void in their +hearts, they hurry out into the crowd as a refuge from their own +thoughts.</p> +<p>Happy those who care to revisit old abodes, childhood’s +remote wing, and the moonlit porches where they knew the rapture +of a first-love whisper. Who can enter the chapel where +their dead lie, and feel no blush of self-reproach, nor burning +consciousness of broken faith nor wasted opportunities? The +new year will bring to them as near an approach to perfect +happiness as can be attained in life’s journey. The +fortunate mortals are rare who can, without a heartache or +regret, pass through their disused and abandoned dwellings; who +dare to open every door and enter all the silent rooms; who do +not hurry shudderingly by some obscure corners, and return with a +sigh of relief to the cheerful sunlight and murmurs of the +present.</p> +<p>Sleepless midnight hours come inevitably to each of us, when +the creaking gates of subterranean passages far down in our +consciousness open of themselves, and ghostly inhabitants steal +out of awful vaults and force us to look again into their faces +and touch their unhealed wounds.</p> +<p>An old lady whose cheerfulness under a hundred griefs and +tribulations was a marvel and an example, once told a man who had +come to her for counsel in a moment of bitter trouble, that she +had derived comfort when difficulties loomed big around her by +writing down all her cares and worries, making a list of the +subjects that harassed her, and had always found that, when +reduced to material written words, the dimensions of her troubles +were astonishingly diminished. She recommended her +procedure to the troubled youth, and prophesied that his +anxieties would dwindle away in the clear atmosphere of pen and +paper.</p> +<p>Introspection, the deliberate unlatching of closed wickets, +has the same effect of stealing away the bitterness from thoughts +that, if left in the gloom of semi-oblivion, will grow until they +overshadow a whole life. It is better to follow the example +of England’s pure Queen, visiting on certain anniversaries +our secret places and holding communion with the past, for it is +by such scrutiny only</p> +<blockquote><p><i>That men may rise on stepping-stones</i><br /> +<i>Of their dead selves to higher things</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Those who have courage to perform thoroughly this task will +come out from the silent chambers purified and chastened, more +lenient to the faults and shortcomings of others, and better +fitted to take up cheerfully the burdens of a new year.</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote276"></a><a href="#citation276" +class="footnote">[276]</a> December thirty-first, 1888.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLDLY WAYS AND BYWAYS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 379-h.htm or 379-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/379 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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