a young man with serious intentions shall take
his sweetheart out, give her presents, send her flowers, go
driving with her, and in numberless little ways incur expense.
This is all very delightful for her, but to him it means ruin.
And at the end he may find that she was only flirting with him.

In fact, whenever a young man and a young woman are associated in any
enterprise, it is quite usual for the young man to pay for both. On
the whole, this custom seems an undesirable one. It is so much a
matter of habit that the American girl usually plays her part in the
matter with absolute innocence and unconsciousness; she feels no more
obligation than an English girl would for the opening of a door. The
young man also takes it as a matter of course, and does not in the
least presume on his services. But still, I think, it has a slight
tendency to rub the bloom off what ought to be the most delicate and
ethereal form of social intercourse. It favours the well-to-do youth
by an additional handicap. It throws another obstacle in the track of
poverty and thrift. It is contrary to the spirit of democratic
equality; the woman who accepts such attentions is tacitly allowing
that she is not on the same footing as man. On reflection it must
grate a little on the finest feelings. There seems to me little doubt
that it will gradually die out in circles to which it would be strange
in Europe.

On the whole, however, even with such drawbacks as the above, the
social relationship of the sexes in the United States is one of the
many points in which the new surpasses the old. The American girl is
thrown into such free and ample relations with the American boy from
her earliest youth up that she is very apt to look upon him simply as
a girl of a stronger growth. Some such word as the German
_Geschwister_ is needed to embrace the "young creatures" who, in
petticoats or trousers, form the genuine democracy of American youth.
Up to the doors of college, and often even beyond them, the boy and
girl have been "co-educated;" at the high school the boy has probably
had a woman for his teacher, at least in some branches, up to his
sixteenth or seventeenth year. The hours of recreation are often spent
in pastimes in which girls may share. In some of the most
characteristic of American amusements, such as the "coasting" of
winter, girls take a prominent place. There is no effort on the part
of elders to play the spy on the meet