nly men who have it here in New
York, although lots are very good looking and intelligent, and all are
kind; but there is a didactic way of talking, a complete absence of
subtlety or romance.--And even those it would be perfectly safe to go
with; because they would not dream of making love to one, but they have the
igniting quality in themselves. Some of the elder men over forty are really
attractive and intensely clever, but as everyone is married, one would
always have the bore of the wives' frowns if one played with them. How I do
wander from what I was telling you!

Tom came with us to the Stock Exchange. We have to leave him at home when
we go to the women's lunches, but he spends the time with Valerie Latour,
and in the late afternoons he goes to the Clubs with the husbands, and he
says they are awfully good fellows and many brilliantly amusing, and full
of common sense; but at some of the clubs they have not got any unwritten
laws as to manners, so now and then when they get rather drunk, they are
astonishingly rude to one another. It is not considered a great disgrace
for a young man to get tipsy here; the slang for it is to get "full." There
are two grades, "fresh" and "full." When you are "fresh" you are just
breezy and what we would call "above yourself;" but when you are "full,"
you can't speak plain, and are sometimes unsteady on your feet, so it is
very unpleasant. You can be "fresh," too, without having drunk anything, if
you have an uppish nature. Octavia and I were perfectly astonished the
first time we heard it spoken of. A rather nice looking boy who was at
dinner had apparently been "full" the night before, and the women on both
sides of him chaffed him and scolded him as if it were a joke. I am glad it
is still considered a disgrace in England, because when it does occur it is
kept out of sight.

After the Stock Exchange we went to see the workings of one of the great
journals. That was too wonderful, Mamma, everything happening in a vast
room on one floor; compositing, typewriting, printing, and sorting. It is
astonishing the tremendous power of concentrating the will to be able to
think in that flurry and noise;--hundreds of clean-shaven young men in
shirt-sleeves smoking cigars or cigarettes and doing their various duties.
The types interested us so; physiognomy counts for nothing,
apparently,--faces that might have been the first Napoleon or Tennyson or
even Shakespeare,--doing the simple manual