Makely is a woman
who would remain in such an absurdity among the very last. I will let you
make your own conclusions concerning this, for though, as an Altrurian, I
cannot respect her, I like her so much, and have so often enjoyed her
generous hospitality, that I cannot bring myself to criticise her except
by the implication of the facts. She is anomalous, but, to our way of
thinking, all the Americans I have met are anomalous, and she has the
merits that you would not logically attribute to her character. Of
course, I cannot feel that her evident regard for me is the least of
these, though I like to think that it is founded on more reason than the
rest.
I have by this time become far too well versed in the polite
insincerities of the plutocratic world to imagine that, because she asked
me to come to her dinner very informally, I was not to come in all the
state I could put into my dress. You know what the evening dress of men
is here, from the costumes in our museum, and you can well believe that I
never put on those ridiculous black trousers without a sense of their
grotesqueness--that scrap of waistcoat reduced to a mere rim, so as to
show the whole white breadth of the starched shirt-bosom, and that coat
chopped away till it seems nothing but tails and lapels.
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