er the West,
young men and girls are permitted to walk together, drive together, go
out to parties and even to public entertainments together, without the
presence of any third person who can be supposed to be looking after or
taking charge of the girl. So a girl may, if she pleases, keep up a
correspondence with a young man, nor will her parents think of
interfering. She will have her own friends, who when they call at her
house ask for her, and are received by her, it may be alone; because
they are not deemed to be necessarily the friends of her parents also,
nor even of her sisters.

In the cities of the Atlantic States it is now thought scarcely correct
for a young man to take a young lady out for a solitary drive; and in
few sets would he be permitted to escort her alone to the theatre. But
girls still go without chaperons to dances, the hostess being deemed to
act as chaperon for all her guests; and as regards both correspondence
and the right to have one's own circle of acquaintances, the usage even
of New York or Boston allows more liberty than does that of London or
Edinburgh. It was at one time, and it may possibly still be, not
uncommon for a group of young people who know one another well to make
up an autumn "party in the woods." They choose some mountain and forest
region, such as the Adirondack Wilderness west of Lake Champlain, engage
three or four guides, embark with guns and fishing-rods, tents,
blankets, and a stock of groceries, and pass in boats up the rivers and
across the lakes of this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of
trackless forest, to their chosen camping-ground at the foot of some
tall rock that rises from the still crystal of the lake. Here they build
their bark hut, and spread their beds of the elastic and fragrant
hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the day, tracking the deer,
the girls read and work and bake the corn-cakes; at night there is a
merry gathering round the fire, or a row in the soft moonlight. On these
expeditions brothers will take their sisters and cousins, who bring
perhaps some lady friends with them; the brothers' friends will come
too; and all will live together in a fraternal way for weeks or months,
though no elderly relative or married lady be of the party.

There can be no doubt that the pleasure of life is sensibly increased by
the greater freedom which transatlantic custom permits; and as the
Americans insist that no bad results have follow