ompare the British climate not with
that of Europe but with the northern part of the United States, the
references to it in English literature would constitute a hymn of
thanksgiving.

As the case stands, however, the people of all parts of the United
States alike, in many of which mere existence is a hardship for some
months in the year, are firmly convinced that the inhabitants of the
British Isles are in comparison with themselves profoundly to be pitied
for their deplorable climate; and it is probable that the prevailing
idea as to the Englishman's habitual treatment of his wife has much the
same origin. It is an inheritance of the Continental belief that John
Bull sold his womenfolk at Smithfield. The frequency of international
marriages and the continued stream of travel across the Atlantic is, of
course, beginning to correct the popular American point of view, but
there are still millions of honest and intelligent people in the United
States who, when they read that an American girl is going to be married
to an Englishman, pity her from their hearts in the belief that, for the
sake of a coronet or some such bauble, she is selling herself to become
a sort of domestic drudge.

Occasionally also even international marriages turn out unhappily; and
whenever that is the case the American people hear of it in luxuriant
detail. But of the thousands of happy unions nothing is said. Not many
years ago there was a conspicuous case, wherein an American woman, whom
the people of the United States loved much as Englishmen loved the
Empress Frederick or the Princess Alice, failed to find happiness with
an English husband. Of the rights and wrongs of that case, neither I nor
the American people in the mass know anything, but it is the generally
accepted belief in the United States that the lady's husband was some
degrees worse than Bluebeard. I would not venture to hazard a guess at
the number of times that I have heard a conversation on this subject
clinched with the argument: "Well, now, look at N---- G----!" Against
that one instance the stories of a thousand American women who are
living happy lives in Europe would not weigh. If they do not confess
their unhappiness, indeed, "it is probably only because they are proud,
as a free-born American girl should be, and would die rather than to let
others know the humiliations to which they are subjected."

"Oh, yes, you Englishmen!" an American woman will say, "your manners are