I often blush for the cheap Americans with loud voices and provincial
speech, and general commonness, whom one meets over here; but with all
their faults they cannot approach the vulgarities at table which I
have seen in Paris. In all America we have no such vulgar institution
as their _rince-bouche_--an affair resembling a two-part finger-bowl,
with the water in a cup in the middle. At fashionable tables, men and
women in gorgeous clothes, who speak four or five languages, actually
rinse their mouths and gargle at the table, and then slop the water
thus used back into these bowls. The first time I saw this I do assure
you I would not have been more astonished if the next course had been
stomach pumps.
And as for the toothpick habit! Let no one ever tell me that that
atrocity is American! Here it goes with every course, and without the
pretended decency of holding one's _serviette_ before one's mouth,
which, in my opinion, is a mere affectation, and aggravates the
offence.
But the most shameless thing in all Europe is the marriage question.
To talk with intelligent, clever, thinking men and women, who know the
secret history of all the famous international marriages, as well as
the high contracting parties, who will relate the price paid for the
husband, and who the intermediary was, and how much commission he or
she received, is to make you turn faint and sick at the mere thought,
especially if you happen to come from a country where they once fought
to abolish the buying and selling of human beings.
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