whereas in other countries
most women generally only begin to exercise and to ripen their
understandings after marriage.

I by no means suppose, however, that the great change which takes place
in all the habits of women in the United States, as soon as they are
married, ought solely to be attributed to the constraint of public
opinion: it is frequently imposed upon themselves by the sole effort of
their own will. When the time for choosing a husband is arrived, that
cold and stern reasoning power which has been educated and invigorated
by the free observation of the world, teaches an American woman that a
spirit of levity and independence in the bonds of marriage is a constant
subject of annoyance, not of pleasure; it tells her that the amusements
of the girl cannot become the recreations of the wife, and that the
sources of a married woman's happiness are in the home of her husband.
As she clearly discerns beforehand the only road which can lead to
domestic happiness, she enters upon it at once, and follows it to the
end without seeking to turn back.

The same strength of purpose which the young wives of America display,
in bending themselves at once and without repining to the austere duties
of their new condition, is no less manifest in all the great trials
of their lives. In no country in the world are private fortunes more
precarious than in the United States. It is not uncommon for the same
man, in the course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the
grades which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support these
vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy: it would seem that their
desires contract, as easily as they expand, with their fortunes. *a

[Footnote a: See Appendix S.]

The greater part of the adventurers who migrate every year to people the
western wilds, belong, as I observed in the former part of this work, to
the old Anglo-American race of the Northern States. Many of these men,
who rush so boldly onwards in pursuit of wealth, were already in the
enjoyment of a competency in their own part of the country. They take
their wives along with them, and make them share the countless
perils and privations which always attend the commencement of these
expeditions. I have often met, even on the verge of the wilderness, with
young women, who after having been brought up amidst all the comforts
of the large towns of New England, had passed, almost without any
intermediate stage, from