rs of society; and society is not
entirely in their hands. Men, men of mature years, form the substance
of English society; they give it its tone; women its grace and its
ornamentation. Even in the Englishwoman's drawing-room the Englishman
is looked up to and treated with deference. The talk and the tone must
be such as pleases him. She finds her pleasure as well as her duty in
making it such as pleases him. She is even there his companion, his
friend, his help. No matter how clever or brilliant she may be, she
does not seek _tenir salon_ like the French female _bel esprit_. No
matter how beautiful or how fashionable she may be, she does not leave
him out of her society arrangements; unless, indeed, in either case,
she chooses to set propriety at naught and brave an accusation of "bad
form." And indeed, should she attempt this she would probably soon be
checked by a very decided interposition of marital authority. The
result of all this is a soberer tone in mixed society than we are
accustomed to, and the discussion of graver topics in general
conversation.

And yet in the household the Englishwoman is quite supreme--much more
so, I think, than she is in "America." She really manages all household
affairs, troubling her husband with no details, but being careful to
manage in such a way as to please him. For, as I have said before, the
wish of the master of an English household is the law of that household.
Notwithstanding all this, I have been led to the firm belief that
hen-pecking is far more common in England than it is with us, and that
curtain lectures are much oftener delivered there than here. "Mrs.
Caudle's Curtain Lectures" would hardly have suggested themselves to an
American humorist, although the thing itself--if not in its perfection,
in its germ--is sufficiently known here to make the humor and the satire
of that series perfectly appreciated. And, strange to say, the average
English husband seems to be a less independent creature than the
"American." English wives more generally insist upon their prerogative
of sitting solemnly up for their husbands at night; and latch-keys are
regarded as a personal grievance. What American wife would think of
making a fuss about a man's having a latch-key? Not a few of them,
indeed, have one themselves. And yet I have seen an Englishwoman of the
lower middle class flush and choke and whimper when the subject of the
inalienable right of a man to a latch-key to his own ho