French conversation.
Conversation of French circles seems to me like gambols of a thistledown, or the rainbow changes in soap-bubbles. One laughs with tears in one’s eyes. One moment confounded with the absolute childhood of the simplicity, in the next one is a little afraid of the keen edge of the shrewdness.
The Germans.
These Germans seem an odd race, a mixture of clay and spirit—what with their beer-drinking and smoking, and their slow, stolid ways, you would think them perfectly earthy; but ethereal fire is all the while working in them, and bursting out in most unexpected little jets of poetry and sentiment, like blossoms on a cactus.
MY WIFE AND I.
Physiognomy of a house.
Houses have their physiognomy as much as persons. There are commonplace houses, suggestive houses, attractive houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses, just as there are all these classes of persons. There are houses whose windows seem to yawn idly—to stare vacantly; there are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and glance at you askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors and windows seem wide open with frank cordiality, which seem to stretch their arms to embrace you, and woo you kindly to come and possess them....
Is not this a species of high art, by which a house, in itself cold and barren, becomes in every part warm and inviting, glowing with suggestion, alive with human tastes and personalities? Wall-paper, paint, furniture, pictures, in the hands of the home artist, are like the tubes of paint, out of which arises, as by inspiration, a picture. It is the woman who combines them into the wonderful creation which we call a home.
When I came home from my office, night after night, and was led in triumph by Eva to view the result of her achievements, I confess I began to remember, with approbation, the old Greek mythology, and no longer to wonder that divine honors had been paid to household goddesses.