Lady Barbarina Part 56

I've had a good deal of intercourse with them, because I've felt more free to talk to them than to the Americans-on account of the language.

They often don't understand mine, and then it's as if I had to learn theirs to explain.

I never supposed when I left Bangor that I was coming to Europe to improve in _our_ old language-and yet I feel I can. If I do get where I _may_ in it I guess you'll scarcely understand me when I get back, and I don't think you'll particularly see the point. I'd be a good deal criticised if I spoke like that at Bangor. However, I verily believe Bangor's the most critical place on earth; I've seen nothing like it over here. Well, tell them I'll give them about all they can do. But I was speaking about this English young lady and her brother; I wish I could put them before you. She's lovely just to see; she seems so modest and retiring. In spite of this, however, she dresses in a way that attracts great attention, as I couldn't help noticing when one day I went out to walk with her. She was ever so much more looked at than what I'd have thought she'd like; but she didn't seem to care, till at last I couldn't help calling attention to it. Mr. Leverett thinks everything of it; he calls it the "costume of the future." I'd call it rather the costume of the past-you know the English have such an attachment to the past. I said this the other day to Madame de Maisonrouge-that Miss Vane dressed in the costume of the past. De l'an pa.s.se, vous voulez dire? she asked in her gay French way. (You can get William Platt to translate this; he used to tell me he knows so much French.)

You know I told you, in writing some time ago, that I had tried to get some insight into the position of woman in England, and, being here with Miss Vane, it has seemed to me to be a good opportunity to get a little more. I've asked her a great deal about it, but she doesn't seem able to tell me much. The first time I asked her she said the position of a lady depended on the rank of her father, her eldest brother, her husband-all on somebody else; and they, as to their position, on something quite else (than themselves) as well. She told me her own position was very good because her father was some relation-I forget what-to a lord. She thinks everything of this; and that proves to me their standing can't be _really_ good, because if it were it wouldn't be involved in that of your relations, even your nearest. I don't know much about lords, and it does try my patience-though she's just as sweet as she can live-to hear her talk as if it were a matter of course I should.

I feel as if it were right to ask her as often as I can if she doesn't consider every one equal; but she always says she doesn't, and she confesses that she doesn't think _she's_ equal to Lady Something-or-Other, who's the wife of that relation of her father. I try and persuade her all I can that she _is_; but it seems as if she didn't want to be persuaded, and when I ask her if that superior being is of the same opinion-that Miss Vane isn't her equal-she looks so soft and pretty with her eyes and says "How can she not be?" When I tell her that this is right down bad for the other person it seems as if she wouldn't believe me, and the only answer she'll make is that the other person's "awfully nice." I don't believe she's nice at all; if she were nice she wouldn't have such ideas as that. I tell Miss Vane that at Bangor we think such ideas vulgar, but then she looks as though she had never heard of Bangor. I often want to shake her, though she _is_ so sweet. If she isn't angry with the people who make her feel that way at least I'm angry _for_ her. I'm angry with her brother too, for she's evidently very much afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight into the subject.

She thinks everything of her brother; she thinks it natural she should be afraid of him not only physically-for that is natural, as he's enormously tall and strong, and has very big fists-but morally and intellectually.

She seems unable, however, to take in any argument, and she makes me realise what I've often heard-that if you're timid nothing will reason you out of it.

Mr. Vane also, the brother, seems to have the same prejudices, and when I tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his sister's not his subordinate, even if she does think so, but his equal, and perhaps in some respects his superior, and that if my brother in Bangor were to treat me as he treats this charming but abject creature, who has not spirit enough to see the question in its true light, there would be an indignation-meeting of the citizens to protest against such an outrage to the sanct.i.ty of womanhood-when I tell him all this, at breakfast or dinner, he only bursts out laughing so loud that all the plates clatter on the table.

But at such a time as this there's always one person who seems interested in what I say-a German gentleman, a professor, who sits next to me at dinner and whom I must tell you more about another time. He's very learned, but wants to push further and further all the time; he appreciates a great many of my remarks, and after dinner, in the salon, he often comes to me to ask me questions about them. I have to think a little sometimes to know what I did say or what I do think. He takes you right up where you left off, and he's most as fond of discussing things as William Platt ever was. He's splendidly educated, in the German style, and he told me the other day that he was an "intellectual broom."

Well, if he is he sweeps clean; I told him that. After he has been talking to me I feel as if I hadn't got a speck of dust left in my mind anywhere. It's a most delightful feeling. He says he's a remorseless observer, and though I don't know about remorse-for a bright mind isn't a crime, is it?-I'm sure there's plenty over here to observe. But I've told you enough for to-day. I don't know how much longer I shall stay here; I'm getting on now so fast that it has come to seem sometimes as if I shouldn't need all the time I've laid out. I suppose your cold weather has promptly begun, as usual; it sometimes makes me envy you. The fall weather here is very dull and damp, and I often suffer from the want of bracing.

VI FROM MISS EVELYN VANE IN PARIS TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING AT BRIGHTON

PARIS, _September_ 30.

DEAR LADY AUGUSTA,

I'm afraid I shall not be able to come to you on January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I'm so very very sorry; it's an immense disappointment. But I've just heard that it has been settled that mamma and the children come abroad for a part of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to Hyeres, where Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she's very poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors. They all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn't agree about the place; so that mamma herself decided for Hyeres, because it's the most economical. I believe it's very dull, but I hope it will do Georgina good. I'm afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until she consents to take more care of herself; I'm afraid she's very wild and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa's positive orders to make her stop indoors. She's very cross (mamma writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn't seem at all to mind the expense papa has been put to-talks very ill-naturedly about her loss of the hunting and even perhaps of the early spring meetings. She expected to begin to hunt in December and wants to know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyeres. Fancy that rot when she's too ill to sit a horse or to go anywhere. But I daresay that when she gets there she'll be glad enough to keep quiet, as they say the heat's intense. It may cure Georgina, but I'm sure it will make the rest of us very ill.

Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred and Adelaide abroad with her: the others will remain at Kingscote till February (about the 3rd) when they'll go to Eastbourne for a month with Miss Turnover, the new governess, who has proved such a very nice person. She's going to take Miss Travers, who has been with us so long, but is only qualified for the younger children, to Hyeres, and I believe some of the Kingscote servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T.; it's only a pity the poor woman has such an odd name. Mamma thought of asking her if she would mind taking another when she came; but papa thought she might object. Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name; she gives 5 more a year for the purpose. I forget what it is she calls them; I think it's Johnson (which to me always suggests a lady's maid).

Governesses shouldn't have too pretty a name-they shouldn't have a nicer name than the family.

I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I didn't go back to England with them. When it began to be talked about that Georgina should be taken abroad mamma wrote to me that I had better stop in Paris for a month with Harold, so that she could pick me up on their way to Hyeres.

It saves the expense of my journey to Kingscote and back, and gives me the opportunity to "finish" a little in French.

You know Harold came here six weeks ago to get up his French for those dreadful exams that he has to pa.s.s so soon. He came to live with some French people that take in young men (and others) for this purpose; it's a kind of coaching-place, only kept by women. Mamma had heard it was very nice, so she wrote to me that I was to come and stop here with Harold. The Desmonds brought me and made the arrangement or the bargain or whatever you call it. Poor Harold was naturally not at all pleased, but he has been very kind and has treated me like an angel. He's getting on beautifully with his French, for though I don't think the place is so good as papa supposed, yet Harold is so immensely clever that he can scarcely help learning. I'm afraid I learn much less, but fortunately I haven't to go up for anything-unless perhaps to mamma if she takes it into her head to examine me. But she'll have so much to think of with Georgina that I hope this won't occur to her. If it does I shall be, as Harold says, in a dreadful funk.

This isn't such a nice place for a girl as for a gentleman, and the Desmonds thought it _exceedingly odd_ that mamma should wish me to come here. As Mrs. Desmond said, it's because she's so very unconventional.

But you know Paris is so very amusing, and if only Harold remains good-natured about it I shall be content to wait for the caravan-which is what he calls mamma and the children. The person who keeps the establishment, or whatever they call it, is rather odd and _exceedingly foreign_; but she's wonderfully civil and is perpetually sending to my door to see if I want anything. She's tremendously pretentious and of course isn't a lady. The servants are not at all like English ones and come bursting in, the footman-they've only one-and the maids alike, at all sorts of hours, in the _most sudden way_. Then when one rings it takes ages. Some of the food too is rather nasty. All of which is very uncomfortable, and I daresay will be worse at Hyeres. There, however, fortunately, we shall have our own people.

There are some very odd Americans here who keep throwing Harold into fits of laughter. One's a dreadful little man whom indeed he also wants to kick and who's always sitting over the fire and talking about the colour of the sky. I don't believe he ever saw the sky except through the window-pane. The other day he took hold of my frock-that green one you thought so nice at Homburg-and told me that it reminded him of the texture of the Devons.h.i.+re turf. And then he talked for half an hour about the Devons.h.i.+re turf, which I thought such a very extraordinary subject. Harold firmly believes him mad. It's rather horrid to be living in this way with people one doesn't know-I mean doesn't know as one knows them in England.

The other Americans, beside the madman, are two girls about my own age, one of whom is rather nice. She has a mother; but the mother always sits in her bedroom, which seems so very odd. I should like mamma to ask them to Kingscote, but I'm afraid mamma wouldn't like the mother, who's awfully vulgar. The other girl is awfully vulgar herself-she's travelling about quite alone. I think she's a middle-cla.s.s schoolmistress-sacked perhaps for some irregularity; but the other girl (I mean the nicer one, with the objectionable mother) tells me she's more respectable than she seems. She has, however, the most extraordinary opinions-wishes to do away with the aristocracy, thinks it wrong that Arthur should have Kingscote when papa dies, etc. I don't see what it signifies to her that poor Arthur should come into the property, which will be so delightful-except for papa dying. But Harold says she's mad too. He chaffs her tremendously about her radicalism, and he's so immensely clever that she can't answer him, though she has a supply of the most extraordinary big words.

There's also a Frenchman, a nephew or cousin or something of the person of the house, who's a horrid low cad; and a German professor or doctor who eats with his knife and is a great bore. I'm so very sorry about giving up my visit. I'm afraid you'll never ask me again.

VII FROM LeON VERDIER IN PARIS TO PROSPER GOBAIN AT LILLE

_September_ 28.

MON GROS VIEUX,

It's a long time since I've given you of my news, and I don't know what puts it into my head to-night to recall myself to your affectionate memory. I suppose it is that when we're happy the mind reverts instinctively to those with whom formerly we shared our vicissitudes, and _je t'en ai trop dit dans le bon temps_, _cher vieux_, and you always listened to me too imperturbably, with your pipe in your mouth and your waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, for me not to feel that I can count on your sympathy to-day. _Nous en sommes-nous flanques_, _des confidences_?-in those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure _poindre a l'horizon_ was of the pleasure I should have in relating it to the great Prosper. As I tell thee, I'm happy; decidedly _j'ai de la chance_, and from that avowal I trust thee to construct the rest. Shall I help thee a little? Take three adorable girls-three, my good Prosper, the mystic number, neither more nor less. Take them and place in the midst of them thy insatiable little Leon. Is the situation sufficiently indicated, or does the scene take more doing?

You expected perhaps I was going to tell thee I had made my fortune, or that the Uncle Blondeau had at last decided to recommit himself to the breast of nature after having const.i.tuted me his universal legatee. But I needn't remind you for how much women have always been in any happiness of him who thus overflows to you-for how much in any happiness and for how much more in any misery. But don't let me talk of misery now; time enough when it comes, when _ces demoiselles_ shall have joined the serried ranks of their amiable predecessors. Ah, I comprehend your impatience. I must tell you of whom _ces demoiselles_ consist.

You've heard me speak of my _cousine_ de Maisonrouge, that _grande belle femme_ who, after having married, _en secondes noces_-there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union-a venerable relic of the old n.o.blesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the crash of expensive tastes against an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins are ferociously _sages_. If you ask me how she managed it I can't tell you; it's no business of mine, and _a fortiori_ none of yours.

She's now fifty years old-she confesses to thirty-eight-and her daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen).

Three years ago she had the thrice-blest idea of opening a well-upholstered and otherwise attractive _asile_ for the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls from the _ecrin_ of Voltaire-or of Zola. The idea has brought her luck; the house does an excellent business. Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and improvements has caused itself to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has asked me to come and stay with her-board and lodging gratis-and correct the conversational exercises of her _pensionnaire_-pupils. I'm the extension, my good Prosper; I'm the improvement. She has enlarged the _personnel_-I'm the enlargement. I form the exemplary sounds that the prettiest English lips are invited to imitate. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good bargain for me.

Just now, as I told you, I'm in daily relation with three separate pairs.

The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra. My cousin doesn't give me a sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I'm not a loser by the arrangement. Also I'm well, very very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of these is a little Anglaise of twenty-a _figure de keepsake_; the most adorable miss you ever, or at least I ever, beheld. She's hung all over with beads and bracelets and amulets, she's embroidered all over like a sampler or a vestment; but her princ.i.p.al decoration consists of the softest and almost the hugest grey eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence-a confidence I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it pa.s.ses into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face-by which I mean that she blushes-as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane.

Like every Anglaise she's rather pinched and prim in public; but it's easy to see that when no one's looking _elle ne demande qu'a se laisser aller_! Whenever she wants it I'm always there, and I've given her to understand she can count upon me. I've reason to believe she appreciates the a.s.surance, though I'm bound in honesty to confess that with her the situation's a little less advanced than with the others. _Que voulez-vous_? The English are heavy and the Anglaises move slowly, that's all. The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact's established I can let the soup simmer, I can give her time to arrive, for I'm beautifully occupied with her compet.i.tors. _They_ don't keep me waiting, please believe.

These young ladies are Americans, and it belongs to that national character to move fast. "All right-go ahead!" (I'm learning a great deal of English, or rather a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. One of them's prettier than the other; but this latter-the one that takes the extra-private lessons-is really _une fille etonnante_. _Ah par exemple_, _elle brule ses vaisseaux_, _celle-la_! She threw herself into my arms the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering the place. For would you believe that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous? In the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre I admit; but that was respectable for a beginning, and since then we've had them by the dozen; I've ceased to keep the account. _Non_, _c'est une fille qui me depa.s.se_.

The other, the slighter but "smarter" little person-she has a mother somewhere out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk-is a good deal prettier, and perhaps on that account _elle y met plus de facons_. She doesn't knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents herself with long interviews in the _pet.i.t salon_, with the blinds half-drawn, beginning at about three o'clock, when every one is _a la promenade_.

She's admirable, _cette pet.i.te_, a little too immaterial, with the bones rather over-accentuated, yet of a detail, on the whole, most satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, rea.s.sures you completely-oh completely!

However, it's the big bouncer of the extra-private lessons who's the most remarkable. These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss Miranda! They also take place in the _pet.i.t salon_, but with the doors tightly closed and with explicit directions to every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed. And we're not, _mon gros_, we're not! Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousins are on the right track-such a house must make its fortune. Miss Miranda's too tall and too flat, with a certain want of coloration; she hasn't the transparent _rougeurs_ of the little Anglaise. But she has wonderful far-gazing eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which combines apparent innocence with complete a.s.surance in a way I've never seen equalled. She's making the _tour du monde_, entirely alone, without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself, seeing _a quoi s'en tenir sur les hommes et les choses_-on _les hommes_ particularly. _Dis donc_, _mon vieux_, it must be a _drole de pays_ over there, where such a view of the right thing for the aspiring young bourgeoises is taken. If we should turn the tables some day, thou and I, and go over and see it for ourselves? Why isn't it as well we should go and find them _chez elles_, as that they should come out here after us?

_Dis donc_, _mon gros Prosper_ . . . !

VIII FROM DR. RUDOLPH STAUB IN PARIS TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH AT GoTTINGEN

MY DEAR BROTHER IN SCIENCE,

I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding in it real matter. It was kept by a Pomeranian and the waiters without exception were from the Fatherland. I might as well have sat down with my note-book Unter den Linden, and I felt that, having come here for doc.u.mentation, or to put my finger straight upon the social pulse, I should project myself as much as possible into the circ.u.mstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its activities and intermittences. I saw there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of my getting a near view, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of forces, of the spontaneous home-life of the nation.

I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room here only, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement, though very clearly set out by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment-a woman with a mathematical head-and I have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the great chance that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the _taste_, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I've adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily-I mean the one I carry in my good square German head-and I'm not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I've prepared my surface.

Unfortunately here also I find the individual native in the minority.

There are only four French persons in the house-the individuals concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. Such a preponderance of the Weibliche is, however, in itself characteristic, as I needn't remind you what an abnormally-developed part this s.e.x has played in French history. The remaining figure is ostensibly that of a biped, and apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to allow him the whole benefit of the higher cla.s.sification. He strikes me as less human than simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy _homunculus_ form an accompaniment.

I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage in consequence of my unattenuated, even if not frivolously aggressive, Teutonism was to prove completely unfounded. No one seems either unduly conscious or affectedly unperceiving of my so rich Berlin background; I'm treated on the contrary with the positive civility which is the portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I've not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly.

My determination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates. I wished to catch in the fact the different forms taken by the irritation I should naturally produce; for it is under the influence of irritation that the French character most completely expresses itself. My presence, however, operates, as I say, less than could have been hoped as a stimulus, and in this respect I'm materially disappointed. They treat me as they treat every one else; whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to being treated worse. A further proof, if any were needed, of that vast and, as it were, fluid _waste_ (I have so often dwelt on to you) which attends the process of philosophic secretion. I've not, I repeat, fully explained to myself this logical contradiction; but this is the explanation to which I tend. The French are so exclusively occupied with the idea of themselves that in spite of the very definite image the German personality presented to them by the war of 1870 they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are not very sure that there _are_, concretely, any Germans; they have already forgotten the convincing proofs presented to them nine years ago. A German was something disagreeable and disconcerting, an irreducible ma.s.s, which they determined to keep out of their conception of things. I therefore hold we're wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the _revanche_; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom in it.

The English-speaking specimens, too, I've not been willing to neglect the opportunity to examine; and among these I've paid special attention to the American varieties, of which I find here several singular examples.

The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics of a period of national decadence; reminding me strongly of some diminutive h.e.l.lenised Roman of the third century. He's an ill.u.s.tration of the period of culture in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes a.n.a.logous to that of a malarious bog. I hear from him of the existence of an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the city of Boston indeed is almost exclusively composed of them. (He communicated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister impression it made on me.)

What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge-and you know what my knowledge is-unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having pa.s.sed through the mediate one; the pa.s.sage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans indeed the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is the one and which the other: they're inextricably confused. Homunculus for homunculus I prefer that of the Frenchman; he's at least more amusing.

It's interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the germs of extinction in the so-called powerful Anglo-Saxon family. I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I just mentioned in that the state of affirmation, faculty of production and capacity for action are things, in her, less inanimate; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation. But unfortunately she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Roman lady of the lower Empire. She makes no secret of them and has in fact worked out a complete scheme of experimental adventure, that is of personal licence, which she is now engaged in carrying out. As the opportunities she finds in her own country fail to satisfy her she has come to Europe "to try,"

as she says, "for herself." It's the doctrine of universal "unprejudiced" experience professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of considerable education, appears to me to be the judgement of a society.

Another observation which pushes me to the same induction-that of the premature vitiation of the American population-is the att.i.tude of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. I have before me a second flower of the same huge so-called democratic garden, who is less abnormally developed than the one I have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of the barbarous and, to apply to them one of their own favourite terms, the _ausgespielt_, the "played-out." These three little persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and a.s.sured me secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed-what can you look for from this?