lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the
dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever
since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If
people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our
women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them
how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot
tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those
missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into
this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let
fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:
“In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
the weaknesses of the French soul.”
You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession;
a science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high
Parisian existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if
it can be taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those
pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the
education which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene
summits of our high Parisian life.
I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have
been parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider
the Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is
“American”; and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is “American.”
I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not
American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations,
for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has
existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out
of all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this
opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on
tolerably long credit for ten months’ savings out of his wages, and
reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he
gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no
matter what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or
China if he had had the same chance.
In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble
worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money
risked in a stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no
matter what his or her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.
But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
almost an unknown thing–and has been, from the beginning.
Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of
the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720–time of Law and the Mississippi
Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a