Imagine anyone now making an
acquaintance on board a steamer! In those simple days people
depended on the friendships made at summer hotels or boarding-
houses for their visiting list. At present, when a girl comes out,
her mother presents her to everybody she will be likely to know if
she were to live a century. In the seventies, ladies cheerfully
shared their state-rooms with women they did not know, and often
became friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite
can be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two
particular "steamers," the great lady is in despair. Yet our
mothers were quite as refined as the present generation, only they
took life simply, as they found it.
Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have
reached an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to
them a twice-told tale. So true is this, that a receipt for making
children good Americans is to bring them up abroad. Once they get
back here it is hard to entice them away again.
With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something of
the glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly rush across
see and appreciate less in a lifetime than our parents did in their
one tour abroad. A good lady of my acquaintance was complaining
recently how much Paris bored her.
"What can you do to pass the time?" she asked. I innocently
answered that I knew nothing so entrancing as long mornings passed
at the Louvre.
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