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The Women of the French Salons by Amelia Ruth Gere Mason
page 151 of 311 (48%)
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
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