If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you–can teach us.
–[“What could France teach America!” exclaims Mark Twain. France can
teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic
feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many
avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not
perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that
money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that
wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by
whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards,
and Mark Twain’s ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.
I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
Twain remark to this: ‘An American is not such a fool: when a creditor
stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following
day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
business?”]– It is a good answer.
It relates to manners, customs, and morals–three things concerning which
we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly
as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a
detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay
evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly
facts? –facts in everybody’s reach, facts which none can dispute.
I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself
pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too,
when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes
which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness
than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and
surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to
elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing
the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass
business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful
people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us–but
enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us?
She can teach us all the fine arts–and does. She throws open her
hospitable art academies, and says to us, “Come”–and we come, troops and
troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters
in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that
we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with
prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and
when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home
and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come
with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill–there is nothing
to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America
do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue,
something to refute–but you persistently won’t. You leave good chances