Page:The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1883).djvu/265

Rh not so nice as men, "anyhow," as they say here. The men, of course, are professional, commercial; there are very few gentlemen pure and simple. This personage needs to be very well done, however, to be of great utility; and I suppose you won't pretend that he is always well done in your countries. When he's not, the less of him the better. It's very much the same, however, with the system on which the young girls in this country are brought up. (You see, I have to come back to the young girls.) When it succeeds, they are the most charming possible; when it does n't, the failure is disastrous. If a girl is a very nice girl, the American method brings her to great completeness,—makes all her graces flower; but if she is n't nice, it makes her exceedingly disagreeable,—elaborately and fatally perverts her. In a word, the American girl is rarely negative, and when she is n't a great success she is a great warning. In nineteen cases out of twenty, among the people who know how to live—I won't say what their proportion is—the results are highly satisfactory. The girls are not shy, but I don't know why they should be, for there is really nothing here to be afraid of. Manners are very gentle, very humane; the democratic system deprives people of weapons that every one does n't equally possess. No one is formidable; no one is on stilts; no one has great pretensions or any recognized right to be arrogant. I think there is not much wickedness, and there is certainly less cruelty than with you. Every one