dress with a new season, she seemed to have made a concession to the
philosophy of the place.

It is the same with matters of speech, choice of words and ideas, as
it is with matters of feeling. The mind can rust as well as the body
if it is not rubbed up in Paris; but the thing on which provincialism
most sets its stamp is gesture, gait, and movement; these soon lose
the briskness which Paris constantly keeps alive. The provincial is
used to walk and move in a world devoid of accident or change, there
is nothing to be avoided; so in Paris she walks on as raw recruits do,
never remembering that there may be hindrances, for there are none in
her way in her native place, where she is known, where she is always
in her place, and every one makes way for her. Thus she loses all the
charm of the unforeseen.

And have you ever noticed the effect on human beings of a life in
common? By the ineffaceable instinct of simian mimicry they all tend
to copy each other. Each one, without knowing it, acquires the
gestures, the tone of voice, the manner, the attitudes, the very
countenance of others. In six years Dinah had sunk to the pitch of the
society she lived in. As she acquired Monsieur de Clagny's ideas she
assumed his tone of voice; she unconsciously fell into masculine
manners from seeing none but men; she fancied that by laughing at what
was ridiculous in them she was safe from catching it; but, as often
happens, some hue of what she laughed at remained in the grain.

A Parisian woman sees so many examples of good taste that a contrary
result ensues. In Paris women learn to seize the hour and moment when
they may appear to advantage; while Madame de la Baudraye, accustomed
to take the stage, acquired an indefinable theatrical and domineering