If you happen to get bored with your husband, or he has a cold in his head,
or anything that gets on your nerves, or you suddenly fancy some other man,
you have not got all the bother and subterfuge of taking him for a lover
and chancing a scandal like in England. You simply get your husband to let
_you_ divorce _him,_ and make him give you heaps of money, and
you keep the children if you happen to want them; or--there is generally
only one--you agree to give that up for an extra million if he fancies it;
and then you go off and marry your young man when he is free; because all
American men are married, and he will have had to get his wife to divorce
him. But when it is all "through," then it is comfortable and tidy, only
the families get mixed after a while, and people have to be awfully careful
not to ask them out to dinner together. One little girl at a dancing class
is reported to have said to another: "What do you think of your new Papa? I
think he is a mean cuss. He gave me no candy when he was mine."

Octavia says, from a morality standard, she does not see there is the least
difference to our lovers in England and France, but I do, because here they
have the comforting sense of the law finding it all right. The only
tiresome part of it is, it must quite take away the zest of forbidden fruit
that European nations get out of such affairs.

Our bedrooms are marvels. Mine is immense, with two suites of impossible
rococo Louis XV. furniture in it; the richest curtains with heaps of
arranged draperies and fringe, grand writing table things, a few
embroidered cushions; but no new books, or comfy sofas, or look of cosy
anywhere. The bathrooms to each room are superb; miles beyond one's ideas
of them in general at home. Tom says he can't sleep because the embroidered
monograms on the pillows and things scratch his cheek, and the lace frills
tickle his nose, while he catches his toes in the Venetian insertion in the
sheets. The linen itself is the finest you ever saw, Mamma, and would be