No doubt the Frenchwoman did much that she ought not to have done, and left undone much that she ought to have done, just as we do, though the things were not precisely the same; we know, too, that the time came when she did lose her poise, and with it her power. But, with all her faults, in the days of her glory she never forgot her point of view. She was rarely aggressive, and, without being too conscious of herself or her aims, it was a part of her esthetic creed to call out the best in others. With consummate tact, she crowned her serious gifts with the gracious ways and gentle amenities that disarmed antagonism and diffused everywhere a breath of sweetness. She carried with her, too, the sunshine that springs from an inexhaustible gaiety of heart, and this was one source of her unfailing charm. Perhaps it was partly why the literary salon retained its prestige for nearly two hundred years, and, in spite of its errors, was brilliant and amusing, as well as an intellectual force, to the end. It is far from my intention to repeat the old cry that other days were better days, and other ways better ways, than ours. We have a life of our own, and do not wish to copy one that is dead, or to put on manners that do not fit us. But the essentials of human nature are eternally the same, and in bringing new forces to bear upon it we may do well sometimes to consult the wisdom of the past, to ponder the secret of its failures as of its successes. It is not a matter of depreciating our aims or our ways, but of getting the most out of them, perhaps through some subtle touch that we have missed; also of preserving our sanity and equilibrium in this new order of things, which tends always to grow more complex and more bewildering. Transcriber’s Notes In a few cases, inconsistent hyphenization was standardized to use the one more common throughout the text. Page 262: “set up their household gods” changed to “set up their household goods” Page 346: “died at twenty-six” changed to “died at twenty-six.”