I begin to think, my dear Tom, that we all make a great mistake in this taste we've got into for foreign travel, foreign languages, and foreign accomplishments. We rear up our families with notions and habits quite inapplicable to home purposes; and we are like the Parisian shopkeepers, that have nothing on sale but articles of luxury; and, after all, we have n't a genius for this trifling, and we make very ungraceful idlers in the end. To train a man for the Continent, you must begin early; teach him French when a child; let him learn dominoes at four, and to smoke cigars at six, wear lacquered boots at eight, and put his hair in paper at nine; eat sugar-plums for dinner, and barley-water for tea; make him a steady shot with the pistol, and a cool hand with the rapier; and there he is finished and fit for the Boulevard,--a nice man for the _salons_. It is cheap, there is no doubt; but it costs a great deal of money to come at the economy. You 'll perhaps say that's my own fault. Maybe it is. We 'll talk of it more another time. I ought to confess that Mrs. D. is delighted with everything; she vows that she is only beginning to live; and to hear her talk, you 'd think that Dodsborough was one of the new model penitentiaries. Mary Anne's her own daughter, and she raves about princes and dukes and counts, all day long. What they 'll say when I tell them that we 're to be off on Wednesday next, I can't imagine. I intend to dine out that evening, for I know there will be no standing the row! The Ambassador has been mighty polite and attentive: we dined there last week. A grand dinner, and fine company; but, talking French, and nothing but French, all the time, Mrs. D. and your humble servant were rather at a nonplus. Then we had his box at the opera, where, I must say, Tom, anything to equal the dancing I never saw,--indecency is no name for it. Not but Mrs. D. and Mary Anne are of a contrary opinion, and tauntingly ask me if I prefer a "Tatter Jack Walsh," at the cross-roads, to Taglioni. As for the singing, it's screeching,--that's the word for it, screeching. The composer is one Verdi,--a fellow, they tell me, that cracks every voice in Europe; and I can believe it. The young woman that played the first part grew purple in the face, and strained till her neck looked like a half-unravelled cable; her mouth was dragged sideways; and it was only when I thought she was off in strong convulsions that the audience began to applaud. There's no saying what their enthusiasm might not have been had she burst a blood-vessel.