aristocracy and the
plutocracy of the two countries. Those people are cosmopolitan;
besides, they travel and they get rid of their international
prejudices.

But what about the good, worthy masses of the people, say, at least
nine-tenths of the populations of America and England?

Well, I should like to tell what I think to be the truth frankly and
plainly. I am not a rich man--far from it--but I now see my way to
easily paying my butcher's bills for the rest of my life, and I can
afford to say what I mean. If you don't like it, and want something
else, please apply elsewhere for compliments, platitudes, and
falsehoods.

I am absolutely convinced that most American women despise English
women, and that most English women cordially hate American women. And
as it is much more flattering to be hated than to be despised, it is
the American women who seem to me the better served of the two.

In the eyes of the English women who have not travelled in America or
had the good fortune of mixing in Europe with the best American women,
and who, in good womanly fashion, stick fast to their prejudiced
notions, the daughters of Brother Jonathan are bumptious, vulgar,
overdressed, loud, assertive, indifferent mothers, selfish wives, bad
housekeepers, or else unbearable prigs and blue-stockings. And you will
hear them deliver judgment in a way that seems to admit of no appeal.

In the eyes of the American women who have not lived the home-life of
the English or mixed with the women of good English society, and who
have been fed on ideas and opinions given in some American books or
published in the newspapers of the smaller American cities, the English
women are silly, sat-upon, ignorant creatures, seedy and dowdy, badly
shaped, badly dressed, and who can only talk of their babies and their
servants.

Among that class of women in both countries, the only concessions I
have heard them make are the following: English women admit that their
American sisters are freer and smarter than they are, and the American
women envy the complexion of the daughters of John Bull.

How amiable women can be!

CHAPTER XXX

THE WOMAN I HATE

Women's-righters--Electric fluids--The bearded lady--The
first-fiddle--Lady doctors--Lady lawyers--Lady
speech-makers--Prominent women--A pretty picture.

Ernest Renan, whom nobody would dream of charging with frivolity, said
that the first duty of woman was to look beautiful. Victor