nments, her domestic establishment is a sort of social exchange,
where more friendships are formed, more real acquaintance made, and more
agreeable hours spent, than in any other place that can be named. She
never has large parties,--great general pay-days of social debts,--but
small, well-chosen circles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a
view to the pleasure which congenial persons give each other, as to make
the invitation an act of real personal kindness. She always manages to
have something for the entertainment of her friends, so that they are
not reduced to the simple alternatives of gaping at each other's dresses
and eating lobster-salad and ice-cream. There is either some choice
music, or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or a
portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the hour and start
conversation; and as the people are skilfully chosen with reference to
each other, as there is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in
its best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and sparkling as a
woodland spring, and one goes away really rested and refreshed. The
slight entertainment provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt
together in Arab fashion,--not enough to form the leading feature of the
evening. A cup of tea and a basket of cake, or a salver of ices,
silently passed at quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or
overload the stomach."

"The fact is," said I, "that the art of society among us Anglo-Saxons is
yet in its ruder stages. We are not, as a race, social and confiding,
like the French and Italians and Germans. We have a word for home, and
our home is often a moated grange, an island, a castle with its
drawbridge up, cutting us off from all but our own home-circle. In
France and Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and public
gardens, where people do their family living in common. Mr. A is
breakfasting under one tree, with wife and children around, and Mr. B is
breakfasting under another tree, hard by; and messages, nods, and smiles
pass backward and forward. Families see each other daily in these public
resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these
customs of society come that naive simplicity and _abandon_ which one
remarks in the Continental, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of
conversation. A Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feelings
and plans and prospects with an unreserve that is perfectly