"They will not remedy any of the present evils in that way," answered Harrison, apparently addressing himself to Ashburner, but he seemed to be talking at Benson and through him at Benson's wife, or his own, or both of them. "Our theory and practice was that a young girl should enjoy herself in all freedom; that her age and condition were those of pleasure and frolic—of dissipation, if you will—that after her marriage she, comparatively speaking, retired from the world, not through any conventional rule or imaginary standard of propriety, but of her own free will, and in the natural course of things; because the cares of maternity and her household gave her sufficient employment at home. A woman who takes a proper interest in her family gives them the first place in her thoughts, and is always ready to talk about them. Now these domestic details are the greatest possible bore to a mere fashionable casual drawing-room acquaintance. Hence you see that the French, whose chief aim is to talk well in a drawing-room or an opera box, utterly detest and unmercifully ridicule every thing connected with domesticity or home life. On the other hand, if a married woman never talks of these things or lets you think of them, she does not take a proper interest in her family. No, the fault of youth is with the other sex. There are too few men about, and too many boys. And the more married belles there are the more will the boys be encouraged. For your married belles like to have men about them younger than themselves—it makes them appear younger, or at least they think so; and besides, such youths are more easily managed and more subservient. But, still worse, the more these boys usurp the place of men in society, the more boyish and retrograde will the few men become who continue to divide the honors of society with them. When Plato enumerated among the signs of a republic in the last stage of decadence, that the youth imitate and rival old men, and the old men let themselves down to a level with the youth, he anticipated exactly the state of things that has come to pass among us. Look at that little friend of yours with the beard—I don't mean Edwards, but an older man about his size."
"Dicky Bleecker, I suppose you mean," growled Benson: "he's as much your friend—or your wife's—as he is mine."
"Well, he is my contemporary, I may say; perhaps five years at most my junior. What perceptible sign of mature age or manliness is there about him? In what is he superior to or distinguishable from young Snelling, who but this season rejoices in his first white tie and first horse, and in the fruits of his first course of dancing lessons?"
"Well, but consider," said Benson, who was always ready to take up any side of an argument—it was one of the first criticisms Ashburner made on American conversation, that the men seemed to talk for victory rather than for truth—"it stands to reason, that an intelligent married woman must be better able than a girl to converse with a mature man, and her conversation must have more attraction for him. As to our boys coming out too soon, doubtless they do, but that depends not on the persons ready to receive them, but on the general social system of the country which pushes them into the world so early. For instance, I was left my own master at twenty-one. So, too, with the want of proper progress and growth in knowledge of the men. It is and must be so with the man of fashion every where, for he is not occupied in learning things that have a tendency to develop or improve his mind, but the contrary. I myself have seen Frenchmen of fifty as easily amused and as eager after trifles as boys."
"Frenchmen?" sneered the other; "yes, but they are boys all their lives, except in innocence."
"Very amusing and pleasant, at any rate; the best people for travelling acquaintances that I know."
"Exactly—very pleasant to know for a little while. I have met with a great many Frenchmen who impressed me favorably, and I used to think as you say, what amusing people they were, but I never had occasion to live with one for any length of time without finding him a bore and a nuisance. A Frenchman turns himself inside out, as it were, at once. He shows off all that there is to show on first acquaintance. You see the best of him immediately, and afterwards there is nothing left but repetitions of the same things, and eternal dissertations on himself and his own affairs. He is like a wide, shallow house, with a splendid front externally, and scanty furniture inside."
"Very true, and an Englishman (don't blush Ashburner) is like a suite of college-rooms in one of his own university towns—a rusty exterior, a dark, narrow passage along which you find your way with difficulty; and when you do get in, jolly and comfortable apartments open suddenly upon you; and as you come to examine them more carefully, you discover all sorts of snug, little, out-of-the-way closets and recesses, full of old books and old wine, and all things rich and curious. But the entrance is uninviting to a casual acquaintance. Now, when you find an American of the right stamp (here Benson's hands were accidentally employed in adjusting his cravat), he hits the proper medium, and is accessible as a Frenchman and as true as an Englishman."
Ashburner was going to express a doubt as to the compatibility of the two qualities, when Harrison struck in again.
"On that account I never could see why Frenchmen should be dreaded as dangerous in society. They fling out all their graces at once, exhaust all their powers of fascination, and soon begin to be tiresome. How many cases I have seen where a Frenchman fancied he was making glorious headway in a lady's affections, and that she was just ready to fall into his arms, when she was only ready to fall asleep in his face, and was civil to him only from a great sacrifice of inclination to politeness!"