I, upon the other hand, am like some lover
who values most an older picture of the woman he adores. I admire her
for building character, but it is by her languorous beauty that I am
infatuated, and the portrait which most effectively displays that beauty
is the one for which I care.
Her very failings were so much a part of her that they made us the more
sympathetic; she was too lovely to be greatly blamed for anything;
gazing into her eyes, we hardly noticed that there was dust under the
piano and in the corners; dining at her sumptuous table, we gave but
little thought to the fact that the cellar was damp, the house none too
healthy, and that there were mosquitoes and rats about the place; nor
did it seem to matter, in face of her allurements, that she was
shiftless, extravagant, improvident in the management of her affairs. If
these things were brought to our attention, we excused them on the
grounds of Latin blood and enervating climate.
But if we excused her, she did not excuse herself. Without being shaken
awake by an earthquake, or forced to action by a devastating fire or
flood, she set to work, calmly and of her own volition, to reform her
character.
First she cleaned house, providing good surface drainage, an excellent
filtered water supply from the river in place of her old
mosquito-breeding cisterns, and modern sewers in place of cesspools.
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