rue, however far one may in reality fall
short of it.

Imagine a society composed of a leisure class with more or less
intellectual tastes; men eminent in science and letters; men less
eminent, whose success depended largely upon their social gifts, and
clever women supremely versed in the art of pleasing, who were the
intelligent complements of these men; add a universal talent for
conversation, a genius for the amenities of social life, habits of daily
intercourse, and manners formed upon an ideal of generosity, amiability,
loyalty, and urbanity; consider, also, the fact that the journals and
the magazines, which are so conspicuous a feature of modern life, were
practically unknown; that the salons were centers in which the affairs
of the world were discussed, its passing events noted--and the power of
these salons may be to some extent comprehended.

The reason, too, why it is idle to dream of reproducing them today on
American soil will be readily seen. The forms may be repeated, but the
vitalizing spirit is not there. We have no leisure class that finds its
occupation in this pleasant daily converse. Our feverish civilization
has not time for it. We sit in our libraries and scan the news of the
world, instead of gathering it in the drawing rooms of our friends.
Perhaps we read and think more, but we talk less, and conversation is
a relaxation rather than an art. The ability to think aloud, easily and
gracefully, is not eminently an Anglo-Saxon gift, though there are many
individual exceptions to this limitation. Our social life is largely a
form, a whirl, a commercial relation, a display, a duty, the result of
external accretion, not of internal growth. It is not in any sense a
unity, nor an expression of our best intellectual life; this seeks other
channels. Men are immersed in business and politics, and prefer the
easy, less exacting atmosphere of the club. The woman who aspires to
hold a salon is confronted at the outset by this formidable rival.
She is a queen without a kingdom, presiding over a fluctuating circle
without homogeneity, and composed largely of women--a fact in itself
fatal to the true esprit de societe. It is true we have our literary
coteries, but they are apt to savor too much of the library; we
take them too seriously, and bring into them too strong a flavor
of personality. We find in them, as a rule, little trace of the
spontaneity, the variety, the wit, the originality, the urbanity,
the p