But, even so, neither the “entertainments” nor the persons who give them, are at all like the nation’s fixed idea of them. The former, if you like, are unnecessary and super-elaborate, but they are always beautiful in their way, and decorous; the latter, more often than not, are extremely interesting and often charming. Why shouldn’t they be? For daily, since I have been here, it has come over me with a sense of having discovered the fact that “human nature is pretty much the same everywhere.” There are intelligent, clever, sympathetic, altogether delightful men and women here, and also men and women who are, by nature, dull, narrow, tiresome or common, just as there are in every habitable region of the globe. But stupidity for stupidity, commonness for commonness, bore for bore, I confess that the stupid, common bore of these regions is much less wearisome than he is in regions less splendid. He (or she) has in his favor all sorts of things that, while they do not make him interesting or worth one’s time, at least furnish him with a variety of avenues of approach--if you know what I mean. Essentially limited though he be, as far as his intellect and sympathies are concerned, mere sordid wealth had usually forced upon him certain contacts and habits and experiences that you can understand and can talk about. There is about him, somewhere, a neutral ground on which for the time being you can get together in a way you simply can’t with the same sort of nonentity who has not been subjected to the same sort of influences. Stupidity for stupidity, commonness for commonness, bore for bore, I, after all, prefer that of Newport to that of Saugdunk, Maine, or Pekin, Kansas. In the long run, of course, they are both exactly the same, and both very awful. The difference between them is the difference between taking a dose of castor oil enveloped in an expensive capsule and taking it straight.