case, and I have no
reason to suppose that it is. In a community, woman is what man makes
her. So long as men's first consideration is business and money-making,
so long as they consider clubs the proper place to seek relief in from
the pursuits and hardships of everyday life, so long as wives are
practically left to themselves to make the best of the long leisures of
the day, the women will study how best they can arrange for themselves
a life of comfort, ease and pleasure. Is there any other country where
you will find women able to enjoy life without the companionship of
men? They have come to an understanding among themselves. They will
have lunch, dinner-parties, where no male guest will be seen, and they
will have a grand time. They try to please each other, and an American
woman will use as much coquetry to win a woman as a French woman will
use to win a man. Is there any other country where you see so many
women's clubs?

Women's clubs? The idea!

Yet that American woman has male friends. She is a delightful chum and
good fellow, the only woman in the world who can have such male
friends, 'pals' without the least misconstruction, the least
objectionable whisperings on the subject. She calls those male friends
by their Christian names in speaking of them, although she invariably
mentions her husband as Mr. John B. Smith.

The American men are the most devoted of husbands, but they are not
under the influence of their women. They indulge them in all their
whims and luxuries, but their status in life is to be their women's
husbands--I will not say upper servants, but domestic animals, not
pets, of undeniable usefulness, who work at the sweat of their brows to
keep in luxury the most lovely, interesting and expensive womankind in
the world.

Some years ago, I was spending a Sunday afternoon in the house of a
young married man in Chicago who, I was told, possessed twenty
millions. The poor fellow! It was the twenty millions which possessed
him. He had a most beautiful and interesting wife, and the loveliest
little girl of three or four years of age that I ever set my eyes on.
That lovely little girl was kind enough to take to me at once--there's
no accounting for taste! We had a little flirtation in the distance at
first. By-and-by, she came toward me, nearer and nearer, then she
stopped in front of me, and looked at me, hesitating, with her finger
in her pretty little mouth. I knew what she wanted, and I said