honic
and Goidal, of the Saxons and Teutons, of the later Normans and even
Provencals, while through all, perhaps, ran the strain of the primitive
Briton and Pict; but not even in this mingling of races can she compare
with her American sister in diversity of racial source. Moreover, the
English stock, which we unite in calling--incorrectly--the Anglo-Saxon,
has remained permanent in type and fount; but this is not so with the
American. This latter is in constant process of modification by the
introduction of new progenital elements, and it cannot now be prophesied
when there will be a clearly-defined race, with individual and permanent
characteristics, established upon this side of the great seas.

Therefore the American woman is the heir of the ages in a sense never
before true of anyone. As with the Parisian in the story, so with the
American woman in truth, all races have united in bringing her of their
best gifts. It is for her to make of these the best that she may;
certainly none of her sisters has ever begun her career with such
fortune brought her by destiny as a birth-gift.

It must not, however, be forgotten or unnoted that, while the American
woman is thus rich in a heritage unequalled by that granted to any of
her sisters, being world-heir instead of heir to a race, she has some
corresponding disadvantages to overcome in her effort to influence as a
racial representative the currents of world-thought and world-progress.
She has behind her no national tradition stretching far back into a past
so remote that it has ceased to be effect and has become merely
foundation. The American woman, alone of all the representatives of the
higher cultures, has no effective nationality to shape her trend. She is
a product of her time only, not of time and ancient tradition mingled;
she has no distinct nationality of growth and line of progress. Every
other woman of Caucasian race has a past to which to refer as
inspiration and cause, a past which is a story of upward growth, of
ever-increasing culture. The American woman found her culture ready for
her--was already, at her birth, the child and expression of the highest
civilization known to her day. She had no need of exerting formative
influence upon her race; all was already done to her hand. Thus she
lacks the greatest of all traditions--the tradition of growth and
development.

Yet, though not of native production, though lacking the influence of
constant-trending n