"So you have Frenchified Dick's name, have you!" said the old gentleman, "but I'm determined you shall not Frenchify Sam's." "No," observed Sam, "I'll not be Frenchified." "And pray, young ladies," resumed the uncle, "Fanny, Jenny, and Anny, have you too been put into French?" "Yes, uncle," replied Jane, "we are now Fanchette, Jeanette, and Annette." "So much the worse," said Uncle Philip. "Listen to me, when I tell you, that all this Frenchifying will come to no good; and I foresee that you may be sorry for it when it is too late. Of what use will it be to any of you? I have often heard that all French books worth reading are immediately done into English. And I never met with a French person worth knowing that had not learned to talk English." "Now, uncle," said Mrs. Clavering, "you are going quite too far. If our knowledge of French should not come into use while in our own country, who knows but some time or other we may all go to France." "I for one," replied Uncle Philip, "_I_ know that you will not; at least, you shall never go to France with my consent. No American woman goes to France, without coming home the worse for it in some way or other. There were the two Miss Facebys, who came up here last spring, fresh from a six months' foolery in Paris. I can see them now, ambling along in their short petticoats, with their hands clasped on their belt buckles, their mouths half open like idiots, and their eyes turned upwards like dying calves." Here Uncle Philip set the whole family to laughing, by starting from his chair and imitating the walk and manner of the Miss Facebys. "There," said he, resuming his seat, "I know that's exactly like them. Then did not they pretend to have nearly forgotten their own language, affecting to speak English imperfectly. And what was the end of them? One ran away with a dancing-master's mate, and the other got privately married to a fiddler." "But you must allow," said Mrs. Clavering, "that the Miss Facebys improved greatly in manner by their visit to France." "I know not what you call _manner_" replied Uncle Philip, "but I'm sure in _manners_ they did not. Manner and manners, I find, are very different things. And I was told by a gentleman, who had lived many years in France, that the Miss Facebys looked and behaved like French chambermaids, but not like French ladies. For my part, I am no judge of French women; but this I know, that American girls had better be like themselves, and not copy any foreign women whatever. And let them take care not to unfit themselves for American husbands. If they do, they'll lose more than they'll gain." "Well, Uncle Philip," said Mrs. Clavering, "I see it will take time to make a convert of you." "Don't depend on that," replied the old gentleman. "I, that for sixty years have stood out against all foreigners, particularly the French, am not likely to be taken in by them now."