The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851Various
History
The International Magazine, Volume 4, No. 5, December 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
"Young married couples whose means will not permit them to keep house,
pass their first year of wedded life in boarding-houses, by which means
the facilities to marriage are greatly extended."
The following passages on our alleged want of sociability identify
us to a certain degree, and to our minds not unpleasantly, with our
English cousins. Of all persons, those to be most pitied or despised
are "the weak brethren," who, devoid of internal or intellectual
resources, or manly self-reliance, declaim against a nation or a
society at large because its members, forsooth, do not receive them
with open arms. The true _citoyen du monde_--the genuine cosmopolite,
never has occasion to make this complaint against any country. For the
more a man depends on himself and the less on others for happiness,
just in that proportion will it be his luck to attract sympathy and
sociability when among strangers. Narrow-minded Spaniards, and those
of other nations, _who travel for the express purpose of getting into
fashionable society_, are peculiarly liable to this reproach. Such a
foreigner have we heard, minutely and boringly detailing to a stern
circle of impregnable natives, the noble and munificent style of
hospitality with which _they_ would be treated, were they visitors
in _his_ fatherland: "In my contree 'spose you come strangére in one
cittee, a gentleman take you in hees house. In ze morning come one
buttiful gairl wiz coffees. Zen dey send you one horse carriage for
make de promenàde. Aftair dinner come buttiful gairls again wiz ticket
on silvare waiter for whole opera box! Wat you sink of dat, hey?"
"_Think!_" replied a native, "why I think that you take great pains to
make a strange gentleman feel _very uncomfortable_." But to return to
our writer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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