personages, man and woman, as they are and as he is
about to meet them in society. He has no idea of them, or rather he has
only a preconceived, arbitrary and false conception of them.--He has
not dined, commonly, with a lady, head of the house, along with her
daughters and often with other ladies; their tone of voice, their
deportment at table, their toilette, their greater reserve, the
attentions they receive, the air of politeness all around, have not
impressed on his imagination the faintest lines of an exact notion;
hence, there is something wanting in him in relation to how he
should demean himself; he does not know how to address them, feels
uncomfortable in their presence; they are strange beings to him, new,
of an unknown species.--In a like situation, at table in the evening,
he has never heard men conversing together: he has not gathered in the
thousand bits of information which a young growing mind derives from
general conversation:

* about careers in life, competition, business, money, the domestic
fireside and expenses;

* about the cost of living which should always depend on income;

* about the gain which nearly always indicates the current rates of
labor and of the social subjection one undergoes;

* about the pressing, powerful, personal interests which are soon to
seize him by the collar and perhaps by the throat;

* about the constant effort required the incessant calculation, the
daily struggle which, in modern society, makes up the life of an
ordinary man.

All means of obtaining knowledge have been denied him, the contact with
living and diverse men, the images which the sensations of his eyes and
ears might have stamped on his brain. These images constitute the sole
materials of a correct, healthy conception; through them, spontaneously
and gradually, without too many deceptions or shocks, he might
have figured social life to himself, such as it is, its conditions,
difficulties, and its opportunities: he has neither the sentiment of it
nor even a premonition. In all matters, that which we call common sense
is never but an involuntary latent summary, the lasting, substantial
and salutary depot left in our minds after many direct impressions.
With reference to social life, he has been deprived of all these direct
impressions and the precious depot has never been formed in him.--e He
has scarcely ever conversed with his professors; their talk with him has
been about impersonal and abstract