nce, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about
railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in
that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of
Fulton's date--1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number
there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No.
Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too
variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our
climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves.
Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and
when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?
But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as
well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They
feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that
they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar.
And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was
sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are
pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
say, with little recurrent shivers of joy--subdued joy, so to speak, not
the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each
other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
interviewer: "It was severe--yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how
true it was; and it will do us so much good!"

If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed
to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know
ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be
an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should
understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself--that would