sion when the offer of a seat to a lady
was declined by her, on the ground that as she had chosen to enter a
full car she ought to take the consequences. It was (I was told in
Boston) a feeling of this kind that had led to the discontinuance of the
old courtesy: when ladies constantly pressed into the already crowded
vehicles, the men, who could not secure the enforcement of the
regulations against over-crowding, tried to protect themselves by
refusing to rise. It is sometimes said that the privileges yielded to
American women have disposed them to claim as a right what was only a
courtesy, and have told unfavorably upon their manners. I know of
several instances, besides this one of the horse-cars, which might seem
to support the criticism, but cannot on the whole think it well founded.
The better-bred women do not presume on their sex, and the area of good
breeding is always widening. It need hardly be said that the community
at large gains by the softening and restraining influence which the
reverence for womanhood diffuses. Nothing so quickly incenses the people
as any insult offered to a woman. Wife-beating, and indeed any kind of
rough violence offered to women, is far less common among the rudest
class than it is in England. Field work or work at the pit-mouth of
mines is seldom or never done by women in America; and the American
traveler who in some parts of Europe finds women performing severe
manual labor, is revolted by the sight in a way which Europeans find
surprising.

In the farther West, that is to say, beyond the Mississippi, in the
Rocky Mountain and Pacific States, one is much struck by what seems the
absence of the humblest class of women. The trains are full of poorly
dressed and sometimes (though less frequently) rough-mannered men. One
discovers no women whose dress or air marks them out as the wives,
daughters, or sisters of these men, and wonders whether the male
population is celibate, and if so, why there are so many women. Closer
observation shows that the wives, daughters, and sisters are there, only
their attire and manner are those of what Europeans would call
middle-class and not working-class people. This is partly due to the
fact that Western men affect a rough dress. Still one may say that the
remark so often made, that the masses of the American people correspond
to the middle class of Europe, is more true of the women than of the
men; and is more true of them, in the rural districts