The French woman, at an afternoon or evening party, may be as beautifully and stylishly dressed as you like, there is always about her dress a certain little touch of simplicity that will make you think that somewhere in her wardrobe she keeps some frock or gown still more beautiful, stylish and expensive. Very often at breakfast-time an American woman will make you think that she has on her very best and smartest dress. I have seen some at the leading hotels of Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Florida, with diamond brooches and bracelets at breakfast. The American woman has a supreme contempt for what is not silk, satin, velvet or crêpe de chine. She generally looks dressed for conquest. With her it is paint and feathers and hooray all the time! On board a steamer across the Atlantic she wears silk and fifty-dollar hats. But, of course, these ladies do not belong to the Olympian sets.
I have mentioned all this because woman's character is very much the same all over this little planet of ours. Now, of all these women, the Americans are those who devote most time and spend most money over their appearance, and as they would be least of all accused of thinking for one moment how they look for the sake of the men, I say I have proved my answer to be right, that women do not dress for men.
Indeed, if the end of the world were to witness the presence of two women only on the face of the earth, each would be discovered striving to outshine the other and look the better dressed of the two.
CHAPTER XX
THE FRENCH WIFE
Her keenness and common-sense — Her power of observation and her native adaptability — Her graceful ways — Her tact — Her artistic refinement — Monsieur et Madame — 'Did I hear you knock at my door, dear?'
The wealthy classes of society in every civilized nation in the world are so much alike in their manners, habits, and customs, that they offer very little food to the observer of national characteristics. The men follow the London fashions, the women the Paris ones. They all cultivate sport, art, and literature; they all enjoy the same luxuries of life, they all have good cooks, they all have discovered the same way of living. If you want to see how differently people live in France, in England, in Germany, in Italy, in America, wherever you like, live among the middle and lower classes. Once, in South Africa, I spent a whole day in a Zulu kraal, living with the natives and like the natives, and I found that day spent in a far more interesting manner than if I had spent it among the hosts of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Mayfair, or Fifth Avenue.
France is the only country that I know where, outside of the aristocracy and the wealthy classes, you can find people who live daintily. The French labourer eats a more appetizing dinner than English and German well-to-do shopkeepers eat and than is served in the hotels of the small American towns. That French labourer would refuse to swallow, and even to look at, that wretched meal which I have seen English working-men eat at noon, when resting their backs against a wall or fence on the road—bread and pickles, or a slice of something looking very much like cat's-meat, and stale beer that had been stewing for hours in the sun in a badly-corked can.