Miss X.--I think I have described her fully enough, but I shall add one passing thought. A little experience of Europe--considerable of its show places--had taught her, or convinced her rather, that America did not know how to live. You will hear much of that fact, I am afraid, during the rest of these pages, but it is especially important just here. My lady, prettily gowned, perfectly manicured, going to meet her lover at London or Fishguard or Liverpool, is absolutely satisfied that America does not know how to live. She herself has almost learned. She is most comfortably provided for at present. Anyhow, she has champagne every night at dinner. Her equipment in the matter of toilet articles and leather traveling bags is all that it should be. The latter are colored to suit her complexion and gowns. She is scented, polished, looked after, and all men pay her attention. She is vain, beautiful, and she thinks that America is raw, uncouth; that its citizens of whom she is one, do not know how to live. Quite so. Now we come to the point. It would be hard to describe this conversation. It began with some “have you been’s,” I think, and concerned eating-places and modes of entertainment in London, Paris and Monte Carlo. I gathered by degrees, that in London, Paris and elsewhere there were a hundred restaurants, a hundred places to live, each finer than the other. I heard of liberty of thought and freedom of action and pride of motion which made me understand that there is a free-masonry which concerns the art of living, which is shared only by the initiated. There was a world in which conventions, as to morals, have no place; in which ethics and religion are tabooed. Art is the point. The joys of this world are sex, beauty, food, clothing, art. I should say money, of course, but money is presupposed. You must have it. “Oh, I went to that place one day and then I was glad enough to get back to the Ritz at forty francs for my room.” She was talking of her room by the day, and the food, of course, was extra. The other hotel had been a little bit quiet or dingy. I opened my eyes slightly, for I thought Paris was reasonable; but not so--no more so than New York, I understood, if you did the same things. “And, oh, the life!” said Miss X. at one point. “Americans don’t know how to live. They are all engaged in doing something. They are such beginners. They are only interested in money. They don’t know. I see them in Paris now and then.” She lifted her hand. “Here in Europe people understand life better. They know. They know before they begin how much it will take to do the things that they want to do and they start out to make that much--not a fortune--just enough to do the things that they want to do. When they get that they retire and _live_.” “And what do they do when they live?” I asked. “What do they call living?”