We lack temperament; we don't know how to live; _nous ne
savons pas vivre_, as they say here. The American temperament is
represented (putting myself aside, and I often think that my temperament
is not at all American) by a young girl and her mother, and another young
girl without her mother--without her mother or any attendant or appendage
whatever. These young girls are rather curious types; they have a
certain interest, they have a certain grace, but they are disappointing
too; they don't go far; they don't keep all they promise; they don't
satisfy the imagination. They are cold, slim, sexless; the physique is
not generous, not abundant; it is only the drapery, the skirts and
furbelows (that is, I mean in the young lady who has her mother) that are
abundant. They are very different: one of them all elegance, all
expensiveness, with an air of high fashion, from New York; the other a
plain, pure, clear-eyed, straight-waisted, straight-stepping maiden from
the heart of New England. And yet they are very much alike too--more
alike than they would care to think themselves for they eye each other
with cold, mistrustful, deprecating looks.
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