"It would be presuming, in a girl of my limited experience to speak of this. I hear so much of the good sense of the nation, that I dare not say aught against its society, and it would be affectation for me to pretend to commend it; but as for your females, judging by my own poor means, they strike me as being singularly well cultivated and accomplished; and yet---" "Go on, I entreat you. Recollect we have solemnly decided in a general congress of states to be cosmopolites, until safe within Sandy Hook, and that _la franchise_ is the _mot d'ordre_." "Well, then, I should not certainly describe you English as a talking people," continued Eve, laughing. "In the way of society, you are quite as agreeable as a people, who never laugh and seldom speak, can possibly make themselves." "_Et les jeunes Americaines_?" said Mademoiselle Viefville, laconically. "My dear mademoiselle, your question is terrific! Mr. Blunt has informed me that _they_ actually giggle!" "_Quelle horreur_!" "It is bad enough, certainly; but I ascribe the report to calumny. No; if I must speak, let me have Paris for its society, and Naples for its nature. As respects New York, Mr. Blunt, I suspend my judgment." "Whatever may be the particular merit which shall most attract your admiration in favour of the great emporium, as the grandiloquent writers term the capital of your own state, I think I can venture to predict it will be neither of those just mentioned. Of society, indeed, New York has positively none: like London, it has plenty of company, which is disciplined something like a regiment of militia composed of drafts from different brigades, and which sometimes mistakes the drum-major for the colonel." "I had fancied you a New Yorker, until now," observed Mr. Sharp. "And why not now? Is a man to be blind to facts as evident as the noon-day sun, because he was born here or there? If I have told you an unpleasant truth, Miss Effingham, you must accuse _la franchise_ of the offence. I believe _you_ are not a Manhattanese?" "I am a mountaineer; having been born at my father's country residence." "This gives me courage then, for no one here will have his filial piety shocked," "Not even yourself?" "As for myself," returned Paul Blunt, "it is settled I am a cosmopolite in fact, while you are only a cosmopolite by convention. Indeed, I question if I might take the same liberties with either Paris or London, that I am about to take with palmy Manhattan. I should have little confidence in the forbearance of my auditors: Mademoiselle Viefville would hardly forgive me: were I to attempt a criticism on the first, for instance." "_C'est impossible_! you could not, Monsieur Blunt; _vous parlez trop bien Francais_ not to love _Paris_."