time. Indeed, the very fact that
marriage (with or without love) is not incessantly in the foreground
of an American girl's consciousness probably makes the awakening all
the more deep and tender because comparatively unanticipated and
unforeseen.

The marriages between American heiresses and European peers do not
militate seriously against the above view of American marriage. It
cannot be sufficiently emphasised that the doings of a few wealthy
people in New York are not characteristic of American civilisation.
The New York _Times_ was entirely right when it said, in commenting
upon the frank statement of the bridegroom in a recent alliance of
this kind that it had been _arranged_ by friends of both parties: "A
few years ago this frankness would have cost him his bride, if his
'friends' had chosen an American girl for that distinction, and even
now it would be resented to the point of a rupture of the engagement
by most American girls."

The American girl may not be in reality better educated than her
British sister, nor a more profound thinker; but her mind is
indisputably more agile and elastic. In fact, a slow-going Britisher
has to go through a regular course of training before he can follow
the rapid transitions of her train of associations. She has the
happiest faculty in getting at another's point of view and in putting
herself in his place. Her imagination is more likely to be over-active
than too sluggish. One of the most popular classes of the "Society for
the Encouragement of Study at Home" is that devoted to imaginary
travels in Europe. She is wonderfully adaptable, and makes herself at
ease in an entirely strange _milieu_ almost before the transition is
complete. Both M. Blouet and M. Bourget notice this, and claim that it
is a quality she shares with the Frenchwoman. The wife of a recent
President is a stock illustration of it--a girl who was transferred in
a moment from what we should call a quiet "middle-class" existence to
the apex of publicity, and comported herself in the most trying
situations with the ease, dignity, unconsciousness, taste, and
graciousness of a born princess.

The innocence of the American girl is neither an affectation, nor a
prejudiced fable, nor a piece of stupidity. The German woman, quoted
by Mr. Bryce, found her American compeer _furchtbar frei_, but she had
at once to add _und furchtbar fromm_. "The innocence of the American
girl passes abysses of obscenity without stai