t is leaves me nothing
to combat; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?
If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished
a general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach
us.--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France
can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more
artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in
many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not
perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that
money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her
that wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome
influence by their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without
bumptiousness. These qualities, added to the highest standard of
morality (not angular and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded
to Frenchwomen by whoever knows something of French life outside of the
Paris boulevards, and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much
as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor
stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following
day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
business?']--It is a good answer.

It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning
which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so
the verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly
as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a
detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay
evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly
facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. I
asked what France could teach us about go