Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/108

Rh He said, what was quite true before the habits of Colonial deference had passed away, but is no longer, "that an American book has no reputation in America till it is stamped with English authority, and then it goes off edition after edition." He uttered sundry other impertinences; but, as he seemed good-natured and unconscious that they were so, I sat them down to the account of individual ignorance and prejudice, not to nationality, which has too often to answer for private sins.

Society, as I have before told you, has the same general features here as with us. The women have the same time-wasting mode of making morning visits, which is even more consuming than with us, inasmuch as the distances are greater. What would Mrs. —— do in London, who thought it reason enough for removing from New-York to the country, that she had to spend one morning of every week in driving about town to leave visiting-cards? One would think that the proportion which circulates as andeniable truth, that time is the most valuable of possessions, would prevent this lavish expenditure. But it is not a truth. Nothing is less valuable to nine tenths of mere society people, or less valued by them, than time. The only thing they earnestly try to do is to get rid of it.

I have seen nothing here to change my opinion that there is something in the Anglo-Saxon race essentially adverse to the spirit and grace of society. I have seen more invention, spirit, and ease in one soirée in a German family at New-York, than I have