The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-02-15
Especial Correspondence

FORM their easy going and deliberate
gait into a mad Yankee gallop which
leaves no time for any such cumbersome
baggage as sentiment and domestic ties
of affection, he proceeds to state that it
is the family institution alone which
sweetens life and renders it pure. 1t
therefore follows, according to M. ST.
mon. that if the Americans by means of
their pernicious example are destroying
the family system of the Old World,
they are ipso facto also destroying the
purity Of the latter.
This will doubtless appear to most Of
my American readers very astonish-
ing remark-especially when it is borne
in mind that it comes from Gaul. To
be accused. by the French of all people,
of the crime of perverting their moral
ity and of communicating their purity
is probably about the very last thing in
the world that the Americans would
expect. Indeed, the inhabitants of this
country have hitherto been under the
impression that it was just the other
way-that,i instead of the Americans
perverting the French, it was the latter
who were making havoc of American
innocence; and to such an extent does
this belief prevail in the United States
that the terms Every Gallo" or Every
French" are regarded here as synony-
NOUS of propriety that is, to say the
least, questionable.
False and erroneous impressions con-
corning sister nations prevail on both
sides of the Atlantic, which are fostered
and increased by such newspaper arti-
Giles as those of M. Jules Simon, and
which can only be dispelled by better
and more thorough mutual acquaint-
New. Not all French novels, plays and
ways are immoral, nor on the other
hand are the family institution and
home life as conspicuously absent from
the social system of the United States
as M. Jules Simon would lead his coun-
trymen to believe. There are other and
better things in France than the can can
and the Moulin Rouge, while in Amer
lea people, although eager to get ahead
of their competitors in the race of life,
nevertheless find time to devote to their
home affections and to domestic ties.
In the course of his article M. Simon
compares French family as yet I'M
tainted by transatlantic adulteration
with what he irnagines to be typical
American household. The members of
the French family he portrays as living
and dying in the house in which they
were born-a house every corner of
which recalls to mind and is sanctihed
by caress or a lesson Of the mother of
the family. Her he describes as the
pattern and apostle of every virtue"
The family in question is respectable
without being austere, fond of pleas
ures, but only of those which are COM
patible with strict sense of duty and
self respect: addicted to art, sci ence and
literature, but disdainful of the more
frivolous forms of the latter, and whose
intercourse is restricted to polite society.
This is M. Simons idea of the French
family unadulterated by American con-
tamination.
Quite the opposite thereof in every re-
spect is the typical American family-of
NJ. Jules Si1non's imagination. Matri
mony in the United States he declares
TO be more Of business contract, ter
minable at pleasure by means of an
ordinary lawsuit ending in divorce,
than any lasting bond of love, as in
France. The ties of marriage are not
regarded as sacred or permanent. but
are treated merely as the stipulations of
an ordinary commercial agreement. The
American mother. according to M.
Simon. is the contrary of that pattern
and apostle of every virtue" above por-