They can't stand any chaff, she said, and if a stranger
dares to make any criticism of Americans to them, they are up in arms at
once and tear them to pieces! "Now, you in old countries, are amused or
supremely indifferent if foreigners laugh at you," she said, "as we are in
the South, but our parvenues in the East haven't got to that plane yet, and
resent the slightest show of criticism or raillerie. You see they are not
quite sure of themselves." Isn't that quaint of them, Mamma?
Then she asked me to look round the table and to tell her if I had ever
seen a better looking set of women, and of course I had not; they were
really charming and so exquisitely dressed, and the apparently most
aristocratic of all she told me was the daughter of a Western miner and an
English housemaid! And she even had a soft, sweet voice. I talked to her
afterwards. Is it not too wonderful to think of what such parentage would
make English people look! It must be climate and that splendid go ahead
vitality--whatever it is, I do admire it. And as Mrs. Van
Brounker-Courtfield seemed so human and not touchy I asked her why a number
of the New York men did not appear to have caught the same appearance of
wonderful refinement and breeding, and she said because the sort of life a
man leads makes him look what he does far more than blood, and that the few
that lived the life of English gentlemen looked like them, just as the rest
who live the life of our city clerks look like them, minus our City clerks'
Saturday interest in sport, and plus the cocktail.
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