“No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No gold spectacles, no guy. It was a beautiful girl, dressed with most exquisite taste and care, and most charming and womanly.”
An American woman, however learned she may be, is a sound politician, and she knows that the best thing she can make of herself is a woman, and she remains a woman. She will always make herself as attractive as she possibly can. Not to please men—I believe she has a great contempt for them—but to please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were to remark to a lady how clever some woman in the room looked, she would probably closely examine that woman’s dress to find out what I thought was wrong about it. It would probably be the same in England, but not in America.
A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another woman’s cleverness. She will far more readily forgive her this qualification than beauty. And in this particular point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman resembles all the women in the Old World.
.......
Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in declaring that the American ones are the least affected. With them, I repeat it, I feel at ease as I do with no other women in the world.
With whom but an Américaine would the following little scene have been possible?
I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to be the reception day of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine and my wife’s, I thought I would call upon her early, before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I went to the house about half-past three in the afternoon. Mrs. X. received me in the drawing-room, and we were soon talking on the hundred and one topics that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently the conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X. drew her chair up a little nearer to the fire, put the toes of her little slippers on the fender stool, and with a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural, manner, said:
“You are married and love your wife; I am married and love my husband; we are both artists, let’s have our say out.”
And we proceeded to have our say out.
But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the seam of her black silk bodice was unsewn. We men, when we see a lady with something awry in her toilette, how often do we long to say to her: “Excuse me, madam, but perhaps you don’t know that you have a hairpin sticking out two inches just behind your ear,” or “Pardon me, Miss, I’m a married man, there is something wrong there behind, just under your waist belt.”