The Argosy — page 339: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

320 Letters from Majorca. after, but, as habit becomes second nature, no doubt they escape nightmare. It may, however, account for the heaviness which distinguishes many of the young men, and the absence of ideas which both men and women—lI speak of the upper classes—suffer from. Dinner parties are almost unknown. In the first place, they are unable to arrange and appoint them; and secondly, as they take supper at ten, to give a dinner party would completely disturb their normal habits, and probably upset the domestic equilibrium for a week after. But in all this they are, after all, following a lead; the lead of their Great Ancestors. It is the effect of training, a heritage handed down to them. No one attempts to strike out a new and more sociable state of existence, where open doors and unceremonious entertaining may go hand-in-hand with all the refinements of life; but then, pro- bably no one in Mallorca wants it or wishes it. ‘Therefore in these few remarks to you, I am not finding fault with them or criticising them, but merely stating facts as they exist. I may think it a pity;a waste of life and opportunity ; but that is looking at it from my own point of view. I might take up my abode for a twelvemonth in Mallorca, and the hospitality of its people during the whole of that time would be limited to a few formal calls, than which nothing can be more tedious and unsatisfactory. The way I should set about it is as follows : I should take an old palace in some old street, and then send round a gilded intimation to those whom I delighted to honour, that I had come to live at such and such a place; that my house, myself, my horses and carriages, my dogs and cats, my fame, my fortune, in short my all, were at their disposition. Upon which they would re- spond with a short visit, to be returned in due time. Ai\insi-soit-il. But the delights of social life, the friendly intercourse, the intimacy that makes life worth living, yet never passes into that familiarity which breeds contempt : all this is foreign to the habits and customs of Palma society. But all this, my sister, did not affect the welfare and happiness ot H. C. and your devoted though unworthy brother. We had come to Mallorca to see the place ; our stay was too limited to attempt to make acquaintance with its people. In Mallorca, too, we have been wan- derers ; not aimless and profitless, I hope; whilst certainly we have had a great deal of happiness. Fortunately, our minds run very much in the same groove. We both love nature, both see it from the same point of view, both are enthusiastic travellers, and think nothing a trouble, even to getting up at four in the morning, if it is necessary to the attainment of a given object. I pass over H. C.’s poetical genius, and lyrical effusions ; and after all he might have a much worse mania. He might, for instance, have been an insect collector, and filled our rooms with crawling spiders and creeping earwigs; and COMIC OOOKS. EO