The Potiphar Papers

NG HIS LETTE

RST TRA

E AND SER

say, come, and I am coming, with the readiness that befit

listless idleness with young Sennaar, I am weary of the simple purity of manners that dis

f the world, have renounced the feudal organization of society, I have found them, as you anticipated, totally free f

e of manner. Knowing that for an American the only nobility is that of feeling; the only grace, generosity; and the only elegance, simplicity; th

hlessness of mere rank, by obviously respecting the character and not the title-the eagerness with which foreign habits are subdued, by the positive nature of American manners-the readiness to assist-the total want of coarse social emulation-the absence of ignorance, prejudice and vulgarity, in the selecter circles-the broa

re proud to have raised themselves from poverty, and they are never ashamed to confess that they are poor. They acknowledge the equal dignity of all kinds of labor, and do not presume upon any social differences between their baker and themselves. Knowing that luxury enervates a nation, they aim to show in their lives, as in their persons, that simplicity is the finest ornament o

uld see the grave and thoughtful, the witty and accomplished, the men and women whose genius fitted them for society, withdrawing from its saloons, and preferring privacy to a vulgar and profuse publicity. We should see society become a dancing school, and men and women degenerated into dull and dandified boys and girls, content with (pardon me, sable sir, but it would be the truth) "style." We should see, as if in an effete civilization, marriages of convenience. We should hear the heirs, or the holders, of great fortunes, called "gentlemanly," if they were dull, and "a little wild" if they were debauched

e. In fact, you have only to consider that this society does not remind

How gladly I should have climbed its Pisgah-peaks of hope, and have looked off into the Future, flowing with milk and honey. I would grieve (if I could) that my sated appetite refuses more,-that I must lay down my crook and play the shepherd no longer. Yet I know well enough that in the perfumed atmosphere of the circle to which I return, I shall recur of

port and summary will be found worthy of that implicit confidence immemoriall

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