ed, one notes with
regret that freedom declines in the places which deem themselves most
civilized. American girls have been, so far as a stranger can ascertain,
less disposed to what are called "fast ways" than girls of the
corresponding classes in England, and exercise in this respect a pretty
rigorous censorship over one another. But when two young people find
pleasure in one another's company, they can see as much of each other as
they please, can talk and walk together frequently, can show that they
are mutually interested, and yet need have little fear of being
misunderstood either by one another or by the rest of the world. It is
all a matter of custom. In the West, custom sanctions this easy
friendship; in the Atlantic cities, so soon as people have come to find
something exceptional in it, constraint is felt, and a conventional
etiquette like that of the Old World begins to replace the innocent
simplicity of the older time, the test of whose merit may be gathered
from the universal persuasion in America that happy marriages are in the
middle and upper ranks more common than in Europe, and that this is due
to the ampler opportunities which young men and women have of learning
one another's characters and habits before becoming betrothed. Most
girls have a larger range of intimate acquaintances than girls have in
Europe, intercourse is franker, there is less difference between the
manners of home and the manners of general society. The conclusions of a
stranger are in such matters of no value; so I can only repeat that I
have never met any judicious American lady who, however well she knew
the Old World, did not think that the New World customs conduced more
both to the pleasantness of life before marriage, and to constancy and
concord after it.

In no country are women, and especially young women, so much made of.
The world is at their feet. Society seems organized for the purpose of
providing enjoyment for them. Parents, uncles, aunts, elderly friends,
even brothers, are ready to make their comfort and convenience bend to
the girls' wishes. The wife has fewer opportunities for reigning over
the world of amusements, because except among the richest people she has
more to do in household management than in England, owing to the
scarcity of servants; but she holds in her own house a more prominent if
not a more substantially powerful position than in England or even in
France. With the German _haus-frau_, who is t