A Bundle of Letters | Page 7

fussy, as you know, and his
first idea, as soon as he found he should have to go back, was that we
should go back with him. He declared he would never leave us in Paris
alone, and that we must return and come out again. I don't know what
he thought would happen to us; I suppose he thought we should be too
extravagant. It's father's theory that we are always running up bills,
whereas a little observation would show him that we wear the same old
RAGS FOR MONTHS. But father has no observation; he has nothing
but theories. Mother and I, however, have, fortunately, a great deal of
PRACTICE, and we succeeded in making him understand that we
wouldn't budge from Paris, and that we would rather be chopped into
small pieces than cross that dreadful ocean again. So, at last, he decided

to go back alone, and to leave us here for three months. But, to show
you how fussy he is, he refused to let us stay at the hotel, and insisted
that we should go into a FAMILY. I don't know what put such an idea
into his head, unless it was some advertisement that he saw in one of
the American papers that are published here.
There are families here who receive American and English people to
live with them, under the pretence of teaching them French. You may
imagine what people they are--I mean the families themselves. But the
Americans who choose this peculiar manner of seeing Paris must be
actually just as bad. Mother and I were horrified, and declared that
main force should not remove us from the hotel. But father has a way
of arriving at his ends which is more efficient than violence. He worries
and fusses; he "nags," as we used to say at school; and, when mother
and I are quite worn out, his triumph is assured. Mother is usually worn
out more easily than I, and she ends by siding with father; so that, at
last, when they combine their forces against poor little me, I have to
succumb. You should have heard the way father went on about this
"family" plan; he talked to every one he saw about it; he used to go
round to the banker's and talk to the people there- -the people in the
post-office; he used to try and exchange ideas about it with the waiters
at the hotel. He said it would be more safe, more respectable, more
economical; that I should perfect my French; that mother would learn
how a French household is conducted; that he should feel more easy,
and five hundred reasons more. They were none of them good, but that
made no difference. It's all humbug, his talking about economy, when
every one knows that business in America has completely recovered,
that the prostration is all over, and that immense fortunes are being
made. We have been economising for the last five years, and I
supposed we came abroad to reap the benefits of it.
As for my French, it is quite as perfect as I want it to be. (I assure you I
am often surprised at my own fluency, and, when I get a little more
practice in the genders and the idioms, I shall do very well in this
respect.) To make a long story short, however, father carried his point,
as usual; mother basely deserted me at the last moment, and, after
holding out alone for three days, I told them to do with me what they
pleased! Father lost three steamers in succession by remaining in Paris
to argue with me. You know he is like the schoolmaster in Goldsmith's

"Deserted Village"--"e'en though vanquished, he would argue still." He
and mother went to look at some seventeen families (they had got the
addresses somewhere), while I retired to my sofa, and would have
nothing to do with it. At last they made arrangements, and I was
transported to the establishment from which I now write you. I write
you from the bosom of a Parisian menage--from the depths of a
second-rate boarding-house.
Father only left Paris after he had seen us what he calls comfortably
settled here, and had informed Madame de Maisonrouge (the mistress
of the establishment--the head of the "family") that he wished my
French pronunciation especially attended to. The pronunciation, as it
happens, is just what I am most at home in; if he had said my genders
or my idioms there would have been some sense. But poor father has
no tact, and this defect is especially marked since he has been in
Europe. He will be absent, however, for three months, and mother and I
shall breathe more freely; the situation will be less intense. I