[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops of omnibuses.]
THE MISTRESS. Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San
Carlo, and hear him cry "Bwavo"?
MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraid to.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men of the best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes, are what you would call good fellows,—easy and simple in manner, enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into the smooth calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard as the sine qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assured that they do not need that lacquer of calmness of which we were speaking.
THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by those who live a great deal in American hotels?
THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?
HERBERT. The last two are the same.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if a man has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, you cannot always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui of hotels or of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfect polish and politeness of indifferentism.
IV
Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates the idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions. Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some forest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees all winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants, cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of a dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost in the distant darkling spaces.