Lippincotts Magazine, August 1873 | Page 5

morning, harmonized with paste from a dozen newspapers.
Our grand national effort, I may say, the common principle that binds
us together as a Colony, is to forget that we are Americans. We
accordingly give our whole intellects to the task of appearing like
Europeans: our women succeed in this particularly well. Miss Yuba
Sequoia Smith, whose father made a fortune in water-rights, is now
afraid to walk a single block without the attendance of a chambermaid
in a white cap, though she came up from California quite alone by the
old Panama route. Everybody agrees that our ladies dress well. Shall I
soon forget how proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when a gentleman of the
emperor's body-guard took her for Marguerite Bellanger in the Bois?
Our men, not having the culture of costume to attend to, are perhaps a
little in want of a stand-point. Still, we can play billiards in the Grand
Hôtel and buy fans at the Palais Royal. We go out to Saint-Cloud on
horseback, we meet at the minister's; and I contend that there was
something conciliatory and national in a Southern colonel offering to
take Bigelow to see Menken at the Gaîté, or when I saw some West
Pointers and a nephew of Beauregard's lighting the pipe of peace at a
handsome tobacconist's in the Rue Saint-Honoré. The consciousness

that we have no longer a nationality, and that nobody respects us, adds
a singular calm, an elevation, to our views. Composed as our cherished
little society is of crumbs from every table under heaven, we have
succeeded in forming a way of life where the crusty fortitude and
integrity of patriotism is unnecessary. Our circle is like the green palace
of the magpies in Musset's _Merle Blanc_, and like them we live "de
plaisir, d'honneur, de bavardage, de gloire et de chiffons."
[Illustration: THE FERRY.]
[Illustration: JOVE'S THUNDER.]
I confess that there was a period, between the fresh alacrity of a
stranger's reception in the Colony and the settled habits I have now
fallen into, when I was rather uneasy. A society of migrators, a system
woven upon shooting particles, like a rainbow on the rain, was odd.
Residents of some permanency, like myself, were constantly forming
eternal friendships with people who wrote to them in a month or two
from Egypt. In this way a quantity of my friendships were miserably
lacerated, until I learned by practice just how much friendship to give.
At this period I was much occupied with vain conciliations,
concessions and the reconciling of inconsistencies. A brave American
from the South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, was a powerful advocate
of State Rights, and advocated them so well that I was almost
convinced; when it appeared one day that the right of States to
individual action was to cease in cases where a living chattel was to
escape from the South to the North.
[Illustration: SCHOOL.]
In this case the State, in violation of its own laws unrecognizant of that
kind of ownership, was to account for the property and give it back, in
obedience to general Congressional order and to the most advanced
principles of Centralization. Before I had digested this pill another was
administered to me in that small English section of our circle which
gave us much pride and an occasional son-in-law. This was by no less a
person than my dear old friend Berkley, now grown a ruddy
sexagenarian, but still given to eating breakfast in his bath-tub. The
wealthy Englishman, who had got rich by exporting china ware, was
sound on the subject of free commerce between nations. That any
industry, no matter how young might be the nation practicing it, or how
peculiar the difficulties of its prosecution, should ever be the subject of

home protection, he stamped as a fallacy too absurd to be argued. The
journals venturing such an opinion were childish drivelers, putting forth
views long since exploded before the whole world. He was still loud in
this opinion when his little book of epigrams, _The Raven of Zurich
and Other Rhymes_, came out, and being bright and saucy was
reprinted in America. The knowledge that he could not tax on a foreign
soil his own ideas, the plastic pottery of his brain, was quite too much
for his mental balance, and he took to inveighing against free trade in
literary manufactures without the slightest perception of inconsistency,
and with all the warmth, if not the eloquence, of Mr. Dickens on the
same theme. The gradual accumulation of subjects like these--subjects
taboo in gentle society--soon made it apparent that in a Colony of such
diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot or a grievance, and
even the Cinderellas had corns in their little slippers, harmony could
only be obtained by