Here the company burst into a horse-laugh.
“Just returned from Paris,” whispered the Philadelphian; “capital fellow!”
“Won’t you translate it to me?” asked the Bostonian; “I used to know French when I went to school, but I have forgotten it since.” (With a significant look.) “You know our girls don’t speak it.”
“‘Strangers are in America at home, while the Americans themselves are only at home when they are abroad,’ said our friend Charles, and he is certainly right; for America, ever since we are overrun by Irish and German paupers, is not fit for a gentleman to live in.”
“If I had my own way,” observed the Gallicised American, “I would never live in any other place but Paris.”
“And I in London,” remarked the Bostonian.
“Our tastes are so different,” rejoined the former; “you like everything that is English,—I love all that is French. Besides, in France one gets so much more easily into society; the English, you know, are ridiculously exclusive.”
“But have we not a minister in London? Can we not always be presented at court?”
“Not always; there are too many applicants.”
“But it is precisely the same thing in France. One of my acquaintances wrote me from Paris, that the American minister, during the space of one year, received no less than fifteen hundred applications for presentation to their French majesties.”