thout parting with any tenderness that
is their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves;
they are superbly independent. When you ask them what makes them so
charming, they say:--"It is because we are better educated than your
girls, and--and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have good
times all round, but we aren't taught to regard every man as a possible
husband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on
regularly."

Yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse
it. They can go driving with young men and receive visits from young
men to an extent that would make an English mother wink with horror, and
neither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond the enjoyment of a good
time. As certain, also, of their own poets have said:--

"Man is fire and woman is tow,
And the devil he comes and begins to blow."

In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof,
in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do not
exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and
climate under the skies.

But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is--I say it
with all reluctance--irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the
buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her
parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptive
right to the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it.

This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and
his wife for the sake of information--the one being a merchant of varied
knowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host has
vanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are left
alone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the
person you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leave
with the very strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been my
experience once or twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to a
man:--"I came to see you."

"You'd better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women
folk--to my daughter, that is to say."

He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. They
exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha'pence, the kicks are all
his own. Nothing is too good for an American's daughter (I speak here of
the moneyed classes).

The girls take every gift as a matter