Miss Pandora. To mention that this impulse took effect without
mentioning sundry other of his current impressions with which it had
nothing to do is perhaps to violate proportion and give a false
idea; but to pass it by would be still more unjust. The Germans, as
we know, are a transcendental people, and there was at last an
irresistible appeal for Vogelstein in this quick bright silent girl
who could smile and turn vocal in an instant, who imparted a rare
originality to the filial character, and whose profile was delicate
as she bent it over a volume which she cut as she read, or presented
it in musing attitudes, at the side of the ship, to the horizon they
had left behind. But he felt it to be a pity, as regards a possible
acquaintance with her, that her parents should be heavy little
burghers, that her brother should not correspond to his conception
of a young man of the upper class, and that her sister should be a
Daisy Miller en herbe. Repeatedly admonished by Mrs. Dangerfield,
the young diplomatist was doubly careful as to the relations he
might form at the beginning of his sojourn in the United States.
That lady reminded him, and he had himself made the observation in
other capitals, that the first year, and even the second, is the
time for prudence. One was ignorant of proportions and values; one
was exposed to mistakes and thankful for attention, and one might
give one's self away to people who would afterwards be as a
millstone round one's neck: Mrs. Dangerfield struck and sustained
that note, which resounded in the young man's imagination. She
assured him that if he didn't "look out" he would be committing
himself to some American girl with an impossible family. In
America, when one committed one's self, there was nothing to do but
march to the altar, and what should he say for instance to finding
himself a near relation of Mr. and Mrs. P. W. Day?--since such were
the initials inscribed on the back of the two chairs of that couple.