always tippling.

The men of high birth or renown for social success belonging, my dear
father, to your time, are still distinguished by an air of good
breeding, by a style of conversation more or less polished and not
without evidences of literary culture, from men of the same rank in my
generation, who appear to pride themselves on respecting nobody and
knowing nothing, not even grammar. Still we are assured that the
world goes on steadily improving. /That/ new idea is in full vigour.

Society in the concrete has become wonderfully conceited as to its own
progressive excellences, and the individuals who form the concrete
entertain the same complacent opinion of themselves. There are, of
course, even in my brief and imperfect experience, many exceptions to
what appear to me the prevalent characteristics of the rising
generation in "society." Of these exceptions I must content myself
with naming the most remarkable. /Place aux dames/, the first I name
is Cecilia Travers. She and her father are now in town, and I meet
them frequently. I can conceive no civilized era in the world which a
woman like Cecilia Travers would not grace and adorn, because she is
essentially the type of woman as man likes to imagine woman; namely,
on the fairest side of the womanly character. And I say "woman"
rather than "girl," because among "Girls of the Period" Cecilia
Travers cannot be classed. You might call her damsel, virgin, maiden,
but you could no more call her girl than you could call a well-born
French demoiselle /fille/. She is handsome enough to please the eye
of any man, however fastidious, but not that kind of beauty which
dazzles all men too much to fascinate one man; for--speaking, thank
Heaven, from mere theory--I apprehend that the love for woman has in
it a strong sense of property; that one requires to individualize