erance, like most American intolerance, was based on ignorant prejudice, while that of the Princesse and the Duchess was based on an established tradition of behaviour.
The Countess frequently visited the Townsends' great, red brick house on the hill, the interior of which was a curious confusion of several periods, like Rome, for Mayme's children were going to college, and their taste was freely displayed throughout the mansion, without in any way destroying what was left of the taste of two preceding generations. The Rogers groups, the stuffed bird of paradise under its glass bell, the heavy, padded chairs, with their tassels, the massively gold-framed oil-paintings remained, but Puck and Judge lay on the living-room table, a discarded rubber football, which needed blowing up, occupied a corner of the seat in the hat-rack, and here and there on the walls, between steel-engravings after masterpieces by Sir Edwin Landseer, depicting stags at bay and other animal tragedies or canvases representing Cardinals playing chess, or sheiks, embedded in cushions while they smoked hookahs, were pinned brightly coloured supplements from the Chicago Inter-Ocean, lithographs of flower sprays from the brush of Paul de Longpre, Christian martyrs about to suffer death in the arena, and Italian girls drawing water from fountains. It was the present humour of John Townsend, the nineteen year old son, to recite as often as he found an audience:
