第5章

But I think it is in the air more than in the blood.I was in Paris,about this time last year,perhaps because I was the only thing in my house that had not been swathed in cheese-cloth,or tied up in a bag with drawstrings,or rolled up with moth-balls and put away in chests.At any rate,I was there.One day I left my wife in New York carefully tagging three worn-out feather dusters,and putting them into a pillow-case,and tagging it,and putting the pillow-case into a camphorated self-sealing paper sack,and tagging it;and another day I was in Paris,dining at the house of a lady whom I asked how she managed with the things in her house when she went into the country for the summer.'Leave them just as they are,'she said.'But what about the dust and the moths,and the rust and the tarnish?'She said,'Why,the things would have to be all gone over when I came back in the autumn,anyway,and why should I give myself double trouble?'I asked her if she didn't even roll anything up and put it away in closets,and she said:'Oh,you mean that old American horror of getting ready to go away.I used to go through all that at home,too,but I shouldn't dream of it here.In the first place,there are no closets in the house,and I couldn't put anything away if I wanted to.