come to Europe "to try," as she says, "for herself." It is the doctrine
of universal experience professed with a cynicism that is really most
extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of
considerable education, appears to me to be the judgment of a society.

Another observation which pushes me to the same induction--that of the
premature vitiation of the American population--is the attitude of the
Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. There is
another young lady here, who is less abnormally developed than the one I
have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar
combination of incompleteness and effeteness. These three persons look
with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has
repeatedly taken me apart and assured me, secretly, that he or she only
is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost
itself before it has been fixed--what can you look for from this?

Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house, who hate
all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions
and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and you will, I think,
hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and
internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to consume
itself; and that with its decline the prospect of general pervasiveness,
to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of
the Fatherland!




CHAPTER IX