Sisters, there is a good deal of commotion in our hotel just now. Rural single ladies talk of going over to the other place.
I had a little hankering in that direction at first, but, come to think it over, mean to stay where I am. It isn't the house that has done this, but the bland atmosphere of Long Branch. If that sort of thing is indigenous to the place—and I mean to test it thoroughly—Russia is welcome to the Grand Duke; a whole-souled American is good enough for me. Besides, Russia is an awful cold place, and I don't think I ever could bring myself to eat cabbage-soup or the roe of a sturgeon.
Sisters, if this sort of thing lies in the atmosphere, don't you think it would be a good thing for the whole Society to come down here next summer? A generous diffusion of masculine energy into the course might be a desirable change. For my part, I don't mean to leave this place till frost comes. I believe this thing is going to be an epidemic at the Branch, and when contagions rage I am sure to catch any disease that is going. I have had the measles twice, and two pretty severe tugs with the scarlet-fever. In fact, I was celebrated, as a child, for catching double. One thing is certain—I never ran away because a disease was catching, and I'm not going to do it here. On the contrary, I am making over one of my old alpaca skirts into a bathing-dress. If I know myself I shall fight it out on that line, if it takes all winter.
CHAPTER XC.
THE YELLOW FLAG.
DEAR SISTERS:—I have gone and done it! Now let me give you a little wholesome advice. It comes out of my superior knowledge of the world, and experience of the human heart. Never say that you won't do a thing, because if you do, just as sure as you live it is the very thing that you are sure to plunge into, whether you want to or not. Besides, people who know enough to doubt themselves, understand that men and women are made up principally of human nature. Now human nature is a great fraud, and isn't to be trusted when he's found in the interior of your own heart, or anywhere else.
In one of my reports, I expressed myself as shocked out of a year's growth, when I heard about gentlemen and ladies going into the salt-sea waves together, and submerging themselves like mermaids in the swell and foam of the ocean. I said, in the heat and glow of modest feminine shrinkitiveness, that nothing on earth, or in the water, should induce me to do it; but circumstances alter cases, and the capacity of eternal change is the essence of genius, which is always making new combinations and discarding old prejudices.
I say it with reluctance, but truth demands frankness. Sometimes I am a little hasty in my conclusions.
Have I said enough—need I go on to explain that the result of a thing proves its propriety?