they are superbly
independent. When you ask them what makes them so charming, they say:
"It is because we are better educated than your girls and--and we are
more sensible in regard to men. We have good times all round, but we
aren't taught to regard every man as a possible husband. Nor is he
expected to marry the first girl he calls on regularly." Yes, they have
good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse it. They can
go driving with young men, and receive visits from young men to an
extent that would make an English mother wink with horror; and neither
driver nor drivee have a thought beyond the enjoyment of a good time. As
certain also of their own poets have said:--

"Man is fire and woman is tow,
And the Devil he comes and begins to blow."

In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, in
absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently accidents do not
exceed the regular percentage arranged by the Devil for each class and
climate under the skies. But the freedom of the young girl has its
drawbacks. She is--I say it with all reluctance--irreverent, from her
forty-dollar bonnet to the buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She
talks flippantly to her parents and men old enough to be her
grandfather. She has a prescriptive right to the society of the Man who
Arrives. The parents admit it. This is sometimes embarrassing,
especially when you call on a man and his wife for the sake of
information; the one being a merchant of varied knowledge, the other a
woman of the world. In five minutes your host has vanished. In another
five his wife has followed him, and you are left with a very charming
maiden doubtless, but certainly not the person you came to see. She
chatters and you grin; but you leave with the very strong impression of
a wasted morning. This has been my experience once or twice. I have even
said as pointedly as I dared to a man: "I came to see you." "You'd
better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women-folk--to
my daughter, that is to say." He spoke with truth. The American of
wealth is owned by his family. They exploit him for bullion, and
sometimes it seems to me that his lot is a lonely one. The women get the
ha'pence; the kicks are all his own. Nothing is too good for an
American's daughter (I speak here of the moneyed classes). The girls
take every gift as a matter of course. Yet they develop greatly when a
catastrophe arrives and the man