I
believe _you_ are not a Manhattanese?"
"I am a mountaineer; having been born at my father's country residence."
"This gives me courage then, for no one here will have his filial piety
shocked,"
"Not even yourself?"
"As for myself," returned Paul Blunt, "it is settled I am a cosmopolite in
fact, while you are only a cosmopolite by convention. Indeed, I question
if I might take the same liberties with either Paris or London, that I am
about to take with palmy Manhattan. I should have little confidence in the
forbearance of my auditors: Mademoiselle Viefville would hardly forgive
me: were I to attempt a criticism on the first, for instance."
"_C'est impossible_! you could not, Monsieur Blunt; _vous parlez trop bien
Francais_ not to love _Paris_."
"I _do_ love _Paris_, mademoiselle; and, what is more, I love _Londres_,
or even _la Nouvelle Yorck_. As a cosmopolite, I claim this privilege, at
least, though I can see defects in all. If you will recollect, Miss
Effingham, that New York is a social bivouac, a place in which families
encamp instead of troops, you will see the impossibility of its possessing
a graceful, well-ordered, and cultivated society. Then the town is
commercial; and no place of mere commerce can well have a reputation for
its society.
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