and in the West
than it is of the inhabitants of Atlantic cities. I remember to have
been dawdling in a book-store in a small town in Oregon when a lady
entered to inquire if a monthly magazine, whose name was unknown to me,
had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked the salesman who she was, and
what was the periodical she wanted. He answered that she was the wife of
a railway workman, that the magazine was a journal of fashions, and that
the demand for such journals was large and constant among women of the
wage-earning class in the town. This set me to observing female dress
more closely; and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in
these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely,
and were in fact ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to
the professional and mercantile classes. Of course in such a town as I
refer to, there are no domestic servants except in the hotels (indeed,
almost the only domestic service to be had in the Pacific States was
till very recently that of Chinese), so these votaries of fashion did
all their own housework and looked after their own babies.

Three causes combine to create among American women an average of
literary taste and influence higher than that of women in any European
country. These are the educational facilities they enjoy, the
recognition of the equality of the sexes in the whole social and
intellectual sphere, and the leisure which they possess as compared with
men. In a country where men are incessantly occupied at their business
or profession, the function of keeping up the level of culture devolves
upon women. It is safe in their hands. They are quick and keen-witted,
less fond of open-air life and physical exertion than English women are,
and obliged by the climate to pass a greater part of their time under
shelter from the cold of winter and the sun of summer. For music and for
the pictorial arts they do not yet seem to have formed so strong a taste
as for literature; partly perhaps owing to the fact that in America the
opportunities of seeing and hearing masterpieces, except indeed operas,
are rarer than in Europe. But they are eager and assiduous readers of
all such books and periodicals as do not presuppose special knowledge in
some branch of science or learning, while the number who have devoted
themselves to some special study and attained proficiency in it is
large. The fondness for sentiment, especially moral and domesti