walking out without
_chaperons_, and visiting their friends as they please. There is a
reason for this: the matrons are compelled, from the insufficiency of
their domestics, to attend personally to all the various duties of
housekeeping; their fathers and brothers are all employed in their
respective money-making transactions, and a servant cannot be spared
from American establishments; if, therefore, they are to walk out and
take exercise, it must be alone, and this can be done in the United
States with more security than elsewhere, from the circumstance of
everybody being actively employed, and there being no people at leisure
who are strolling or idling about. I think that the portion of time
which elapses between the period of a young girl leaving school and
being married, is the happiest of her existence. I have already
remarked upon the attention and gallantry shewn by the Americans to the
women, especially to the unmarried. This is carried to an extent which,
in England, would be considered by our young women as no compliment; to
a certain degree it pervades every class, and even the sable damsels
have no reason to complain of not being treated with the excess of
politeness; but in my opinion, (and I believe the majority of the
American women will admit the correctness of it,) they do not consider
themselves flattered by a species of homage which is paying no
compliment to their good sense, and after which the usual attentions of
an Englishman to the sex are by some considered as amounting to hauteur
and neglect.

Be it as it may, the American women are not spoiled by this universal
adulation which they receive previous to their marriage. It is not that
one is selected for her wealth or extreme beauty to the exception of all
others; in such a case it might prove dangerous; but it is a flattery
paid to the whole sex, given to all, and received as a matter of course
by all, and therefore it does no mischief. It does, however, prove what
I have observed at the commencement of this chapter, which is, that the
women have not that influence which they are entitled to, and which, for
the sake of morality, it is to be lamented that they have not; when men
_respect_ women they do not attempt to make fools of them, but treat
them as rational and immortal beings, and this general adulation is
cheating them with the shadow, while they withhold from them the
substance.

I have said that the period between her emancipa