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<h2> WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US </h2>
<p>He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much does
he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his
parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon us—advertisedly
in our own special interest—a natural apprehension moves us to ask,
What is the diameter of his reflector?</p>
<p>I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the
newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a
whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that
our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon the
land.</p>
<p>"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well<br/>
timed."<br/>
<br/>
"He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and<br/>
profitably studied."<br/></p>
<p>These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to whether
so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as
70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and
pull it through without assistance.</p>
<p>I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,
and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly
tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there
was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became
more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up in my
mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his equipment? What
was his method?</p>
<p>He had gotten his equipment in France.</p>
<p>Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an
Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.
The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies
their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently able to
group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by nice
shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he labels all
those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group names, and is
now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result he intimately
knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true,
but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he had
the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant System, but subject to
error.</p>
<p>The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a
Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be
all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often
able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad
observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is
then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's chance
of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no more than
a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new ways which it will
prefer to its own.</p>
<p>To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply be
France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark—almost
Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing France, teach
us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading.
Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter.
Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date—1809.
Postal service? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy? No, we
taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. Magazining? No, that is our own
specialty. Government? No; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility,
Democracy, Adultery the system is too variegated for our climate.
Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot
rob the poor to enrich ourselves. Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the
others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing
left of the book.</p>
<p>I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?
But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as
well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They
feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that they
had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And
true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand,
because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are
pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
say, with little recurrent shivers of joy—subdued joy, so to speak,
not the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each
other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
interviewer: "It was severe—yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how
true it was; and it will do us so much good!"</p>
<p>If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed
to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know
ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be an
education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should understand
ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.</p>
<p>It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself—that
would be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug
to himself. But to explain the bug to the bug—that is quite a
different matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows
himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.</p>
<p>A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior—its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a
knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
or six—absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years
and years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
its adorations—of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the
national name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples
through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.</p>
<p>There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
life of a people and make a valuable report—the native novelist.
This expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have
fifteen conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time.
This native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been
absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is derived
from conscious "observation"? The amount is so slight that it counts for
next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital of the novelist
is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation—absorption. The
native expert's intentional observation of manners, speech, character, and
ways of life can have value, for the native knows what they mean without
having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be astonished to see a
foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the elusive shades of these
subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes a foreigner, with a
foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State whose life is
familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. Bret Harte got
his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put
both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to
the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study-conscious observation—his
failure was absolutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the
unacclimated observer, evidently.</p>
<p>To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize
the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life of
a few people grouped in a certain place—his own place—and that
is one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and
the people of the whole nation—the life of a group in a New England
village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;
in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty
States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in
a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to; and
the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the
Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the
Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the
Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the
Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the
Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists,
the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners. And
when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of
the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and not
anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, manners,
feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.</p>
<p>"'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its<br/>
vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.<br/>
'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',<br/>
and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the<br/>
church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the<br/>
suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite<br/>
sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the<br/>
great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of<br/>
Newport for those who choose to see it."—M. Paul Bourget.<br/></p>
<p>[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he has
undertaken. "Records" is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use of
it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is 'fastes'. I
think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he expected to find the great
"American soul" secreted behind the ostentations of Newport; and that he
was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and
psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: "the
nature of the people" of the United States of America. We have been
accused of being a nation addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust that
we shall be allowed to retire to second place now.</p>
<p>There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled
"American." There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend, or
drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles, or
breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a particular
subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or face or
expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or disposition,
or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can rationally be
generalized as "American."</p>
<p>Whenever you have found what seems to be an "American" peculiarity, you
have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social
scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can cross the
Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious drift, or
sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of face, but
there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west, where
you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with everything else
which one might propose to call "American." M. Bourget thinks he has found
the American Coquette. If he had really found her he would also have
found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in other lands in
the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the same ways and
impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette; I have seen her
in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels, and seen her twin in
foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours. He thought he saw her.
And so he applied his System to her. She was a Species. So he gathered a
number of samples of what seemed to be her, and put them under his glass,
and divided them into groups which he calls "types," and labeled them in
his usual scientific way with "formulas"—brief sharp descriptive
flashes that make a person blink, sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid.
As a rule they are pretty far-fetched, but that is not an important
matter; they surprise, they compel admiration, and I notice by some of the
comments which his efforts have called forth that they deceive the unwary.
Here are a few of the coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:</p>
<p>THE COLLECTOR.<br/>
THE EQUILIBREE.<br/>
THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.<br/>
THE BLUFFER.<br/>
THE GIRL-BOY.<br/></p>
<p>If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further and
furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his
note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the native
the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make that novel
and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any American can
tell him—any American to whom he will show his anecdotes. It was
"put up" on him, as we say. It was a jest—to be plain, it was a
series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and
contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. M.
Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a type
of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these
people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the
same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and
always the spirit of treachery.</p>
<p>In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted to
the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the
situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.</p>
<p>But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his
behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was
"significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the source
whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of conspiracy
against him almost from the start—a conspiracy to freight him up
with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could
invent.</p>
<p>The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they
did not excite his. Consider this:</p>
<p>"There is not in all the United States an entirely nude<br/>
statue."<br/></p>
<p>If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a
little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present
observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this
innocent comment:</p>
<p>"This small fact is strangely significant."<br/></p>
<p>It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.</p>
<p>Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of.
I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for
strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If
he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:</p>
<p>"If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he<br/>
is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in<br/>
a tribute."<br/></p>
<p>Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised;
one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be
ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a "tribute." I think a little
psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this: A dog
does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be ridiculed, a
negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like to be
ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this formula: the
American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of argument
stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for suspicion
that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and regards
it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.</p>
<p>I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour
intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves
them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a
mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American
girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any
other impossible riddle which a person wants answered.</p>
<p>It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Perhaps
one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German
gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The
nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two—the composed
Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in other
countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal with us,
but that is the case in some other countries. We have no monopoly of it;
it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a single specialty
with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name "American."
That is the national devotion to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but
the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither of those peoples is the
beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand alone in having a drink that
nobody likes but ourselves. When we have been a month in Europe we lose
our craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel folk that they needn't
provide it any more. Yet we hardly touch our native shore again, winter or
summer, before we are eager for it. The reasons for this state of things
have not been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and say no more.</p>
<p>It is my belief that there are some "national" traits and things scattered
about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have lived so
long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the dogma that
the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever since I arrived
in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts about that; and
before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a few random
statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If people are to
come over to America and find fault with our girls and our women, and
psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them how to
behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot tell them
from the French model, I intend to find out whether those missionaries are
qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into this detail before
engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let fall a remark which
renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:</p>
<p>"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied<br/>
to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all<br/>
the weaknesses of the French soul."<br/></p>
<p>You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession; a
science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high Parisian
existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if it can be
taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those pathetic,
neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the education
which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene summits of our
high Parisian life.</p>
<p>I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have been
parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider the
Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is "American"; and
that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is "American." I believe that
both of these things are merely and broadly human, not American monopolies
at all. The love of money is natural to all nations, for money is a good
and strong friend. I think that this love has existed everywhere, ever
since the Bible called it the root of all evil.</p>
<p>I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of
all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this
opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolerably
long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and reasonably
expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he gave for
them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no matter
what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or China if he
had had the same chance.</p>
<p>In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble worker
stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money risked in a
stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no matter what his or
her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.</p>
<p>But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
almost an unknown thing—and has been, from the beginning.</p>
<p>Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of the
Railroad King; France saw it in 1720—time of Law and the Mississippi
Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a
cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly
anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more "American" than
it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid
Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.</p>
<p>But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.
When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is peculiarly
and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when he encounters
a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person would merely
examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it go; but that
is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know why that thing
exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he will not let go of
it until he has found out. And in every instance he will find that reason
where no one but himself would have thought of looking for it. He does not
seem to care for a reason that is not picturesquely located; one might
almost say picturesquely and impossibly located.</p>
<p>He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have told
him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the
country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a
trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is not
particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
himself.</p>
<p>In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it
that protects her?</p>
<p>It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to M.
Bourget: "Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that a
marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the beginning,
have been made for love; and where love is there is no room for the
corruptor."</p>
<p>Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column—three
columns—and with artillery.</p>
<p>"Two reasons of a very different kind explain"—that fact.</p>
<p>And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not retreat
now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I am honest
and not trying to deceive any one.</p>
<p>1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer in
New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a
Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished adultery
with death.</p>
<p>2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.</p>
<p>If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing
Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.</p>
<p>1. This universality of "protection" has existed in our country from the
beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during all
the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.</p>
<p>2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
been thought of.</p>
<p>Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
"protected" by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare—what
is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000? They
were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy divorce
law to protect them.</p>
<p>Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking—hunting
for it in out-of-the-way places—was new; but that was an error. I
remember that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
which M. Bourget employs in his reasonings about American social facts and
their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was
caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure—by the
natural processes of animal decay—of the phosphorus contained in
them.</p>
<p>This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; and
he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the
locusts do like that in Egypt.</p>
<p>Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important
contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard
it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced
against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a
detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join their
several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards burned
at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.</p>
<p>These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that the
Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly flat.</p>
<p>As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in anecdotes."</p>
<p>Why? "In history they are all false"—a sufficiently broad statement—"in
literature all libelous"—also a sufficiently sweeping statement,
coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly
extravagant in our language—" and when it is a matter of social
life, "almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification, almost.
He has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes—mainly
"biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature," furnished by
his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did he mean not in literature or
anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not able to answer
that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have only the
translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had an
intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
side-tracked.</p>
<p>"But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces
appear to me to be most conclusive." And he sets himself the task of
explaining—in a couple of columns—the process by which
Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an
empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN 40 YEARS.
No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics he
forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.</p>
<p>I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but
I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was
not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually
dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with interest, for
I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in America,
but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it. I only know it
didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.</p>
<p>Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it
crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments
flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget
said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke all up. I remember
exploding its American countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon.
He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul-General—for the
United States, of course; but we were very intimate, notwithstanding the
difference in rank, for I waived that. One day something offered the
opening, and he said:</p>
<p>"Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American,
because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time he
can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his
grandfather was!"</p>
<p>I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
back at him as quick as a flash—"Right, your Excellency! But I
reckon a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because
when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out
who his father was!"</p>
<p>Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on! He
reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:</p>
<p>"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George, I never heard it
said so good in my life before! Say it again."</p>
<p>So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then
he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and
doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. In my
opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those dear old
ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh sort
of original way.</p>
<p>But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is
the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming
to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.</p>
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