“I have always heard that American women made the best mothers,” said I.
“As regards the maternal affections of our women,” replied he, “I can easily conceive why they should be strong. It is nearly all the romance (!) they enjoy; the duties they assume in marrying overbalancing infinitely the caresses and attentions bestowed upon them by their husbands. Our young men are an industrious, steady, persevering, but not an amiable race of beings. They have a high respect for ladies in general; but they are not devoted to them beyond the forms and usages of society. Money-making is the principal pursuit to which they are devoted; and which so completely absorbs their time, that, between business and politics, they hardly find time for the cultivation of affections.
“And our rich people,” he continued, “are, in this respect, more to be pitied than the poor. The latter spend their few leisure hours, or rather minutes, at home, in the circle of their families; while the former are compelled to waste them in society. And what society is that? It does not consist of a few friends whom accident assembles round the fireside, to pass away an evening in agreeable chit-chat. Our fashionable people are not fond of this cheap, unostentatious sort of amusement; and, besides, it does not suit the taste of our boys and girls, who are only satisfied with a dance. For this reason our parties are expensive, and afford little or no relaxation to men of sense. I once heard a diplomatist say, that a young man, in order to form his manners and judgment, ought to choose his female society from among ladies not under thirty, and his male companions from gentlemen not under forty years of age; but certainly, if manners and judgment are to be acquired only on such terms, our state of society is such that our young men must for ever remain deficient in them.
“If our married women were to be compensated for the loss they sustain in society by increased attention from their husbands, they might perhaps profit by the exchange. But our business men have no time for cooing. Their first object is trade; everything else is surbordinate. There is a great deal of domestic comfort in the United States, resulting from sound principles of morality and religion, especially on the part of the women; but I have hardly ever seen that tender affection—that union of souls, in which two persons require nothing but each other’s consent for the completion of their happiness. That state, I am aware, requires either absolute poverty, or a degree of wealth and refinement which, from the vain attempt to satisfy the heart with the gratification of artificial wants, returns once more to the legitimate source of all human happiness. Both cases are as yet unknown in America; labour securing a competency to every industrious man, and the laws and institutions of the country preventing the accumulation of property.
“These circumstances make us a practical and active, but not an enthusiastic or imaginative people. We choose our fair companions according to the dictates of good sense, not after ‘some fanciful creation of the mind.’ Our country is not yet a land of beaux idéals.”
“On this account,” proceeded my travelled cicerone, “we are not subject to disappointment when the dreams of our youth are not realized; and the organization of society prevents us even from perceiving our error. Suppose one of our young men to marry a woman whose tastes, disposition, and character are essentially different from his own: it would not necessarily follow that the union must, on this account, prove an unhappy one. The points of contact are so few, the sphere of action of each party so well defined by custom and law, and the occupation of the man out of the house so constant, that he may become the father of a large family, and even die without finding out his mistake. This assertion seems to be absurd, and yet it is true to the very letter. And it is this sort of passiveness in all matters not relating to business or politics, which, though it may not constitute the most amiable or interesting feature of our character, is nevertheless the principal cause of the universal content which pervades our community.
“A similar match in Europe would be the source of endless misery. The comparative leisure enjoyed even by the labouring classes would prove a source of pain to two minds not perfectly tuned in unison. Nothing creates so many artificial wants,—nothing is, in itself, such exquisite luxury as leisure.[6] Our rich, industrious population may pity the poor lazzarone, who is badly fed, scarcely covered, and who has no other couch to lay his limbs upon but the marble steps of a palace or a church; and yet how many such vagabonds would be willing to exchange their position with that of our most opulent citizens? Such is the difference in men’s ideas of happiness.
“An European computes his time, or rather his leisure moments, better than his money; in America the case is reversed. In Europe, wealth is comparatively within the reach of few; but every one has his little share of leisure, from the day-labourer who has his hour at noon and his vesper, to the rentier who lives in idleness. Under these circumstances, the choice of a companion determines a man’s happiness for life. Great and many are the calls on each other’s sympathy in pleasure and in affliction, and a single discord destroys the harmony for ever. A man may live with a woman of different tastes,—he may eat and drink with her,—he may see her at specified hours of the day,—he may share his fortune or anything else with her without being unhappy; but who can describe the feelings of an enthusiast whose wife remains motionless at one of Shakspeare’s plays?—at the sight of the ocean or the Alps?
“These inequalities of taste and disposition become a true source of misery in proportion as we have leisure to give scope to our imagination. In active life, in the pursuits of agriculture, commerce, or manufactures, they are hardly noticed. What time, I would ask you, has one of our young men to be unhappy?—when in the morning he rises, to read the papers; then takes his breakfast, at which his fair partner presents him with her own white hands two cups of hyson or pekoe, with the trifling addition of a steak or a chop; then goes to his counting-room, where he remains until one; then passes the hour from one till two on ’change; then returns home to eat his beef and pudding, which he accomplishes in about ten minutes; then returns once more to his counting-room, where he remains till sunset; then comes home to swallow his two or three cups of tea; after which, if there be no political caucas, no evening lecture, or late arrival of the mail, he is heartily glad to go to rest, in order to gather strength for the work of the next day? What can it matter to him whether his wife be sentimental? whether she have imagination or taste? whether she be an admirer of the drama?
“‘What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’