The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1910-01-13
On Culture.

pbase of modern life. "The American
wcman's intellectual characters
tics" says Marcel Provost. lis curl
osity. One feels she would like TO nav
tel pairs of eyes so as to see every
thing, ten pairs of ears so as to near
everything When l sit down at
table beside an American woman OF
Paris. she Immediately asks me:
Have YOU seen such and such play?
Have you been to such and such an
prt exhibition? What do you think OF
this novel or of that book recently
,mblished? And l am forced to admit
that | have not seen the latest play,
that for more than ten years have
not set my foot inside the annual
salons that l read slowly and care
Ally. and am therefore forced to
lad but few books. And 1 know my
American neighbor has great dis
dain for my inculture. have infinite
sympathy for her charming and uni
versal intellectual curiosity, only long
experience has taught me that mans
head cannot contain too many ideas
at once.
There is, consequently, an abyss
between the way most American
women l have met conceive intellect
ual culture and my own way. Far
from me to pretend that l am right.
But if had the honor Of being pro-
fessor of French to young American
girls, l would begin with the follow
ing truthful anecdote:
"a compatriot of theirs, speaking
to the poet, Francois Coppee, asked
DO you speak English, Monsieur"
And he answered, modestly, Non,
Madame, l am still learning French"
There is just touch of conceit in
Monsieur Prevost's laudation of his
cNn way, the laudation being all the
more painfully apparent for his at
tempt to veil it with the self-depreci-
atory, Far be it from me to pretend
that l am right" But, seriously, he
speaks truth when he intimates that
many women are surface cultured
and. therefore, their intellectually is
shallow and feeble for lack of nour-
ishment. 1t is an alarming tendency
OF the ambitious society woman and.
of other women, who desire to know
many things, to skim over the sur
face of the topics of yesterday and
today and tomorrow, extracting a
morsel of knowledge here and one
there, passing on to the next --latest
ed the idea of the last. A woman of
that kind is notsa pleasant companion
for the thoughtful or serious man or
woman who lives for a purpose. She
is a splendid master of the art of
small talk an art which has cour-
tesy behind it, now and then, in
concealing, among the great mass of
flippant utterances of the tongue, the
scantiness of intellect with which
some of the occupants of the draw
ing room have been endowed, but you
cannot pin her down on any subject
in which you are interested and of
which you would care to know more.
She never trusts you to open the
conversation. She scans her mental
list of eligible topics and begins
Don't you dote on Browning? We had
Browning club at home and" You
listen patiently and then inquire what
she thinks the poet meant when he
said thus and so. She looks at you
blankly. co." she says, 81 don't just
recall that quotation, you know, but
l was speaking of the general char
acteristics of his works" And one
has to be satisfied with that from the
disciple of one who said, Better have
failed in the high aim, as /, thar
vulgarly in the low aim succeed,-As
God be thanked, 1 do not" quota
ton which she credited to Words
worth, by the way, earlier in the con
versation. But she is not daunted.
81 see that disagreeable Ballingel
and Pinchot controversy has beer
settled" she says, conveying the i'm
preston that she is up" on politics
also you intimate that there may b.
ether developments which were borl
of this problem and ask her which
side she favored.
30, you know" she smiles, Il onl!
read the headlines and really don
remember what they quarrele'
about" Shades of knowledge.
And yesterday she informed me tina
Miss So-and-So was dreadfully "un
cultured person. A good creature
with kindly instincts, you know, blu
so crude" And l happen to know tina
Miss So-andSo who may make
grammatical error now and then
sweetness and purity and self sacri
fee itself and, therefore, enrolled il
the small army of the truly cultured
My Browning friend is not cul
tured. Hers is not intellectually. !
is pretense, sounding brass an
that sort of thing and kind of pre-
tense that the world despises, recog
pizing it on sight. My venerabl
Aunt Martha helped bring up her ow
brothers and sisters married early
reared large family, and forgot sci
CYOrapoalu I'll hon ,too,a That oh