the women, who are very subtle, but rather hard. They are not so
nice to the men as the men are to them; I mean, of course, in
proportion, you know. But women are not so nice as men, "anyhow,"
as they say here. The men, of course, are professional, commercial;
there are very few gentlemen pure and simple. This personage needs
to be very well done, however, to be of great utility; and I suppose
you won't pretend that he is always well done in your countries.
When he's not, the less of him the better. It's very much the same,
however, with the system on which the young girls in this country
are brought up. (You see, I have to come back to the young girls.)
When it succeeds, they are the most charming possible; when it
doesn't, the failure is disastrous. If a girl is a very nice girl,
the American method brings her to great completeness--makes all her
graces flower; but if she isn't nice, it makes her exceedingly
disagreeable--elaborately and fatally perverts her. In a word, the
American girl is rarely negative, and when she isn't a great success
she is a great warning. In nineteen cases out of twenty, among the
people who know how to live--I won't say what THEIR proportion is--
the results are highly satisfactory. The girls are not shy, but I
don't know why they should be, for there is really nothing here to
be afraid of. Manners are very gentle, very humane; the democratic
system deprives people of weapons that every one doesn't equally
possess. No one is formidable; no one is on stilts; no one has
great pretensions or any recognised right to be arrogant. I think
there is not much wickedness, and there is certainly less cruelty
than with you. Every one can sit; no one is kept standing. One is
much less liable to be snubbed, which you will say is a pity. I
think it is to a certain extent; but, on the other hand, folly is
less fatuous, in form, than in your countries; and as people
generally have fewer revenges to take, there is less need of their