Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/191

 NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget? If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you can teach us. 1 It is a good answer. It relates to manners, customs, and morals three things concerning which we can never have ex haustive and determinate statistics, and so the ver dicts delivered upon them must always lack con- clusiveness and be subject to revision ; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a detail of my question which could be an swered only with vague hearsay evidence, and go

&quot;What could France teach America?&quot; exclaims Mark Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French working- men than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by their diplomacy, their tact, their common sense, without bumptiousness. These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark Twain s ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his club would immediately see his name canceled from member ship. A man who had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark Twain remark to this: &quot;An American is not such a fool: when a creditor stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following day. When he has been a. bankrupt three times he can retire from business&quot;?

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