Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San Carlo,
and hear him cry "Bwavo"?

MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraid to.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men of the
best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes,
are what you would call good fellows,--easy and simple in manner,
enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into the smooth
calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard as the sine
qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assured that they do not
need that lacquer of calmness of which we were speaking.

THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by those who
live a great deal in American hotels?

THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?

HERBERT. The last two are the same.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if a man
has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, you cannot
always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui of hotels or
of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfect polish and
politeness of indifferentism.

IV

Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates the
idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions. Let us
say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some forest
trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees all winter
long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants, cheerful by
day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of a dark
sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its dazzling
whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost in the
distant darkling spaces.

If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon gets an
impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothing else
so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothing makes one
feel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent cat will quit the
fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching the falling snow
with a serious and contented air. His thoughts are his own, but he is in
accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; on such a day he is charged
with enough electricity to run a telegraphic battery, if it could be
utilized. The connection between thought and electricity has not been
exactly determined, but the cat is mentally very alert in certain
conditions of the atmosp