equally avoiding vulgar oh’s and ah’s! and set phrases; be more careful not to drawl; and not to open the mouth, so as to call “hot,” “haut;” giggle less; speak lower; have more calmness and more dignity of manner, and think instead of pulsating,—­I would put them, for all in all, against any women in the world.  They lose half of these defects when they marry, as it is; but the wisdom of Solomon would come to our ears with a diminished effect, were it communicated through the medium of any other than a neat enunciation.  The great desideratum in female education, at home, is to impart a graceful, quiet, lady-like manner of speaking.

Were it not for precisely this place, Vevey, I should add, that the women of America speak their language worse than the women of any other country I ever was in.  We all know, that a calm, even, unemphatic mode of speaking, is almost a test of high-breeding; that a clear enunciation is, in short, an indispensable requisite, for either a gentleman or a lady.  One may be a fool, and utter nonsense gracefully; but aphorisms lose their force when conveyed in a vulgar intonation.  As a nation, I repeat, there is more of this fault in America, perhaps, than among an equal portion of educated people anywhere else.  Contrary to the general rule too, the men of America speak better than the women; though the men, as a class, speak badly.  The peculiar dialect of New England, which prevails so much all over the country, is derived from a provincial mode of speaking in England which is just the meanest in the whole island; and though it is far more intelligible, and infinitely better grammar is used with us, than in the place whence the patois came, I think we have gained little on the score of elegance.  I once met in England a distinguished man, who was one of the wealthiest commoners of his county, and he had hardly opened his mouth before I was struck with this peculiarity.  On inquiry, I learned that he came from the West of England.  It is by no means uncommon to meet with bad grammar, and an improper use of words as relates to their significations, among the highest classes in England, though I think not as often as in America, but it is rare, indeed, that a gentleman or a lady does not express himself or herself, so far as utterance, delivery, and intonation go, as a gentleman and lady should.  The fault in America arises from the habits of drawling, and of opening the mouth too wide.  Any one knows that, if he open the stop of an organ, and keep blowing the bellows, he will make anything but music.  We have some extraordinary words, too:  who, but a Philadelphian, for instance, would think of calling his mother a mare?