“You have to joke about everything,” said Mrs. Norris. “Sometimes I think that I understand you and suddenly you begin joking, and then I lose confidence in all you have said.”
“I mean all I say and then some more,” I declared. “I assume that you are moral giants or that you do a lot of work secretly. No man could keep his footing in the slippery path of unending leisure. In Europe leisure is the aim of all, and where it most abounds morality is a joke. Here blood and leisure are the timber of which all ladies and gentlemen are made. In America we know that it's rotten timber. We have discovered three great commandments. They are written not only on tablets of stone, but everywhere. If they were printed across the sky they couldn't be any plainer. You know them as well as I do.” The three ladies turned serious eyes upon me and shook their heads.
Then I shot my bolt at them:
“They are:
“1. Get busy.
“2. Keep busy.
“3. See that it pays, which means that you are to play as well as work.”
Mrs. Norris smiled and nimbly stepped out of my way and bravely answered, like a real rococo aristocrat:
“I fear that you are prejudiced. I should be proud to have my daughter marry into one of these old families, not hastily, of course, but after we have found the right man. There are splendid men in some of them, and your best Italian is a most devoted husband. He worships his wife.”
“And if you're looking for a worshiper you couldn't find a place where the arts of worship have been so highly developed,” I answered. “But no American girl should be looking for a worshiper unless she's under the impression that she created the world, and even then a doctor would do her more good. Of course Gwendolyn would prefer a man, and what's the matter with one of your own countrymen—Forbes, for instance?”