choose
between them. And what excellence he has in each he owes to the fact
that he is in the main English in origin.

That Americans should think that they have a higher respect for
womanhood than any other people is not surprising; for every other
people thinks precisely the same thing. They would be unique among
peoples if they thought otherwise. Frenchman, German, Italian,
Spaniard, Greek--each and every one who has not had his eyes opened by
travel and knowledge of the world believes, with no less sincerity of
conviction than the American, that to him alone of all peoples has it
been vouchsafed to know how duly to reverence the divine feminine. To
the Englishman it seems that the German not seldom treats his wife much
as if she were a cow; and he is sometimes distressed at the way in
which, for all the pretty things he says to her, the Frenchman, not of
the labouring classes only, will allow his wife to work for and wait on
him. While the language which an Italian can, on occasions, use towards
the partner of his joys is, to English ears, appalling. But each goes on
serenely satisfied of his own superiority. You others, you may pay
lip-service, yes; but deep down, in the heart of hearts--_we_ know. The
American has as good a right to this same foible as any other; but what
is to be noted is that whereas Englishmen laugh at the pretensions of
Continental peoples, they have been willing to accept the chivalry of
the American at his own valuation: the fact being that the valuation is
not originally American, but was made by the travelling Englishmen of
the past who communicated their appraisement to the people at home as
well as to the American whom they complimented. Englishmen of the
present day have accepted the belief as an inheritance and without
question; for it was at least a generation and a half ago that the myth
first obtained vogue, and the two facts most commonly adduced in its
support by the English visitors who spread it were, first, that women
could walk about the streets of New York or any other American city,
unattended and at such hours as pleased them, without being insulted;
and, second (absurdly enough), the provision of special "ladies'
entrances" to hotels, which seem to have enormously impressed several
English visitors to the United States who afterwards wrote their
"impressions."

For the first of these, it is a mere matter of local custom and police
regulation. When it is understood that