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.

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:

"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
the weaknesses of the French soul."

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,
n