He will fly from you as
a hare to cover. I want you to be a belle, and you must help me.' I
naturally asked her what I was to talk about, and she promptly replied
'Nothing. Study the American girl, they have the most brilliant way
of jabbering meaningless recitativos of any tribe on the face of the
earth. Every sentence is an epigram with the point left out. They are
like the effervescent part of a bottle of soda-water.' This was while
we were still in Wales, and she sent for six books by two of those
American novelists who are supposed to be the expounders-in-chief of
the American girl at home and abroad, and made me read them. It nearly
killed me, but I did it, and I learned a valuable lesson. I hated the
American girl, but I felt as if I had been boiled in soda-water and
every pore of my body had absorbed it. I felt ecstatically frivolous,
and commonplace, and flashing, and sizzling. And--I assure you this
is a fact, although you may not give me credit for such grim
determination and concentration of purpose--but I never eat my
breakfast before I have read an entire chapter from one of those two
authors, it adjusts my mental tone for the day and keeps me in proper
condition.
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