selfish by tradition, as the American women must be, and wildly generous
by nature, as they nearly always are; and infinitely superior to her
husband in cultivation, as is commonly the case with them. As he knows
nothing but business, he thinks it is the only thing worth knowing, and
he looks down on the tastes and interests of her more intellectual life
with amiable contempt, as something almost comic. She respects business,
too, and so she does not despise his ignorance as you would suppose; it
is at least the ignorance of a business-man, who must have something in
him beyond her ken, or else he would not be able to make money as he
does.

With your greater sense of humor, I think you would be amused if you
could see his smile of placid self-satisfaction as he listens to our
discussion of questions and problems which no more enter his daily life
than they enter the daily life of an Eskimo; but I do not find it
altogether amusing myself, and I could not well forgive it, if I did not
know that he was at heart so simple and good, in spite of his
commerciality. But he is sweet and kind, as the American men so often
are, and he thinks his wife is the delightfulest creature in the world,
as the American husband nearly always does. They have several times asked
me to dine with them _en famille;_ and, as a matter of form, he
keeps me a little while with him after dinner, when she has left the
table, and smokes his cigar, after wondering why we do not smoke in
Altruria; but I can see that he is impatient to get to her in their
drawing-room, where we find her reading a book in the crimson light of
the canopied lamp, and where he presently falls silent, perfectly happy
to be near her. The drawing-room is of a good size itself, and it has a
room opening out of it called the library, with a case of books in it,
and Mrs. Makely's piano-forte. The place is rather too richly and densely
rugged, and there is rather more curtaining and shading of the windows