b/w 
 
 OF TB. 
 
 
' 
 
THE 
 
 WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 BY 
 
 C. DE VARIGNY 
 
 TRANSLA TED FROM THE FRENCH BY 
 
 ARABELLA WARD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1895 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1895, 
 
 BY 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PBESS, 
 RAHWAY, N. J. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Birth of a Civilisation A World in Process of 
 Formation Woman's Part at the Beginning- of 
 American Colonisation Different Elements among 
 the Colonists North and South Puritans and 
 Cavaliers Antagonistic Ideas and Traditions 
 Establishment of Mixed Schools Their Dangers 
 and their Effect Beginnings of Social Life- 
 American Women at the Commencement of the 
 Nineteenth Century 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Overmastering Influence of American Women Their 
 Rights and Privileges Flirtation, Love, Mar- 
 riage Legislation for the Protection of Women 
 Its Abuse American Circes Breach of Promise 
 Cases Three Years of a Young Girl's Life The 
 American Married Woman American Morals 
 Aristocracy and Plutocracy Prevalence of 
 Luxury, 58 
 
 ^CHAPTER III. 
 
 Marriage and Divorce in the United States Extreme 
 Laxity of the Law Typical Cases Legislation of 
 the Different States Adventuresses Woman in 
 the Far West Story of Belle Starr, . . .129 
 iii 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Money in American Society Adaptability of the 
 American Woman Her Qualities and Her Defects 
 Various Types Elizabeth Patterson American 
 Critics of American Women The American 
 Woman of To-day Her Position and Her In- 
 fluence, 183 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED 
 STATES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Birth of a Civilisation A World in Process of 
 Formation Woman's Part at the Beginning of Amer- 
 ican Colonisation Different Elements among the Col- 
 onists North and South Puritans and Cavaliers 
 Antagonistic Ideas and Traditions Establishment of 
 Mixed Schools Their Dangers and their Effect Be- 
 ginnings of Social Life American Women at the Com- 
 mencement of the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 I. 
 
 EUROPE is becoming Americanised. In 
 one century, between the years 1789 and 
 1889, she cast upon the shores of North 
 America more than fifteen million emi- 
 grants. Until I860 she flooded the United 
 States with the product of her manufac- 
 tories and thrust upon them her literature, 
 her ideas, her arts and artists, her fashions 
 and styles, her outlaws and adventurers. 
 
 Like a dry and sandy soil, the new earth . 
 absorbed everything, assimilated every- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 thing the good and the evil, the clear 
 waters with the muddy. Then, out of 
 these different elements, by the genius of 
 the race, by the influence of the climate, by 
 *> freedom of thought, and by an intellectual, 
 religious, and moral culture, there arose 
 ^ another civilisation. This civilisation has 
 certain affinities with ours, yet presents 
 unexpected contrasts to it. In its turn, it 
 reacts on Europe, which its tourists invade, 
 and where its roving millionaires exchange 
 their homes for establishments so sump- 
 tuous as to rival in luxury, elegance, and 
 comfort, not only those of the high-born 
 aristocracy which is vanishing and which 
 they envy, but of the moneyed aristocracy 
 which their wealth is crushing. In their 
 turn they initiate us into their ideas, 
 their morals, and their customs. They do 
 this, not as timid, hesitating parvenus in 
 dread of ridicule, but as people certain of 
 success, who smile at our prejudices, embold- 
 ened by an assurance acquired through ex- 
 perience. In return, these civilisations suffer 
 mutual drawbacks. They react one on the 
 other, and change more or less rapidly and 
 deeply, according to circumstances. Above 
 all, they vary according to the activities 
 involved. 
 Antiquity recognised only two of these : 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 brutal conquest and intellectual conquest ; 
 strength of arms and charm of eloquence 
 and of art. Each has helped the other. 
 Murderous Avar has become methodical and 
 scientific ; the book and the newspaper have 
 replaced the tribune, which has grown too 
 limited for its audience. Men write more 
 and speak less. Finally, to these influ- 
 ences a third is added, which in olden times 
 was either unknown or else despised, yet 
 which is more helpful, more subtle, and 
 more powerful than any other the influ- 
 ence of woman. 
 
 For a long time woman amounted to little ; 
 she was an accident, as it were, in the his- 
 tory of the people as in the life of man. 
 She is much to-day ; and already setting 
 aside old customs, our historians, travellers, 
 philosophers, and moralists study not only 
 a nation's politics, its methods of adminis- 
 tration, and its economics, but they do more . 
 than this ; they inquire into ita_social life 
 and customs ; into the realm of which 
 woman is the centre, and where she alone 
 holds sway and determines, now and again, 
 those great events which impel a nation 
 onward. Whether we approve or not, we 
 cannot deny the broadening power of this 
 woman-influence. Napoleon L, who was 
 strongly opposed to it, severely rebuked 
 
4 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Mme. de Stael for entering into politics, 
 and she replied, u Women should not be 
 blamed for their interest in the affairs of 
 a country, when for that country they lose 
 their heads." The argument admitted of 
 no reply, and there are many more that 
 resemble it. That which astonishes us is 
 not that a part and the largest part of the 
 human race has at length won its share 
 of influence, but that so many years were 
 needed in which to win it. Yet precisely 
 because woman's progress has been slow, 
 her influence makes itself the better felt. 
 
 This influence rarely shows itself in the 
 clear light of day. It is not a public 
 affair, so to speak, and therefore less of 
 a responsibility. A woman's social laws 
 depend upon her will alone. She pro- 
 mulgates them, observes them, and makes 
 others submit to them. The chief work is 
 left to man ; but woman, by the strength of 
 her influence, is the propulsive power by 
 which we may take the measure of our 
 civilisation. The standard rises where her 
 influence is most marked ; it falls where 
 this influence is weak and vacillating. 
 She seems in these modern times the low- 
 water mark of progress. If, like everything 
 new, she has her fanatical followers, she 
 has her slanderers too ; reckless enemies, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 5 
 
 who do more for her than her most devoted 
 friends. Was her future greatness foreseen, 
 I wonder, by those ancient law-makers and 
 philosophers who, after reducing woman to 
 servitude, then reproached her for having 
 the vices of a slave these Fathers of the 
 Church whose logic she frustrated, and who 
 so greatly reviled her ? 
 
 Plato, who affirmed that he who failed in \ 
 this world would in the next be changed into 
 a woman, was asked by Hippocrates, "What 
 is woman 3" and he replied " A disease." / 
 
 SL_ Jerome painted her in colours no less \ 
 sombre, when he said, "All women are 
 very evil and are inspired by the devil." 
 According to St. Tjiqrn&s, " Woman is an 
 accidental and superfluous being." In still 
 harsher language, St. John of Damascus 
 tells us that " Woman is an evil animal, ' 
 a hideous worm which makes its home in 
 the heart of men." St. John Chrysostom 
 writes, "She is the source of evil, the/ 
 author of sin, the gate of the tomb, the 
 entrance to hell, the cause of all our mis- 
 fortunes." According to St. Gregory the 
 Great, "She has no sense of goodness." 
 Erasmus calls her "A stupid and silly 
 animal, but for all that, pleasing and 
 gracious ; a woman," he adds, "is always 
 a woman, that is to say, foolish." 
 
6 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The evil things recorded of her would 
 fill a folio. The largest library could not 
 hold the volumes that have been written on 
 this subject. One can state positively that 
 in Paris alone more than one thousand such 
 novels and other works appear annually, yet 
 still, whether beloved or not, she is none the 
 less triumphant. With what proud dis- 
 dain she bears unflinchingly the terrible 
 criticism of the most pessimistic of philoso- 
 phers : U O men, wise in your deep and 
 mighty science, you who have thought, 
 who know where, when, and how every- 
 thing in nature is united, what is the reason 
 of this love, and of these kisses ? Put your 
 subtle spirit on the rack, and tell me when 
 and where and how / came to love, and 
 why?" 
 
 ) So says Burger, and Schopenhauer puts 
 the same question. He asks, furthermore, 
 in what this strongest and most mysterious 
 of all realms consists. He is amazed that 
 it can so torture the world's great souls ; 
 that it can thrust itself into diplomacy, 
 troubling it with its trifles, thrusting its love 
 letters and locks of hair into the portfolios 
 of statesmen ; that it upsets everything and 
 turns the whole world topsy-turvy. He 
 1 blames " the sex with broad hips, long hair, 
 ! and limited ideas." Rather than call it 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 beautiful, he claims it were more just to 
 ('name it "unsesthetic." So much for the 
 ^physical side ; and as for the moral- 
 according to his notion, " Nature refused to 
 woman strength, and gave her instead the 
 art of deception, to protect her weakness. 
 The lion has his teeth and claws, the 
 elephant and the wild boar their means of 
 defence, the bull its horns, the cuttlefish 
 its ink, with which to discolour the waters : 
 and so woman has deceit, born in the finest 
 as truly as in the dullest natures. It is 
 as natural for her to use it on every 
 occasion, as it is for an animal to use its 
 natural weapons when attacked." 
 
 Schopenhauer does not forgive Chris- 
 tianity for having changed the happy state 
 of inferiority in which woman was held 
 by the ancients. He says : " The Eastern 
 people have a better idea of woman's 
 position than have we, with our gallantry 
 and our stupid feeling of reverence, the 
 most absolute proof of our German-Chris- 
 tian ignorance." Is it not this, in short, 
 which has created the "lady," whom he 
 holds in deep and bitter hatred? "The 
 European woman, the object of Asia's scorn, 
 and whom Rome and Greece both mocked 
 at, is a monster the offspring of human 
 folly, a mere machine for spending money." 
 
 \ 
 \ 
 
 L 
 
8 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Such in fact is his feeling against Germany, 
 for the stand that she has taken in this 
 unwise production, that he concludes thus : 
 "In case of my death, I make this con- 
 fession, that I despise the German nation 
 because of its infinite stupidity, and I blush 
 to be a member of it." 
 
 In spite of this last stroke the success 
 which Schopenhauer won in Europe did 
 not reach to the United States, although 
 he strongly admired that country without 
 understanding it, and which, understanding 
 him, liked him only moderately well. The 
 "lady," the butt of his bitter gibes and 
 jeers, not content with having conquered the 
 New World, is now in a fair way to Ameri- 
 canise the Old. 
 
 II. 
 
 Every nation forms its own conception of 
 woman. Ideas, like language, vary. The 
 same thought may be expressed in many 
 different ways. With the French, woman 
 is an ideal, embodying every exquisite detail 
 of civilisation. The Spaniard still thinks 
 her the Madonna of his shrine. In Italy 
 she is a garden flower ; in Turkey, a con- 
 venient article of furniture. We all know 
 the naive complaint of the young Arabian 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 girl about her husband : "Before marriage 
 he used to kiss my foot-prints, but now he 
 harnesses me with the ass to the plough, 
 and makes me work." 
 
 The Englishman, the predecessor of the 
 American, saw in woman, above all else, 
 the mother of his children, the mistress of 
 his Home. Unsociable by taste, by nature 
 independent, his city life is one of restless- 
 ness, and he submits to it only that he may 
 win with ease the living he best loves, that 
 of a country home. Deeply imbued with 
 biblical traditions, which are familiar to him 
 from his fireside discussions and from the 
 reading of the Scriptures, he has acquired 
 these two characteristics respect for 
 parental authority and a desire for a large 
 posterity. He retains, too, his taste for 
 a nomadic life. From this he derives the 
 instinct which drove men to seek a greater 
 field of activity in the Indies, in Canada, 
 Australia, and at the Cape, and which 
 caused them to settle and to people English 
 colonies. It is the same instinct which 
 leads the man of business to spend some 
 time each year in visiting Europe, in hunting 
 in Scotland, in catching salmon in Norway 
 and Sweden, or in travelling in Egypt. It 
 is this, too, which drives these bold explorers 
 to the heart of Africa, and to the ice of the 
 
10 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 North Pole. Domestic by occupation and 
 necessity, the Englishman has the wan- 
 derer's instincts the wish to camp out, to 
 change his abode, to see beyond his horizon, 
 and to breathe a different atmosphere. 
 Moreover emigration appeared natural to 
 him. It carried with it none of the unpleas- 
 ant thoughts which prevail when success is 
 quite impossible where fate has placed one. 
 He brought with him those instincts and 
 ideas, to plant in the new soil which he 
 colonised. He transmitted them to his 
 descendants, and so it came about that he 
 was led to the shores of the New World by 
 two causes : first by religious persecution ; 
 and then, by the desire to make his fortune. 
 Thus, an offshoot from the mighty English 
 trunk, he took root and grew, bearing fruit 
 in time ; for he did not emigrate alone. His 
 wife, his sons and daughters, came with him, 
 and with him shared his hopes and fears. 
 He commanded, they obeyedo He gave 
 judgment, and his word was law. When 
 in 1620 they embarked on the Mayflower; 
 when in 1630, a thousand strong, they emi- 
 grated to Massachusetts Bay, there to find 
 the religious tolerance and political liberty 
 which Charles I. had refused them, they 
 did it not as vanquished rebels, nor as hope- 
 less fanatics, but as loyal subjects, as free_ 
 
THE WOMEN OF TUE UNITED STATES. 11 
 
 English men, who came to spread their tents 
 on a solTwhose remoteness would assure 
 their independence. Almost all belonged 
 to the class of those who, though not rich, 
 were, nevertheless, in easy circumstances. 
 Coming originally, for the most part, from 
 Boston and Dorchester, they gave these 
 names to their new settlements, begun with 
 prayer when first they landed, and with the 
 remembrance of the mother-country em- 
 bodied in these names, and in that of New 
 England, given to their adopted home. 
 
 A short distance from the shore rose the 
 forest, dense and illimitable. It extended 
 northward to the majestic stream of the St. 
 Lawrence and the Canadian frontiers ; and 
 westward to the great and unknown lakes 
 of Ontario, Erie, and Michigan, and to the 
 rich prairies of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 
 which were discovered a century later by 
 two Englishmen, George Flower and 
 Maurice Birbeck. With hatchet and fire 
 the colonists made great clearings in the 
 forest, enlarged the glades, utilised the 
 wood in building huts, and made arable the 
 soil. They carried with them the necessary 
 implements, with whose aid were to be 
 planted their future crops. It was the rough 
 life of the pioneer and not the wretched one 
 of a poor settler. The men builded, laboured, 
 
 OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
12 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 planted ; the women attended to their 
 domestic duties, prepared the food and 
 mended the clothes, until evening brought 
 the family together around the common 
 meal. A general prayer followed, some 
 Bible reading, a religious exhortation from 
 the father, and then another prayer. It was 
 a simple and a wholesome life, full of work 
 and religion ; with no time for vain regrets 
 and idle dreams ; a calm and serious exist- 
 ence ; not monotonous or empty, but one 
 in which the mind and body were always 
 active. Their efforts were rewarded by a 
 growing ease, by the comforts won through 
 foresight and labour, by the knowledge of all 
 trades which comes from the necessity of 
 learning. One was at once architect and 
 builder, breeder and farmer, woodman and 
 carpenter, trapper and hunter in short, 
 everything. Each year showed fresh prog- 
 ress, a wider domain, an increased harvest, 
 a greater number of cattle, a growing 
 prosperity in all things. 
 
 New England became populated. The 
 emigrants had nothing to fear from the 
 Indians, few in number and ready to hire 
 out their services. Between 1630 and 1640, 
 N twenty thousand English Protestant colo- 
 nists crossed the Atlantic. The women were 
 by no means lacking in boldness nor fearless- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 13 
 
 ness, butit was not until the religious change 
 which England brought about in passing 
 from Catholicism to Protestantism that 
 woman played an important part. She felt 
 the influence of reform as did man. Chris- 
 tianity had given her liberty, but Protestant- 1 
 ism freed her from further restraint. It I 
 gave her equal rights with man; it recog-l^. 
 nised even her natural intelligence, even her 
 faculty of insight and of reason, and her \ 
 duties and responsibilities in this life. She 
 was free to live as she wished, even to marryv 
 as she wished. Thus she moved with greater 
 ease in the broader realm of her religious 
 ideas, conforming to them or not, as she 
 wished. She retired within herself, and 
 meditated within her conscience, where 
 none but God might look. A feeling of 
 limitless responsibility arose in place of her 
 former passive obedience, and within her 
 was born a strong and independent soul. 
 Then was she indeed the equal of man. 
 Free, now, this woman mentally from all the 
 restrictions of her childhood. Bear her and 
 her family three thousand miles away across K 
 an unknown ocean on which navigation is 
 as slow as it was perilous ; place her on 
 foreign shores, encircled by the solitude of 
 an endless forest, deep and vast; give her 
 this new life, where she feels that she is not 
 
14 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 only useful, but necessary, and where she 
 may assume her share of a common burden ; 
 let her husband and children demand much 
 from her and then, comparing her strength 
 with her task, you will find one equal to the 
 other. Faith will sustain her. The very 
 thought of her usefulness rouses in her 
 a courage forgetful of self. Her mind is 
 full of different occupations, and becomes 
 stronger. She works and plans, and amid 
 constant activity she satisfies one of the 
 most urgent demands of her nature and of 
 her heart, viz., to feel that she is the centre 
 of a home, and indispensable to those whom 
 she loves. The more children she has, the 
 richer she thinks herself. 
 
 The boys helped the father, the daughters 
 the mother, and the race grew. As yet 
 woman had neither rivals to fear, nor temp- 
 tations to conquer. Isolation was her 
 pedestal, and she grew in the solitude of 
 the modest home, where she was queen. 
 That period was a happy one. If the grain 
 rose thick in the beds between the tree- 
 stumps blackened by fire, it grew also on 
 fertile soil, which the plough had scarcely 
 scratched. So, too, the children multiplied 
 in the log cabins. Fever, which inevitably 
 accompanies a clearing of the ground, carried 
 away the weakest, as at the beginning it 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 15 
 
 had laid low the less robust of the settlers ; 
 but the gaps were filled, and those who 
 survived, strong and vigorous, were the 
 beginning of a great nation. Then, too, the 
 climate was healthful. The forests grew, 
 new settlers invaded them, making clearings 
 in their turn, always pushing farther off the 
 black wall of trees which slowly gave way 
 before them, and there was left as the result 
 of their toil a rich green earth, a stranger 
 to sunlight, to be sure, but which, under its 
 rays, put forth a golden harvest. The soli- 
 tary places were filled. From the window 
 of each hut other huts could be seen, 
 within which lived and toiled fellow- 
 workers and fellow- thinkers. All were 
 free and independent, each in his own 
 home ; but there existed no longer the 
 uncertainty of isolation. In case of danger, 
 illness, or accident, one^ could help the 
 other, and aid in the common fight against 
 Nature. An elementary grouping, in which 
 each woman was a centre sufficient in itself, 
 whose birth and rapid development we have 
 followed. 
 
 Gferms of fishing- villages, like Yerba- 
 Buena, with its 479 inhabitants, which be- 
 came a city twenty years later San Fran- 
 cisco, which claims 300,000 population, 
 encampments of hunters, like Chicago, 
 
 
16 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 which have more than a million, did not 
 rise in this way. The English colony took- 
 root, unconscious of its strength, and 
 still more ignorant of the future. Wholly 
 absorbed in his rough labour, the pioneer 
 thought only of the extension of his land. 
 But as the farm grew, as the family in- 
 creased, the home became more beautiful, 
 more comfortable, and better protected. A 
 certain degree of civilisation was introduced 
 on the day when, relieved from some of 
 their burdens, the daughters had a part in 
 the home of which the wife, the mistress of 
 the house, took care, and which she now had 
 time to beautify. Flowers were cultivated, 
 as well as vegetables. In the evenings the 
 mother did some light work, while the 
 daughters attended to the household duties. 
 During the day the men hunted and the 
 deer-skins made thick carpets. The sur- 
 plus of the farm products was exchanged 
 for European goods. The colonist's hut 
 became a house. He camped out no longer. 
 He lived. In this rising world decided in- 
 dividualities and tastes developed without 
 restraint. Every talent was useful, and 
 therefore welcome. Of what need to oppose 
 them, or to compel them to turn where they 
 would bring about only mediocre results ? 
 Independence submits only to the task of 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 17 
 
 / 
 
 being useful, of contributing to the happi- 
 ness of others, of doing a bee's work and 
 not a hornet's. 
 
 At that time there existed Jlie__authority 
 of the head of the house, before which every- 
 thing yielded ; of the mother of the family, 
 who had charge ofthe education of the little 
 ones ; and this authority lasted until the 
 day when the settlement was able to build 
 a chapel and provide for the maintenance 
 of a pastor. Sometimes several settlements 
 united together in the choice of one clergy- 
 men who visited each locality in turn, hold- 
 ing services. The chapel was the centre, 
 first of the village, then of the town, and 
 finally of the city. Thus Christianity came, 
 and man embraced it. In the majority of 
 cases, it was woman who demanded it. Not 
 that men were indifferent, but they knew 
 better how to calculate than to plan. A 
 man doubts his own capabilities and his 
 neighbours' ; he hesitates before the difficul- 
 ties and responsibilities which loom up 
 before him. It is the wife who, pointing to 
 her children, convinces him of the value of 
 public worship, of the necessity of strength- 
 ening and maintaining faith by higher and 
 more persuasive precepts than theirs. She 
 has as much faith as he, and something else, 
 foresight. After this question was decided, 
 
.18 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 came the one of schools, and it seemed as 
 though the mother had no further wish. 
 Together they provided the daily bread ; 
 they gave all they could the fruit of their 
 labour, which sustains life ; they preserved 
 and kept in their children and in themselves 
 the religious thought which caused them to 
 leave everything, sacrifice everything, even 
 their native country. It remained for them 
 to give to their children the instruction 
 which they themselves had received, and 
 which, although primitive, made free beings 
 of them, capable of believing and thinking. 
 Then, like the first, this latter problem, too, 
 was solved. 
 
 When several settlements had united they 
 built a school a simple hut, common to all 
 to which they called a master, who, although 
 of no great accomplishments, could teach 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic to the young 
 generation, too unwilling as yet to give to 
 study more than a few hours every day. 
 Strange instruction that, and strange schools, 
 \those, in which girls and boys sat together, 
 studying the same lessons from the same 
 books ! Nevertheless, from that rude hut 
 came the woman of the next generation. 
 Rude and rough as it was, and shocking 
 to our own ideas, it was the starting point 
 of the civilising influence which developed 
 
OF 
 
 OF TT?K 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 in those children a chivalrous instinct at 
 that time still unfelt ; the respect for her 
 who later was to justify the American say- 
 ing, " In the United States, woman is 
 queen." 
 
 This influence which the future had in 
 store for her, the woman of the North at 
 that time possessed and used only within 
 the limited home circle in that very home 
 which, built at the price of so much labour, 
 was about to become uncertain and unsafe. 
 
 From England came new settlers, whose 
 presence should have increased the power 
 and strengthened the safety of the first 
 comers, but who caused new and unex- 
 pected disturbances. They claimed their 
 part of the land passed beyond the first 
 settlers, forcing their way through the 
 forest, pushing it before them, and at the 
 same time driving back the Indian who 
 dwelt there, whose hunting ground and 
 whose home it was. He lived there and 
 needed, in order to live, not a few acres only, 
 like the white man who plants and reaps, 
 but great tracts of territory where he might 
 hunt the game on which he subsisted, and 
 secure the furs and skins in which he 
 traded. The game fled before the invaders, 
 and the Indian was forced to follow it 
 further into the forest, his old and once 
 
20 THE WOMEN OF TEE UNITED STATES. 
 
 silent home, but which now resounded with 
 the hatchet of the colonists, with the crack- 
 ling of the fires which they lighted in order 
 to burn the weeds and destroy the stumps 
 scattered throughout the glades where, 
 daily, new huts arose, to be replaced later 
 by substantial houses. Sheds and granaries 
 surrounded the cleared fields, which were 
 at last inclosed by hedges and railings. 
 
 At this gradual intrusion, the Indian at 
 first was amazed and then enraged. His 
 complaints were unheard. From being well 
 treated and even courted by the first settlers, 
 who feared him, he became suspicious and 
 troublesome, like a landowner whom one dis- 
 possesses without right and without com- 
 pensation ; a threatening enemy whom men 
 had just cause to fear. The Englishman's 
 inborn scorn of an inferior race increased 
 against these superstitious and cruel pagans 
 who rebelled against every form of civili- 
 sation as against all religious instruction ; 
 who scalped a conquered enemy, and offered 
 human sacrifices to their bloodthirsty divin- 
 ities. It is true that the Indians were the 
 first masters of the soil, but they knew 
 not how to hold it. By right, the land 
 belonged to the more intelligent race who 
 cleared it, who made it valuable, who 
 watered it with the sweat of the brow, who 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 21 
 
 held it in the name of God and of the King, 
 and who would not give it up. This meant 
 war with the Indian. The settlers accepted 
 the inevitable, and began their prepara- 
 tions. Their farms were transformed into 
 fortresses in which they banded together as 
 a single body. 
 
 Such a condition of affairs was necessary 
 if they were to renounce instinctive and 
 voluntary isolation, and bring together their 
 fellow-patriots who, although led thither 
 by the same aspirations, having the same 
 language, ideas, and religious beliefs, never- 
 theless put their personal independence 
 above everything, and jealously shut them- 
 selves up within the narrow circle of their 
 family. It was indeed necessary to break 
 down the barriers, to join together in com- 
 mon cause against the threatened attack of 
 the common enemy. All for one, and one 
 for all, became the watchword. They met 
 and decided on a code of signals to be used 
 in case of danger ; they elected leaders and 
 made ready their fire-arms. In each colony 
 all the able-bodied men were enlisted ; from 
 settlement to settlement they made ready 
 for battle. They asked England for aid, 
 but she had none to give. Instead of sol- 
 diers, she granted a charter. The colonists 
 made good use of this, for it gave them the 
 
22 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 right to the land in the name of England, 
 whose possession it was "by right of dis- 
 covery and by first settlement." Charles I. 
 then fell in the conflict with his Parliament, 
 and the English Commonwealth, under the 
 Lord-Protector, Oliver Cromwell, had enough 
 to do to rescue Jamaica from Spain, to check 
 the growing navigation of Holland, and to 
 keep Scotland and Ireland quiet. 
 
 The settlers could no longer wait for aid. 
 The time for that had now gone by. The 
 fight was upon them, when the Pequot 
 Indians began to burn and pillage the settle- 
 ments along the Connecticut River. In 
 those long and obscure contests, not only 
 was the courage of the settlers great, but 
 the fortitude of the women was astonishing. 
 The annals of the times tell us that they 
 were as brave as the men, warding off many 
 an attack with the aid of the daughters ; 
 handling their muskets as they would a 
 distaif ; brave, no matter how many the 
 assailants, and not hesitating to bury them- 
 selves under their burning homes, rather 
 than fall alive into the enemy's hands. A 
 merciless war it was, without quarter from 
 either side. Great acts of treachery were 
 committed, which made a void about the 
 settlements and which cut down the Indians 
 like ripe grain. So far was he pushed into 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 23 
 
 the forest that there was no further thought 
 of following him. Then, after a time, men 
 could breathe again. The effort had been 
 great, but the emigrant remained master, and 
 as a proof of this still held fast the colony 
 of the North, where he had stood so firm. ~ 
 
 Woman was again raised a step higher, as j 
 the companion and equal of man. As the I 
 common danger had increased, as it had 
 tightened the bonds already strong, as it 
 had brought kindred spirits together, so it 
 united the settlements and bound together 
 the scattered colonies. The first league was 
 formed in 1643, between Massachusetts, 
 Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, 
 under the name of New England, a confed- 
 eration which was the cradle, so to speak, of 
 the great American Union. 
 
 III. 
 
 We have now endeavoured to sketch 
 woman's position, her influence, and her 
 characteristics, in the settlements of the 
 North ; later on, we shall find what time and 
 education have done for the modern Ameri- 
 can woman. But this Northern woman 
 was not the only type existing at the time. 
 Simultaneously there appeared another, dif- 
 fering in conditions but not in origin ; one 
 
24 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 which presented a striking contrast to the 
 first. In our day these two types are 
 united, without either having lost its 
 identity, and from this union has sprung 
 the American woman as we know her ; the 
 characteristic result of a civilisation other 
 than ours, destined, perhaps, to take her 
 elder sister's place, and one whose influence 
 was felt long ago, although unconsciously. 
 A short time after the Puritans fled from 
 the religious persecution of the Stuarts to 
 colonise the North, the defeated subjects of 
 Charles I., in their turn, sought the haven 
 of the New World, already harassed by 
 anarchy and civil war. It was a strange 
 fate which threw indiscriminately upon dis- 
 tant shores those who, holding their religion 
 and political independence above all, had 
 not hesitated to leave their fatherland. 
 Strange fate, too, that which from the 
 exodus of voluntary exiles, of zealous Prot- 
 estants and devout Catholics, of passionate 
 liberals and fanatical royalists, created the 
 citizens of this great Republic. Instinct- 
 ively, the new settlers went southward. 
 They had nothing in common with the 
 Puritans of the North, except race and 
 language. Their politics, their religion, 
 even their ideas of social life, were different. 
 The emigrants of the North belonged to the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 25 
 
 middle class ; to the once triumphant party 
 of Cromwell, which slew the King and 
 usurped his power. Virginia was a royal 
 colony and a loyal one. She had her charter 
 of incorporation from a King. The royal- 
 ists, emigrating, settled there, and that 
 there might be no doubt as to their feeling, 
 they called it the " Old Dominion," in dis- 
 tinction to the Commonwealth of England, 
 which they hated. " Old Dominion " meant 
 to them the old royal land of the sovereign, 
 who, though a defeated martyr, still sheltered 
 them. Eleven years later, they celebrated 
 the restoration of the Stuarts and the reign 
 of Charles II. 
 
 Royalty, too, was a religion and had its 
 stanch followers. Here, too, woman held 
 the first .place, perhaps because she is more 
 apt to become enthusiastic for the principle 
 which underlies a permanent individuality, 
 than for the abstract principle represented 
 by transient personalities. Her ideal de- 
 mands an idol, a shrine ; and for those 
 women who were royalist and Catholic by 
 birth, family, and education, the idol had 
 been shattered, the temple profaned. So 
 they embarked, as desirous as the men to 
 leave a country whose past was fast dis- 
 appearing, and thus was brought to America 
 a new element. 
 
26 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The race- trait was the same in the 
 Northern settlers as in the South. The 
 union of the settlers was no more desired 
 by the South than by the North. The 
 Virginian planter was as isolated on his 
 plantation as was the New Englander hus- 
 bandman on his farm. Both required large 
 estates. It was not until later that the so- 
 cial instinct, created and developed by out- 
 of-door life, made itself evident ; but from 
 the beginning these settlers, as in England, 
 needed a home, large or small as the case 
 might be. They needed land, and also ser- 
 vants, and tenants who did not exist ; but 
 for whom they substituted slaves. Every- 
 where slavery was tolerated, but it existed 
 in the South as nowhere else. The Puritan 
 accepted it also, but always with a feeling 
 of dislike, as a sort of makeshift, and a 
 restricted and limited one. He feared its 
 despotism over his family and himself. His 
 conscience condemned it ; he preferred free 
 labour, which, in his harsh climate, the na- 
 ture of his tillage made necessary. Not so, 
 however, in the South. Many slaves were 
 needed both on the tobacco plantations and 
 in the households. Tobacco was not only 
 a product ; it was coin. Salaries, merchan- 
 dise, even taxes were paid in it ; and once 
 every year English ships carried it to Eng- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 27 
 
 land as part of their cargo, exchanging for 
 it such articles as the colonists would take. 
 What strikes one first of all in regard 
 to these two distinct emigrations, notwith- 
 standing their common origin and instincts, 
 and the fact that they came from the same 
 land to the same land, is their difference of 
 tradition, of social atmosphere, of education 
 and of life. The royalist settler brought to 
 Virginia with the last remnants of his for- 
 tune, his ideas, his fears, and his hopes. 
 Lord or not, as it might be, he was English, 
 and as such a man of business, who knew 
 what he was about ; accustomed to handle 
 estates, to carry on and manage large trans- 
 actions. On this new continent, where the 
 still useless soil was to be of such value, 
 he speedily amassed a new fortune. He 
 enjoyed a monopoly in the tobacco which 
 Europe craved, and which his slaves pro- 
 duced at the lowest possible cost to sell for 
 the highest price, and the demand for which 
 increased in proportion to the increase of 
 cultivation. In this new country woman's 
 influence was supreme. In leaving Eng- 
 land, she did not leave her habits and tradi- 
 tions. Every emigrant, rich or poor, carried 
 his own world with him an invisible world 
 of ideas, the result of his early training, or 
 bequeathed to him by preceding genera- 
 
28 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 tions. To this world, even though freed 
 from his country, he was for many years a 
 slave. Is not this the germ of that individ- 
 uality, which made the settler differ from 
 the native, who thought himself superior to 
 him whose lands he occupied, and whom he 
 trod down and suppressed ? In this respect 
 alone the settler felt himself superior to the 
 Indian, his neighbour ; he was the country's 
 chosen and predestined ruler. An aristocrat 
 by birth, with strong race and class preju- 
 dices, the newcomer, woman, strove to 
 implant her ideas in this new soil ; to revive 
 the distinctions of rank and caste ; to teach 
 to the modern American woman her own 
 feeling of social superiority, her respect for 
 ancestry, for name, and for descent ideas 
 which contrast strongly with the republican 
 feelings of a later day. 
 
 Already, in 1773, the Harvard students 
 were classified, not according to age or 
 merit, but according to the position held 
 by their parents in the social world. 
 Mistress and Lady of the Manor, the South-' 1 
 erner fulfilled her duties and claimed her 
 privileges. Her husband's home was noted 
 for its hospitality. The Southern "gentle- 
 men" had preserved not only the narrow 
 life of the court of the Stuarts, but also its 
 framework. On their prosperous planta- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 29 
 
 tions rose great mansions, resembling the 
 English castles, with their massive chimneys, 
 pointed roofs, mahogany staircases, long 
 and narrow windows, and wide piazzas. 
 Social traditions also were retained. The 
 memoirs of Mrs. Quincy, who revives this 
 lost world in her writings, show the people 
 faithful to English manners and customs ; 
 ceremonious, using a haughty courtesy 
 towards inferiors ; maintaining their rank 
 and position ; putting between the slave and 
 themselves the intermediate service of a 
 white major-domo, or valet. A lady of that 
 period advertised in the Maryland Gazette 
 that she was in need of a lackey "One who 
 would serve at table, clean the knives, lay 
 the cloth, and carry orders ; who knew how 
 to cut and curl the hair, who could speak 
 French, who would be as honest as the times 
 would allow, and as sober as he knew how 
 to be," 
 
 Mrs. Peace Hazard of Newport, R. L, 
 relates a story of how her grandmother, 
 after having divided the greater part 
 of her fortune among her children, con- 
 gratulated herself upon her return to 
 "a simple life." She had reduced the 
 number of her domestics to seventy. She 
 still had six thousand acres of land and 
 four thousand sheep, whose fleece was suffi- 
 
30 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 cient to clothe her entire household. Her 
 dairy required twenty-four slaves, each of 
 whom had charge of twelve cows, and whose 
 duty it was to make from a dozen to twenty- 
 four cheeses a day. 
 
 The residence of the Lee family at Marble- 
 head cost ten thousand pounds ; that of 
 Godfrey Malbone at Newport twenty thou- 
 sand pounds ; enormous sums for that 
 period. The Wentworth house at Ports- 
 mouth contained fifty-two rooms. It was 
 a free-and-easy life which the colonists led, 
 and luxurious in a primitive fashion. It 
 was a life which left to the woman her cus- 
 tomary duties, and to the husband and sons 
 sufficient leisure for hunting, fishing, racing, 
 and other sports. A new race grew up, 
 which felt itself superior by blood and 
 birth, as well as by habit and the responsi- 
 bility of command ; by a refinement of 
 manner and an intellectual pre-eminence in 
 the entirely English pursuit of physical 
 exercises. It was a race which, when there 
 came to be an American Union, would 
 give it legislators, statesmen, warriors, 
 governors, and administrators, a Congress, 
 and an army, a race which would assert 
 the supremacy of the South over the North, 
 until the time when it should itself fall in 
 the bloodiest civil war that the world has 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 31 
 
 ever seen. Meanwhile, these Southern 
 settlements were a sort of prelude to the 
 great future. Wholly royalist by tradition, 
 they were, before all else, independent by 
 instinct. With them their inborn feeling 
 gave way before another. They loved Eng- 
 land, they honoured the King, but they 
 were Virginians, and if, in the War of Inde-j 
 pendence, some few remained faithful to thei 
 mother-country, the greater number broke \ 
 away, and voluntarily took up arms, lead- 
 ing on to battle and to glory the Northern 
 settlers who followed them, and who grate- 
 fully gave to them the duty of directing the 
 troublous destinies of the Republic which 
 unconsciously they were establishing. The 
 fight was an heroic though a bloody one. 
 The women willingly gave to it their hus- 
 bands and sons, and even in this war they 
 showed distinctive characteristics. 
 
 Occasionally were seen the chivalry and 
 courtesy of Fontenoy. A vague odour of the 
 old aristocracy seemed to linger about the 
 cradle of this utilitarian Democracy. Two 
 Virginian colonists, Washington and Lee, 
 took command of the armies of the growing 
 Republic, and to them flocked numbers of 
 volunteers, almost all Frenchmen. When, 
 in 1781, Washington disembarked at New- 
 port, he was saluted by four French regi- 
 
 t 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
32 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ments, the Bourbon, Soisson, Sainton, and 
 Deux-Ponts ; by Rochambeau, by the Prince 
 de Broglie, by the Viscomte de Noailles, 
 by the Due de Deux-Ponts, afterwards 
 King of Bavaria ; by Lauzun and Admiral 
 Ternay ; and by the Adonis of the century, 
 Count Fersen. In the midst of four thou- 
 
 rsand brilliant red-and-white uniforms, bear- 
 ing standards on which was embroidered 
 the fleur-de-lis, stood Washington, at the 
 head of the Continental troops, whose worn 
 and soiled regimentals and tattered flags 
 were the witnesses of their past battles. 
 Amid the applause of the smiling women, 
 on whom the soldiers' glances lingered, the 
 American general advanced, while the 
 cannon thundered out salutes worthy of a 
 French marshal. In the evening, Rocham- 
 beau gave a ball which Washington opened 
 with dignity, dancing the minuet with the 
 belle of Newport, Miss Champlain. The 
 French saw this, and taking the instruments 
 away from the musicians they played the 
 "Conquering Hero," amid the applause of 
 an enthusiastic audience. A battle followed 
 the ball, and the gay dancers marched 
 bravely to the attack, took Yorktown, and 
 forced the English army to surrender and 
 withdraw. " Only one discordant note 
 was heard," says Mrs. Quincy, in her jour- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 33 
 
 nal, "and that was the more than cold 
 reception that Washington and the French 
 armies received from the German settlers." 
 To this war, which lasted for eight years, 
 Virginia alone sent not only 26,678 men, 
 but almost all the officers for the 231,791 
 soldiers. The Northern women had offered 
 resistance, but the Southern never showed 
 lack of courage or resolution. Patriotic 
 during the entire period, woman's influence 
 told, when at last independence brought 
 peace and the social life of the South 
 dawned in the North. New York was 
 already a city, the great port of entry to 
 the sea and to the whole continent. In 
 1789 its population amounted to 33,000, the 
 most of which were emigrants, merchants, 
 tradesmen, and shipowners ; the beginning 
 of a cosmopolitan society (curiously de- 
 scribed in letters of the times) in which the 
 Dutch element of 1621 was entirely distinct 
 from the English. But even then there ex- 
 isted that feminine exclusiveness which was 
 afterwards so strongly developed in New 
 York, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and 
 throughout the South and the West ; an ex- 
 clusiveness as rigid as it ever was in Eng- 
 land. Mrs. Knox, wife of General Knox, the 
 Minister of War, was the leader of the bon 
 ton, and society's model ; an odd one if we 
 
34 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 may judge from a description in one of Dr. 
 Manasseh Cutler's letters. He writes : " Her 
 table is served after the French fashion. 
 As to her, she affects (on account of her 
 husband's position) a bold manner which 
 is not pleasing in a woman. She wears her 
 hair frizzed in front, and built up at the 
 back, about a foot high, over a sort of head- 
 piece made of wire, which it covers but 
 does not hide. From this float black gauze 
 streamers to her waist, and are held in place 
 by a huge comb. She is enormous, like her 
 husband. Both are considered here the 
 most monstrous couple in the New World. 
 On the other hand they are most hospitable ; 
 always ready to welcome strangers ; always 
 giving dinners, which in themselves are an 
 indispensable passport to every newcomer." 
 
 To the aristocracy of birth which was 
 incarnate in ~the Southerner, was added a 
 new aristocracy, that of the official world, 
 which revolved about the President and his 
 Cabinet, one in which a social decree was 
 as important as the affairs of State, but the 
 influence of which scarcely passed beyond 
 the limits of the political capital of the 
 time. 
 
 It was a world in itself, curious in more 
 than its mere name, and one which we shall 
 have an opportunity of studying later. At 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 35 
 
 this time it was but just born. Congress 
 was as yet without a fixed meeting place. 
 It moved from city to city, and even in case 
 of great need a quorum could be called only 
 at great cost. Membership for which to-day 
 there is so much dispute, was despised at 
 that time. The distances were great ; the 
 expense of a session was heavy. To accept 
 George Washington's resignation it was 
 with great trouble that twenty Congressmen 
 were called together, the smallest number 
 required for a vote, and they represented 
 only seven Colonies. A simplicity wholly 
 republican prevailed, from the beginning, 
 in this official world which was composed 
 of the President's Cabinet and of the 
 foreign representatives. George Washing- 
 ton was economical, and Mrs. Washington, 
 whom the Northerners reproached for hav- 
 ing introduced into the growing Republic 
 "the luxury and etiquette of a Court" 
 offered to his guests only "a cup of tea or 
 coffee, some smoked tongue, some roast 
 meat, arid buttered toast." At nine o'clock 
 she would remind them that the General 
 kept early hours, and all left the house on 
 foot, preceded by a servant with lanterns. 
 When the President was u at home" a butler 
 announced the guests, Washington bowed 
 without shaking hands, a circle formed 
 
30 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 about him ; he spoke a few words and then 
 withdrew. One cannot imagine anything 
 more formal. Mrs. Adams, wife of the 
 Vice-President ; Mrs. Hamilton, of whom 
 Brissot de Warville says, " She added the 
 candour and simplicity of an American to 
 all the other feminine attractions" ; Mrs. 
 Jay, " imposing but agreeable"; Mme. de 
 Brehan, sister of the Comte de Moustier, 
 Minister from France, "an odd little woman 
 fantastic and affected," to whom once, when 
 Jefferson was repeating some gallant society 
 talk to her, he declared that his country- 
 women could not do better than to take 
 her for their model all these, with Mrs. 
 Washington, composed the elite in the 
 official salons, of which economical Oliver 
 Wolcott wrote to his wife: "You can 
 come here without fear ; the example of the 
 President and his surroundings make all 
 display not only useless, but in poor taste." 
 When Congress, after having in July, 
 1790, decided to build on the banks of the 
 Potomac its future seat, it chose Philadel- 
 phia as a temporary meeting place, until the 
 city of Washington was ready to receive it. 
 This city became the rendezvous of French 
 emigrants, of visitors from the North and 
 South, in short, the capital of the United 
 States. It was renowned even then for the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 37 
 
 beauty of its women, and strove to rival 
 New York. "The belles here," wrote 
 Rebecca Franks, afterwards Lady John- 
 ston, " have more attractions in their eyes 
 alone, than the New York beauties have in 
 their whole persons." Brissot de Warville 
 praises them warmly, but calls them af- 
 fected; the Comte de Rochambeau reproaches 
 them for over-dressing. Both are astonished 
 at the young girls' freedom of speech and 
 manner, although both pronounce them very 
 fascinating. They were indeed this, accord- 
 ing to the opinion of their contemporaries. 
 When the English Minister said courteously 
 to Senator Tracy of Connecticut, "Your 
 American women would be admired even at 
 St. James's," Tracy replied, " I do not doubt 
 it ; they are much admired at Litchfield 
 Hill." 
 
 If in this society the customs, usages, and 
 manners were still a blending of English 
 and French, which the women copied and at 
 times exaggerated, certain individual and 
 characteristic traits stood out most clearly. 
 Of these the most marked was the independ- 
 ence of the young girls who had so discon- 
 certed Brissot, and their careless behaviour, 
 which, however, was much modified by a 
 womanly instinct, except for the masculine 
 manner which some bold coquettes affected. 
 
38 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Miss Rebecca Franks tells of their meeting 
 at early dawn, in order to drink punch ; of 
 their copying the men's voices, of their 
 being mad over gambling. Coquettes they 
 were and always will be, but they acted as 
 did Minerva, who though she was the goddess 
 of wisdom was none the less woman. The 
 moment she saw from a pool of water that 
 her puffed out cheeks disfigured her, she 
 ceased playing the flute ; and so these women 
 gave up punch and card-playing, still retain- 
 ing the art of flirtation, which they raised to 
 a science. Mrs. Abigail Adams, wife of the 
 second President of the Republic, gives an 
 amusing sketch of the city of Washington 
 and of life at the White House. Washing- 
 ton was hardly built, yet the President and 
 his Cabinet and Ministers were there. The 
 White House was only a huge incomplete 
 barrack, with half finished rooms, without 
 bells, without even its inner walls. It was 
 a freezing winter, and at times the President 
 could find no one who was willing to bring 
 him kindling-wood from the neighbouring 
 forest. 
 
 Mrs. Adams wrote to a friend: "I 
 reached Washington last Sunday. On leav- 
 ing Baltimore we were lost in the woods 
 and went eight or nine miles, I should 
 think, in the direction of Fredericksburg. 
 
UNIVT 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 We were obliged to retrace our steps about 
 eight miles, but we could not find the road 
 this time either, and wandered about for 
 two hours before meeting a guide. Here I 
 am at last, not without some trouble, in a 
 city which is such in name alone." 
 
 A little later she wrote again, saying that 
 a schooner had just arrived from Phila- 
 delphia, with all the state furniture ; besides 
 five little cases containing the archives of 
 the Republic. In a postscript she added 
 that the archives had been stored in a shop 
 and had been burned during the night. 
 Later she notes, as something exceptional, 
 that on one day she received fifteen calls. 
 "We want nothing here," wrote Gouver- 
 neur Morris, "unless it be houses, cellars, 
 kitchens, agreeable people, amiable women, 
 and some few other insignificant details." 
 
 Under Madison these needs increased ; 
 the city grew, as well as the population, 
 and there was a great deal of gossip about 
 Mrs. Madison's receptions. She received, 
 "gowned in a red velvet pelisse ; as though 
 it was Sunday, and she going to service, on 
 her head she wore a large hat trimmed with 
 lace;" "an elegant costume," writes Mrs. 
 Qtiincy, " but not exactly suited to a home 
 reception." On another occasion she writes, 
 " She [Mrs. Madison] wore a black velvet 
 
40 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 gown, and a turban trimmed with poppies. 
 About her throat was a collar of the same 
 colour." She was tall, strong, of pleasing 
 appearance, and beloved by her entire 
 household. Mrs. Monroe, who succeeded 
 her in the White House, was a niece of 
 General Knox. When on a visit to Paris, 
 where she went with her husband, then 
 Minister from the United States, she was 
 called " the beautiful American." She had 
 the haughty and condescending manners of 
 a princess. A letter of this period describes 
 her at one of her receptions, " surrounded 
 by her two daughters, Mrs. Hay and Mrs. 
 Governeur, as beautiful as their mother." 
 " She wore a black velvet gown en traine, 
 which set off her perfect figure ; her 
 shoulders and arms were bare, her hair was 
 raised and puffed, with ostrich feathers in it ; 
 about her throat was a rich string of pearls. 
 There is always a strange crowd in her 
 drawing-rooms. The Southern aristocracy 
 elbows its way there among the democracy 
 of the North. One meets John Kandolph 
 in his riding costume, booted and spurred ; 
 members of Congress in thick, greased 
 boots ; ambassadors in knee-breeches and 
 silk hose." The elite preferred the recep- 
 tions of the French ambassador to these 
 mixed salons ; those of Hyde de Neuville ; 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 41 
 
 of Mr. Bagot, the English Minister, whose 
 wife, niece of the Duke of Wellington, led 
 the fashion ; of Mrs. Jonathan Russell, 
 where were always to be found the two 
 belles of the day, Mrs. Hull and Miss Ran- 
 dolph, a granddaughter of Jefferson, whose 
 grace was so much admired and whose 
 sharp wit was so feared. 
 
 Society was still in a chaotic state, but 
 one in which the constitutional elements 
 were discernible. A new type had appeared, 
 which tended towards social freedom. 
 " America for Americans," said Monroe, and 
 this caught votes. The settler became the 
 American. More than thirty years had 
 passed since the winning of national inde- 
 pendence. The sons of the first settlers 
 were imbued with the ideas and traditions 
 of the mother-country ; those who had 
 fought and conquered, and who had estab- 
 lished the Republic ; Puritans and Liberals 
 in the North ; Loyalists and Royalists, but 
 yet Independents in the South, each had a 
 place in the New World. The race had 
 grown. It had been differently brought up 
 and with other ideas. 
 
 By principle as much as by necessity 
 a special system of public education had 
 been established. Girls and boys took 
 the same courses, played the same games, 
 
42 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and were subjected to the same discipline. 
 It was in these public schools that the 
 new generation was formed ; in these 
 primitive and rudimentary schools, whose 
 origin, character, and mode of teaching 
 did not justify the fear which naturally 
 enough was roused by the contact of the 
 two sexes. The results of this education 
 'are worthy of notice ; and here it is neces- 
 sary to go back a step, in order to explain 
 the difference between the American woman 
 of that day and of this with her freedom of 
 manner, her independence, and her instinct- 
 ive experience. It is to these accounts, 
 supplemented by personal observation, that 
 we shall turn, and show in as clear a manner 
 as possible the results of an education as 
 diametrically opposed to our ideas as it is 
 to our traditions. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The first occasion on which I studied the 
 details of an American public school was at 
 the annual examination, a great educational 
 gala day, which interests parents as well 
 as the students and professors of Punahou 
 College, established near Honolulu by the 
 American residents of the Hawaiian Islands. 
 Although a Frenchman I was asked to 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 43 
 
 preside, and I questioned the students 
 according to a pre-arranged programme 
 and assigned them their respective ranks. 
 Theoretically, I understand the function of 
 these schools, which correspond to our 
 lycees, and which include the classes 
 between our fifth grade and that of 
 rhetoric inclusive. Punahou College was 
 (except of course, in regard to certain 
 interior arrangements which the tropical 
 climate demanded) an exact reproduction 
 of some of the smaller colleges which I 
 have visited in the United States. Richly 
 endowed, provided with an excellent 
 faculty, with a complete course in science 
 and letters, this institution accommodated 
 about 150 students, among whom there 
 were as many day students as boarders. 
 The main part, a vast two-story building, 
 well aired, looked out upon a large garden, 
 upon a sloping lawn, and upon the sea, and 
 contained the rooms of the principal and 
 his wife, the recitation rooms, the court- 
 yard, dining-rooms, infirmary, linen-closets, 
 library, etc. The main building had two 
 wings at right angles, inclosing a large 
 playground, and containing the rooms of 
 the boarding-pupils. The right wing shut 
 in those of the boys ; the west, those of the 
 girls. Both sexes studied in the same 
 
44 TUE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 rooms, took their meals in common, and 
 worked, played, and talked together. The 
 youngest were twelve years of age, the 
 oldest twenty. Although ignorant of none 
 of these details, I could not resist wonder- 
 ing as to the practicability of the theory, 
 of which I approve. Involuntarily, I 
 recalled my own college days in Paris. I 
 called up amusing "pictures of my fellow- 
 students ; of our bold manner, under which 
 was hidden a great depth of timidity and 
 embarrassment ; our jests, which ill con- 
 cealed our romantic aspirations ; a mixture 
 of naive credulity and ignorant precocity, 
 childish illusions and affected scepticism 
 which, with most of us, was a better learned 
 lesson than that of any professor. I asked 
 myself, without being able to answer, what 
 would have happened if these young girls 
 whom we followed with curiosity, who 
 under their mother's wing passed us in 
 the street if they had been allowed to 
 take part in our amusements and our work, 
 to be our companions and our rivals every 
 day and every hour, in classes as well as 
 in the dining-room, in the playground as 
 on the street? It was in vain I said to 
 myself, that things are so here, for I can- 
 not imagine them so where I have been 
 educated. What appeared to me so simple 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 45 
 
 in the New World looked quite strangely 
 complicated in the Old. I concluded (an 
 easy conclusion, in that it cut short the 
 difficulties and saved any deeper researches) 
 that the American mind is not like ours ; 
 that "one man's meat is another man's 
 poison. " 
 
 Going deeper I ended Jby mastering the 
 situation, by understanding arid admiring 
 it. For this, both time and a close exami- 
 nation were necessary. I had to study the 
 mechanism, the tarn of the wheels, as it 
 were, and take into consideration those 
 elements which are alike on both sides of 
 the Atlantic, but which are cramped and 
 falsified by our advanced and rather 
 enervated civilisation. I can point out 
 the advantages and the disadvantages of 
 the system. The schools to which I refer 
 were, in the first place, the result of cir- 
 cumstances, as we have shown of the 
 sparse population in settlements scattered 
 at first, but which later on drew more and 
 more toward a common centre. They were 
 also, by reason of the traditions and 
 the temperament of the race, and their 
 religious influence and social conditions, 
 the result of an intelligent and in every 
 way healthful conception of life. We 
 reach it by offering higher courses of 
 
46 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 study and by giving greater opportunities 
 to both sexes. We commence at one end ; 
 the Americans, at the other. Their efforts 
 were rude and rough, but they discovered 
 under the English traditions, which were 
 rather brutal in the manner of education 
 as in all else, those happy tendencies, still 
 in a rudimentary state, which developed 
 with time. The few documents of those 
 days show us how the public and primary 
 schools were managed where girls and boys 
 together received the first and deep impres- 
 sions of childhood. They show us the 
 mode of corporal punishment that was 
 inflicted, the use of the ferule, and that 
 strange appeal to chivalrous sentiments 
 which allowed the young boys to take 
 upon themselves the punishment of their 
 companions, and offer themselves as substi- 
 tutes. Mr. Richard M. Johnston, professor 
 in the University of Georgia, 1 gives among 
 other writings a little sketch, made on the 
 spot, of this singular custom. He intro- 
 duces us into Mr. Lorriby's school. Mr. 
 Lorriby, he says, "did not belong to the 
 
 'M. de Varigny is evidently citing his author from 
 memory. The book to which he here refers is Oddities 
 of Southern Life and Character by Henry Watterson 
 (Boston, 1883) ; and his apparent quotation which follows 
 is in reality a paraphrase. TRANSLATOR. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 47 
 
 category of severe masters. He was both 
 good and diplomatic. A newcomer in the 
 settlement, and poor, he understood very 
 well how to act and how to follow out the 
 ideas of those among whom he lived. He 
 inclined towards gentleness, but on the 
 slightest pretence he was ready to use 
 rougher measures, if a desire for such was 
 expressed. This, unfortunately, was the 
 case. Some parents complained because 
 no punishment was used. One of them 
 unfortunately had heard the fable of the 
 frogs who begged for a king, so Mr. Lorriby 
 was nicknamed 'Old King Log.' Another 
 parent threatened to take away his children 
 and put his son on a farm and his daughter 
 to mending the linen. They loved their 
 children then as much as we do now, 
 but they had odd ways of showing their 
 affection. The parents were never better 
 pleased than when their child had been 
 punished at school. They appreciated 
 instruction, but believed that in the ferule 
 lay great virtues. The schools were, in 
 some respects, caves of Trophonius. Boys 
 and girls passed through them by a series 
 of incomprehensible mysteries. The idea, 
 then, was that the ferule was indispensable 
 for inculcating knowledge and making it 
 sink deep into the mind through the skin. 
 
48 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The generations who preceded us passed 
 beyond that ; it was our turn. I cannot ex- 
 plain this fact except by admitting that the 
 minds of our parents were so upset by this 
 method of teaching that they could under- 
 stand no other, nor could they reason with 
 any sense on the subject. They thought 
 that men resembled beasts : that a dog was 
 more faithful to the master who beat him, 
 and that there was nothing better for a 
 mule than to be worn out by fatigue and 
 used up by blows, before finding himself 
 face to face with a well-furnished manger. 
 
 "They themselves had been so roughly 
 treated at school that they carried away 
 with them an inexhaustible fund of gratitude. 
 They heard with satisfaction their children's 
 complaints ; their accounts of daily flights 
 from school gratified them. The less 
 deserved was the punishment the more 
 healthful it seemed. When the master 
 without any visible motive chastised an 
 entire class and made the scholars puzzle 
 their brains as to the value of such proceed- 
 ings, the mystery increased the physical 
 impression, and the parents rejoiced men- 
 tally. It recalled their own young days, 
 they said, and they concluded that since 
 they had survived it, the system ought to 
 be a good one. We meet in life with so 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 49 
 
 many blows whose cause and effect quite 
 pass our comprehension ! When Mr. Lor- 
 riby had done what the parents expected, 
 he revealed himself in an entirely new light. 
 "One certain Monday morning he told us 
 that we must expect a change of rule ; and to 
 tell the truth, we did not have to wait long 
 for it. Before the end of the recitation more 
 than one among us was rubbing his aching 
 back. The girls suffered nothing, with one 
 exception, and as this was the first time I 
 had witnessed a like event, I was naturally 
 impressed. The delinquent (neither she nor 
 I nor any of the others knew what wrong 
 she had done) was Susan Potter. She was 
 twelve years old, tall and beautiful for her 
 age. In bidding her at first politely to 
 approach in order to feel his ferule, Mr. L. 
 asked, as if the most natural thing in the 
 world, and one which surprised none of us, 
 whether among the boys there was someone 
 who was disposed to take Susan's punish- 
 ment upon himself. After a moment's 
 silence and to my great astonishment Sea- 
 born Byne, my neighbour, rose and offered 
 himself as substitute. He did it with the 
 bearing of a boy doing a deed of courtesy 
 and fearing no consequences. Whereupon 
 Susan, without a word or a sign of thanks, 
 took her seat and settled herself comfort- 
 
50 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ably, so that she might lose no detail of 
 what was passing. It was evidently not 
 exactly what Seaborn had anticipated. 
 This indifferent curiosity as to his fate 
 made him regret his chivalrous offer, but 
 there was nothing to be done. To cap the 
 climax he was very fat. He more than 
 fitted his clothes, and I am almost sure that 
 my thinner neighbour would have come off 
 better in the fray. But Seaborn was so fat 
 that he offered a tempting target for the 
 ferule which I almost forgave Mr. L. for 
 using with so much freedom. Seaborn 
 yelled, struggled, and rubbed his sides, his 
 back, his entire body. When it was over 
 he returned sadly to his seat, looking 
 covertly at Susan. She was smiling. Sea- 
 born' s brother Joel alone pitied him, sob- 
 bing under his breath. * Please do not cry.' 
 said Seaborn in a threatening tone. Then 
 he muttered between his teeth, 'If ever 
 again I make a fool of myself for her I will 
 consent to be smashed, then dug up, and 
 smashed again.' What he meant by smash- 
 ing, I never knew and he never told me, but 
 I remained under the impression that it was 
 something very disagreeable, and which he 
 would avoid at any price. However this 
 may be, Seaborn kept still. I saw him 
 again years after, and I could not but feel 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 51 
 
 that this episode of his childhood had for- 
 ever shattered his ideas of chivalry." 
 
 Continuing his narrative, the author 
 shows us Betsy Ann, a pretty girl of sixteen, 
 whose rising charms caused a fluttering in 
 the heart of Bill Williams, the cock of the 
 school, a strapping fellow of twenty. He 
 tells us the story of this timid and awkward 
 love, so forgetful of self. Betsy Ann was 
 conscious of her beauty, which made itself 
 felt on Mr. Lorriby himself. Besides, she 
 did exactly as she pleased, until, as the 
 result of a greater prank than usual, Betsy 
 was condemned to the humiliation of receiv- 
 ing a blow from the master's ferule. Bill 
 Williams interposed ; he said that never in 
 his presence should Betsy be struck. His 
 build was that of one well able to protect 
 her. No one doubted the result of an 
 encounter between himself and Mr. Lorriby ; 
 he would come out of it conqueror. Never- 
 theless he respected authority, and in order 
 to reconcile his love and his scruples, he 
 offered to submit to Betsy Ann's punish- 
 ment. But Mr. Lorriby understood ; he 
 guessed that Bill would not let himself be 
 humiliated before Betsy Ann, and satisfied 
 of good results from the affair, he pro- 
 nounced a pardon. The rest may easily be 
 imagined. Betsy was ashamed of her too 
 
52 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 discreet protector. She might have loved 
 him, if, less thoughtful for himself, he had 
 more heroically protected her. But Bill 
 understood nothing of this. Thanks to him 
 she escaped from her escapade unhurt, and 
 Bill himself had not suffered the humilia- 
 tion of corporal punishment. Mr. Lorriby 
 had perceived under his sangfroid the 
 well-formed resolution to return blow for 
 blow ; but Betsy had neither seen nor 
 sought further, and without saying a word 
 turned her back on her defender. It was 
 not enough to be chivalrous, but he must 
 be chivalrous in a particular way. 
 
 V. 
 
 Such a hero was "Old Hickory," as An- 
 drew Jackson was called by his contempora- 
 ries. He was the most popular and the most 
 daring President whom the United States 
 have ever had, the most dangerous man who 
 could have been chosen to govern the young 
 Republic in the midst of a threatening con- 
 dition of affairs ; a man who had nothing 
 in common with his predecessors, Wash- 
 ington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 
 and John Quincy Adams. He had neither 
 their suavity nor their savoir-faire. He 
 represented a different element, a national 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 53 
 
 ^_type, which had put off the swaddling- 
 clothes of the past and was scornful of 
 present conventionalities ; which was bluntly 
 assertive, but forceful, and far in advance 
 of the times. Although in years Andrew 
 Jackson belonged to a past age, there was 
 in him the breadth of mind of the coming 
 generation. He was not a statesman nor a 
 skilled or wise politician, but an ardent, 
 patriot nevertheless. He stepped from the 
 popular ranks, a 'favourite with the masses 
 who had raised him to power because they 
 recognised in him the instincts, the loves, 
 and the hatred's of democracy. The young 
 generation who flocked about him, and who 
 shouted for him, was weary of the yoke of 
 tradition, impatient to see at the head a 
 representative of national ambitions, and 
 one who would inspire American politics 
 with a new force. It was another world, 
 rising and asserting itself, and the women 
 were neither less enthusiastic over it, nor 
 less ready to demand from it their share of 
 influence. Was it not a Betsy Ann, under 
 the name of Mrs. Eaton, who reigned in the 
 White House, and inspired in the impetu- 
 ous President, as she had in the wise Bill 
 Williams, an affection so deep as to cause 
 him to confess himself openly her passion- 
 ate admirer and devoted servant ? 
 
54 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 " Evil to him who evil thinks." Platonic 
 lover, he asked nothing and expected noth- 
 ing. Hardly did he touch those rosy fingers 
 to his lips. Chivalrous ? He was, and like 
 no one else. This rough soldier who in 
 twenty obscure fights had risked his life 
 against the Indians ; who because, when a 
 child, he had been beaten by an English 
 officer for refusing to clean his boots, had 
 sworn revenge and had defeated the English 
 at New Orleans, and had killed their best 
 generals, Pakenham and Gibbs ; who, 
 without waiting for orders, had taken 
 Florida ; and who, when elected President, 
 had entered into the fight with the United 
 States Bank, with the capitalists, with the 
 South, with Congress, and with the foreign 
 representatives he the soldier, ardent, 
 violent, rough, fell a slave to a woman, 
 ready to defend her against the whole world, 
 and to risk for her his popularity and a 
 re-election. And who was she ? The 
 daughter of an innkeeper, the wife of a 
 naval commissary, who had committed sui- 
 cide in a fit of delirium tremens. Then she 
 had married Mr. Eaton for her second hus- 
 band. This was she who had fascinated 
 Old Hickory at first sight. He himself was 
 married, but Mrs. Jackson did not in any 
 way trouble him. This estimable woman 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 55 
 
 from the frontiers, who had taken up arms 
 against the Iroquois, calmly sat and smoked 
 her corn-cob pipe by her hearth,* without 
 bestowing a look upon her irascible hus- 
 band. Mrs. Eaton presided over the recep- 
 tions at the White House. She held its 
 keys, and admitted only her friends. Not 
 a shadow of scandal was breathed. She was 
 like a heroine of Fielding's novels, irre- 
 proachable, but despotic. Mrs. Donelson, 
 the President's niece, almost his daughter, 
 had refused to recognise Mrs. Eaton, and 
 had been sent to Tennessee by Jackson. 
 Mrs. Calhoun, wife of his colleague, the 
 Vice-President of the United States, hesi- 
 tated to bow before the idol, so Andrew 
 Jackson broke with his friend, who from 
 this time gave up all hope of succeeding 
 him. The wife of the Minister from Hol- 
 land declined the honour of sitting by the 
 side of Mrs. Eaton, and the President de- 
 manded that the Minister be recalled. 
 Baron Krudener, Minister from Russia, and 
 Mr. Yaughan, the English Minister, were 
 more complaisant. They gave balls in 
 honour of the reigning Queen "Bellona" 
 the papers called her Bellona accepted 
 
 *M. de Varigny is in error here. Mrs. Jackson died 
 before her husband's election to the Presidency. TRANS- 
 LATOR. 
 
 OF T 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
56 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 them, and the diplomatic troubles with 
 Russia and England disappeared. Clever 
 Van Buren, who was a bachelor and an 
 expert in flattery, paid court to Bellona, 
 and became Secretary of State, then Vice- 
 President after Jackson's re-election, and 
 finally succeeded him in the White House, 
 having defeated Calhoun, who was less 
 diplomatic. Thus, by the hand of a grate- 
 ful woman, he was carried to the highest 
 rank. Notwithstanding her humble origin 
 and disputed beauty, it was not in her 
 father's inn, nor by her dissipated husband, 
 that she was prepared for her role in life. 
 Early in her first school, and later as the 
 favourite and courted village belle, she had 
 lived in men's society ; she had learned the 
 secret of their weakness, had understood 
 her own power over them, had used it, pre- 
 served it, and never wasted it. She wished 
 rather to rule all men than belong to one. 
 All that she had retained from her early 
 education (less perhaps from her studies 
 than from the contact with the boys, her 
 fellow-playmates) had rendered her less 
 susceptible, had made her completely mis- 
 tress of herself, and therefore capable of 
 governing others. Thus brought up, was 
 ' not the American girl, from the first, 
 superior to the English girl, her contem- 
 
 suj 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 57 
 
 porary ? They are two distinct beings. In\ 
 the one, who is the grandmother of our 
 modern girl, we note the same characteris- 
 tics, the freedom of manner, the instinctive 
 prudence, the self-possession, the conscious- 
 ness of her every advantage. So in the man 
 of that time we see both his respect for 
 woman, learned early in the public school, 
 and the feeling of chivalry which her physi- 
 cal weakness and her charms inspired. The 
 development of civilisation and the growth 
 of prosperity brought new elements into 
 this primitive world which we have tried to 
 describe, but they did not alter the ground- 
 work, and the changes which they effected 
 left intact the fundamental characteristics of 
 the woman of the United States. 
 
 From the start, then, by force of circum- 
 stances, by her common suffering and 
 trouble, and by her public education, she 
 was man's companion and equal. At no 
 time has she been inferior to him, there in 
 America, as she has been in Europe. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Overmastering Influence of American Women Their 
 Rights and Privileges Flirtation, Love, Marriage 
 Legislation for the Protection of Women Its Abuse 
 American Circes Breach of Promise Cases Three 
 Years of a Young Girl's Life The American Mar- 
 ried Woman American Morals Aristocracy and 
 Plutocracy Prevalence of Luxury. 
 
 I. 
 
 ON a new continent, whose limits were at 
 that time unknown, a number of voluntary 
 emigrants fleeing, not from the laws, but 
 from party oppression, discontented rather 
 than rebellious, exiling themselves without 
 thought of a return, carrying everything 
 with them family and traditions these 
 were the circumstances which surrounded 
 the American colonists. By force of circum- 
 stances, by isolation, by common danger, 
 even by the role which events mapped out 
 for her, and which we have already traced, 
 ;Woman proved herself the equal of man, and 
 not at all his inferior, as she was in Europe, 
 where she passed from her father's home 
 under the no less despotic yoke of her hus- 
 
 58 
 
tsr 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 59 
 
 band's authority. Her chains fell from her 
 on the day when she reached American 
 shores ; her part in life expanded. She was 
 not only as useful but as necessary as her 
 husband in their common labour, and her 
 duties won for her thejsquality with him 
 which she sought. If the laws did not ex- 
 plicitly state this equality, it was because 
 woman did not demand it. Every right 
 clearly defined is no less clearly limited, and 
 woman had everything to gain by not stating 
 her rights precisely. 
 
 As a child, the school is open to her, and 
 from the tenderest years her weakness and 
 her charms bring her friends and protectors. 
 As a young girl, she is free. As a woman, 
 the divorce laws allow her to break oppress- 
 ive bands. Public opinion follows her and 
 protects her at every period of her life. But 
 she looks higher ; equality alone does not 
 satisfy her. The circumstances in which 
 she is placed confirm and second her ambi- 
 tion. Years pass, prosperity increases, civi- 
 lisation broadens. In a larger and more 
 worthy field of action man's duty becomes 
 more absorbing and woman's less so. She 
 is freed from the narrow duties of the first 
 settlers ; she no longer, like her grand- 
 mother and mother, does the family cooking 
 and sewing and the work of a servant. She 
 
60 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 has time to improve her mind and make new 
 acquaintances, and she reigns undisputed 
 and without a rival in the intellectual sphere 
 which man is early compelled to give up on 
 account of his incessant labour. To her 
 natural charms she adds that of the mind, 
 of the superior culture and knowledge which 
 man cannot long deny her. Her thinking 
 and acting faculties are not now put to the 
 same use as are man's. The cold and silent 
 activity of man expends itself in every sense 
 on a boundless continent, on a fertile soil, 
 which repays his every effort, but which, in 
 taking all his time, leaves but little for his 
 family and none for the development of his 
 mind. He knows the art of making money, 
 but not of spending it, not of getting from 
 it the comfort and pleasure which it ought 
 to give. On this side woman is extremely 
 clever. She acquires this art of spending, 
 and practises it with much ingenuity. She 
 beautifies her home, and makes it as well 
 as herself, more attractive, and man's 
 admiration for her increases. She becomes 
 the spending, as he is the receiving, agent. 
 She spurs him on to work in flattering his 
 heart and his vanity. She profits by the 
 leisure which labour has created for her, and 
 to the natural respect which she inspires, as 
 much in women as in men, is added the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 61 
 
 respect which a superior intelligence wins 
 for her. 
 
 Twice queen, her great power intoxicates 
 her, and the worship which is given her, the 
 homage which surrounds her, justify in her 
 own eyes her caprices and her whims. 
 Sure of everyone's respect, certain of find- 
 ing in every man, whoever he may be, a pro- 
 tector and defender, of granting a favour in 
 asking one, she lives at ease in this atmos- 
 phere of gallantry, which forced to be pro- 
 longed becomes commonplace, and which is 
 addressed to her sex rather than to her 
 individual self, yet whose privileges she 
 does not hesitate to claim. Whoever has 
 visited New York has had many opportuni- 
 ties of taking part in an episode such as 
 Baron Hiibner relates : * 
 
 "I was sitting in one of the cars which 
 run along the principal streets of the great 
 city. A slight touch of a fan arrested my 
 attention, and I saw standing proudly erect 
 before me a young lady, who was measur- 
 ing me from head to foot, with a haughty, 
 imperious, and even angry stare. I hast- 
 ened to rise, and she took my seat with- 
 out deigning to thank me by even a smile 
 or a look. I was, however, obliged to stand 
 the rest of the way, in an uncomfortable 
 * Promenades autour du Monde. 
 
62 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 position, painfully holding on to one of the 
 straps which run the length of the car. 
 
 "One day a young girl had driven an 
 infirm old man from his seat, in an espe- 
 cially haughty manner. Just as she was 
 leaving the car one of the passengers called 
 to her: 'Miss, you have forgotten some- 
 thing.' She returned hastily. 'You have 
 forgotten to thank this gentleman.' ' 
 
 Such things are not exceptional, but it 
 would be unjust to American women to 
 attribute to all the faults of some. This 
 ^assurance, this consciousness less of their 
 rights than of their privileges, explains their 
 independence and the reason why they can 
 undertake, alone, long journeys. They are 
 sure of finding everywhere that universal 
 deference and the attentions which they 
 reward, it would seem, by the sole fact of 
 accepting them, and in exchange for which 
 not even a word of thanks is necessary. 
 For years they have everywhere been accus- 
 tomed to a recognition of this indisputable 
 sovereignty and universal respect. Every- 
 where they are at home, and they are con- 
 scious of the fact. In New York, the cos- 
 mopolitan city, the one city of the world 
 which contains the most Irishmen next to 
 Dublin, the most Germans next to Berlin and 
 Vienna ; in Chicago and St. Louis these 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 63 
 
 towns of the West, which having made their 
 fortunes, are now mighty cities this obvious 
 stamp of feminine royalty strikes one with 
 great force. In every place, public or pri- 
 vate, at the theatres, in the hotels, in the 
 railroad trains and on board steamers, in the 
 restaurants and in the shops, in the streets 
 and parks, in the drawing room and in her 
 father's house, woman is queen. All roy- 
 alty is hers from the start, as we have 
 shown. All royalty is hers from the fact 
 of her existence, for she justifies it by her 
 double superiority. She has derived her 
 charms from the living source of all physical 
 beauty. 
 
 Married young and for love, her parents 
 have bequeathed to her the gifts of youth 
 and love. In her are refined the character- 
 istic traits of a strong and healthy race, 
 which now and then, as in the West, are 
 free from all admixture. There, however, 
 where immigration has introduced, as in the 
 Eastern States, a new factor it is one which 
 has modified the original type but not 
 injured its form. 
 
 The Hibernian, French, Italian, and Ger- 
 man blood mingled with the Anglo-Saxon 
 has softened with its characteristic vivac- 
 ity or morbidness, grace or languor, the 
 outlines which the American woman in- 
 
64 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 herited. Thus we find in this land almost 
 every kind of plastic beauty the voluptu- 
 ous nonchalance of the Creole, the aristo- 
 cratic purity of the Englishwoman, the 
 expressive and mobile physiognomy of the 
 Frenchwoman, the blooming complexion 
 and slender figure of the Irish girl. From 
 these races the American has borrowed what 
 is best in each : and youth and love bring 
 about elimination, marriage in the United 
 States being, more than anywhere else, the 
 result of an instinctive affinity. For a long 
 time shut up within the distant walls of a 
 continent but little visited, and possessing 
 nothing which would naturally attract the 
 curiosity of the traveller or the observation 
 of the tourist, the beauty of the women, 
 which was legendary among the naval 
 officers and diplomats whose duties brought 
 them to the coast or to Washington, made 
 itself manifest on the day when facility of 
 communication and the nomadic instinct of 
 the race caused a regular exodus of rich \ 
 Americans. Ancient Europe attracted them. 
 Her monuments, palaces, cities, and mu- 
 seums became the object of regular pil- 
 grimages the result of a serious education, 
 above all for the women. London, Paris, 
 Florence, Munich, Rome, and Dresden saw 
 American colonies settling within their 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 65 
 
 walls. They became fitful and changing 
 kaleidoscopes, whose personal characteristics 
 were constantly renewed and which grew 
 and gravitated about a few rich, well-known, 
 and established families. From this it came 
 about that the American colony took posses- 
 sion of certain quarters in each of these 
 cities that were especially liked ; and the 
 American woman made these her centres 
 and lived there. Each centre was a foreign 
 city in the midst of the great French, Eng- 
 lish, Italian, or German one. 
 
 There is an English proverb which says 
 that seven or eight generations are needed 
 to make a "gentleman" ; three or four to 
 make a "lady." Not so many as this are 
 necessary for the -American woman. She 
 has the physical beauty of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, modified by circumstances, as we have 
 shown ; leisure, which man makes for 
 her ; intellectual culture ; wealth, quickly 
 attained ; and the elegance and refined 
 tastes natural to her sex. Europe did the 
 rest. 
 
 Very proud of the beauty of their wives, 
 their sisters, and their daughters, the Ameri- 
 cans regard them as less of an honour to 
 the race which bore them than to the usages 
 and customs of their country. On this 
 point, their opinion is worth noting. One 
 
66 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of them told me it one day, in one of those 
 humourously ironical chats in which Swift 
 excelled, and in which the coldly scoffing 
 mind of the Anglo-Saxon glories. A great 
 traveller, and a conscientious observer, 
 chance brought us together at Madrid, and 
 afterward at Naples, and one evening we 
 dined with Mr. X. We met with pleasure ; 
 we had common friends across the Atlantic, 
 and nothing further was necessary for the 
 beginning of intimacy. I was greatly 
 pleased with his keen mind, a little para- 
 doxical at times, but full of the unexpected. 
 
 At table, we spoke of the Latin and the 
 Anglo-Saxon races. It is needless to add 
 that his preference was for the latter. 
 
 "The future is in its hands," he said to 
 me, resuming, after dinner, our interrupted 
 conversation. " It will end by populating 
 the world. At the beginning of this century 
 the United States had only six million 
 inhabitants. Now we are seventy millions. 
 Already we reach toward South America. 
 Oceanica is made up of the sons of our 
 colonists. Compare with your French 
 families of one or two children, these 
 Western families, in which we count ten or 
 twelve. From the point of view of the 
 population you stand still, while we double 
 in thirty years. The dot kills you." 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 67 
 
 "Why, how so?" 
 
 " There's not a doubt of it. Is there any- 
 thing more absurd than a system in which 
 the children's future is assured by the 
 parents ? It is the opposite of all truth ; it 
 is the world turned upside down, in whicli 
 the elders deprive themselves for the 
 younger ; when those who no longer pro- 
 duce sacrifice themselves for those who 
 are best able to help themselves. Even if 
 this sacrifice assured their happiness it 
 would be different, but nine times out of ten 
 you make them unhappy." 
 
 He had begun, and there was nothing for 
 me to do but to listen. 
 
 " You think that I am making paradoxes 
 for amusement ; but it is not so. Look 
 before you at those three young girls ; one is 
 pretty, the other two decidedly homely. 
 The one on the right has a crooked figure, 
 her face is pale and thin, and her features 
 drawn and weary. The next one, her sister, 
 is hardly better looking. Both, as you 
 know, have a large dot, and as you express, 
 it, great expectations ; suitors flock about 
 them. It is no less true that Nature, a harsh 
 stepmother, if you wish it is neither your 
 affair nor mine has condemned them to 
 celibacy. Their father married, too late in 
 life, a rich and poorly built woman. This 
 
68 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 is the result. Well ! these two young 
 girls, homely and of feeble constitution 
 also, are sought after by young men who 
 will not love them, and with good reason, 
 but who ask from a rich marriage the wealth 
 which fortune forgot to have in their cradles 
 and which they do not see the necessity of 
 gaining. 
 
 u As to the other, she has everything that 
 pleases, but without a dot, what will she 
 find ? An old man or an aged bachelor. 
 This is her lot. Will the two ugly ones have 
 children ? We may doubt it. In any case 
 we may hope not. So be it. But every 
 ugly girl alone has not a large dot. There 
 are pretty ones well endowed. I admit 
 this ; but is it not already too much to ask 
 that chances be made equal ? x Do you 
 not see that a father afflicted with two 
 daughters, exactly alike, is forced to double 
 his sacrifices to marry them, and that their 
 marriage, whatever he himself may think of 
 it, is no help to humanity ? Left to herself, 
 Nature gets out of the trouble to the advan- 
 tage of everyone. It is a law of nature 
 that a young man who is strong and healthy 
 should love a young girl who is beautiful, 
 strong, and robust. It is by the same law 
 that they marry, and, as in fairy tales, shall 
 have many children like themselves. Of 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 69 
 
 what use is it to buy at a heavy price a hus- 
 band for a girl who does not want children, 
 and who will give to the world a puny, 
 sickly being, whose life she will save, if it 
 is to be saved, by great effort, and for whose 
 dot she will exhaust herself, in order that he 
 in his turn may become the founder of a fam- 
 ily like himself. In all things and every- 
 where, nature acts by elimination. Certain 
 vegetable and animal products are forced to 
 disappear, and imperfect germs are incapa- 
 ble of more perfect reproduction." 
 
 "In other words, you require the sup- 
 pression of ugly women ? " 
 
 "Total suppression no ; but not to stand 
 in the way of it, and above all not to strive 
 to perpetuate them any more than in the 
 case of sickly and rickety men. A similar 
 being costs as much arid more to feed and to 
 bring up than a sound and healthy being. 
 You found societies to breed horses, the 
 fowls of the' barn-yard, the ovine and bovine 
 races, but when a higher being is concerned, 
 a man or a woman, you make at great ex- 
 pense an absurd system which is contrary 
 to nature, the result of which is to perpet- 
 uate the ugliness and the degeneracy of the 
 race. You deem it a simple and natural fact 
 that a man in the vigour of life should marry 
 an ugly girl, if only one with a good dot, 
 
70 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and you call this a 'fine match.' You find 
 it easy and natural for a poor but beautiful 
 girl to marry an old man who has lived his 
 life as you say, but who is rich, and you 
 congratulate the mother or friend who has 
 brought it about. It enrages me to see 
 these villainous acts. Nature herself is en- 
 raged, but she has her revenge ; and in this 
 lies the danger. You shut your eyes in 
 order not to see it. However, the statistics 
 are there, and they will enlighten you. 
 Science, medicine, physiology, the courts 
 themselves, din the truth into your very 
 ears. You close them, but none are so deaf 
 as those who will not hear. Your fathers 
 wear themselves out over the dot. Your 
 mothers hunt for heirs as sons-in-law and 
 daughters-in-law. A few days ago one of 
 them said to me : * I want Ernest to marry, 
 he does such foolish things ; I am looking 
 for a rich wife for him. Ernest could not 
 live without money, and we do not mind 
 about beauty. Would you tell us of some- 
 one ? ' Her Ernest is a great blockhead, 
 badly brought up, in the habit of frequent- 
 ing all sorts of bad company, thin, worn-out, 
 already half paralytic. His devoted mother 
 is looking about and will find some creat- 
 ure who is ugly, yet one with a large dot. 
 They will marry ; they will want to found a 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 71 
 
 family. May God keep the results from 
 you ! " 
 
 He paused for breath and continued : 
 " In the United States we are more 
 logical. If we copy your fashions, we do 
 not import your theories of marriage. We 
 marry for love, and everyone is happy. One 
 of my friends, a Chicago millionaire, has 
 just given his daughter to a young mer- 
 chant who is starting in life. On their 
 wedding day he presented them with two 
 thousand dollars to defray the expenses of 
 a trip to Europe. They thought him very 
 generous. The son-in-law works, and adores 
 his wife, who makes him happy. I will 
 wager that before six years have passed they 
 will have six children and a hundred thou- 
 sand dollars. With this, good-evening." 
 
 He shook my hand and left. My neigh- 
 bour, a lady of some years, who understood 
 English, had heard him, for I caught her 
 whispering, as he left: " These Americans 
 are all materialists." 
 
 II. 
 
 We have described the colonisation of the 
 Eastern States from the beginning, Puritan 
 and Protestant, recruiting itself from the 
 middle classes of the England of 1630, 
 
V2 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 hostile to tlie Stuarts, sympathising with the 
 Commonwealth and with a republican form 
 of government. In the South, on the con- 
 trary, which was settled by the partisans of 
 the dethroned Stuarts, we have shown the 
 preservation of the aristocratic English tra- 
 ditions, the system of slavery crystallising 
 into an institution, the free and easy ways of 
 the planter gradually taking the place of 
 the stately life of the great proprietor. In 
 West, invaded and peopled at a later 
 
 y, these two types met and intermingled, 
 Represented by adventurers from the South 
 and East, and by those bolder pioneers who 
 were eager for free life and more room, and 
 who fell back before the advancing civilisa- 
 tion whose conventionality was irksome to 
 them. Young and energetic, they peopled 
 the Western solitudes with a progeny 
 vigorous like themselves, and as large as it 
 always is where the child is a help, and not 
 a hindrance. 
 
 Hence arose three distinct types the citi- 
 zen of the East, the Southern planter, and 
 the Western farmer. It is true that these 
 conditions were modified, each section en- 
 croaching upon the other. The West became 
 dotted with large cities ; the East impinged 
 upon the South after the War of Secession ; 
 the South was for a time ruined and favoured 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. V3 
 
 emigration. But time had not as yet 
 accomplished its work of coalition any more 
 than it had effaced each characteristic trait. 
 The East, the first of these three sections 
 to be settled, became the most thickly popu- 
 lated, the most important, its great busi- 
 ness centre being New York, the real capi- 
 tal of the Union, the "Empire City," as she 
 calls herself. No other city of the Re- 
 public can rival her. Her population, her 
 luxury, the brilliance of her receptions and 
 balls, the wealth of her millionaires, the 
 elegance of the women's toilets, make her 
 the leader of custom and fashion, the city 
 which gives law to all the others. 
 
 Society in Boston is more intellectual, 
 more serious. Baltimore, Charleston, and 
 Richmond are more aristocratic. Phila- 
 delphia is a happy medium, more fastidious, 
 more reserved. There is more gaiety in 
 New Orleans, more of a " go as you please " 
 atmosphere in Chicago, and more wit and 
 taste at Washington, where Congress holds 
 its winter session and draws together the 
 cosmopolitan world of the legations, of the 
 Senate and House of Representatives ; but 
 in none of these cities does the social life 
 reach the same degree of intensity that it 
 does in New York, the paradise of the 
 American young girl. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
74 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Here, better and to a greater degree than 
 anywhere else, she can give free play to her 
 taste for spending money, to her toilet, to 
 receptions and balls, to flirtation and pleas- 
 ure. The social life, of which she is the 
 soul, is made for her, and American custom 
 gives her the entire liberty that she longs 
 for. The extent of this liberty has at times 
 been exaggerated, and some have deduced 
 a general rule from a few loud and noisy 
 exceptions, and have attributed to the 
 young New York girls a too bold manner. 
 The truth, as it is, is enough, and presents 
 a sufficiently disconcerting contrast to our 
 French customs to need further accentua- 
 tion. Fearless Amazons, the New York 
 girls walk in groups, or are accompanied by 
 an escort to whom they allow for the moment 
 the honour of attending them in the walks 
 of Central Park, or else they drive there in 
 a light buggy drawn by a swift trotter. 
 During the winter they make up sleighing 
 parties or skate on the ponds. We meet 
 them in the large shops and in the fashion- 
 able restaurants without other escort than a 
 friend. The evenings are spent at some 
 theatre or ball. The summer they pass at 
 Newport, Saratoga, Long Branch, or Bar 
 Harbour, where they display themselves at 
 the Casino in such gorgeous toilets as might 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 75 
 
 well put to flight any prospective husband. 
 In the autumn they go to Paris, London, 
 Florence, Rome, Naples, or Lucerne. Our 
 European hotels are filled with their exuber- 
 ant gaiety and extraordinary whims. One 
 meets them everywhere. They are indefati- 
 gable travellers, visiting everything, explor- 
 ing everything, and everywhere they are as 
 free as they are at home, heedless of the 
 wonder they arouse or the comments they 
 excite. 
 
 " This is all very well," said Walpole, "but 
 how do they manage at home?" Nine 
 times out of ten the Americans make quiet 
 wives ; as is seen when the English make of 
 them countesses, marchionesses, or duch- 
 esses, bearing with dignity the greatest 
 names of the United Kingdom. From the 
 fact that the American manner is directly 
 opposed to our French ideas, and would 
 expose our women to certain interpretations 
 which, everything considered, would be less 
 to our honour than to theirs ; from the fact 
 that the Americans turn aside from the con- 
 ventional path which our young girls follow, 
 a path in which our implacable logic mingles, 
 whether one will or no, a whole category of 
 human beings whatever their hopes, their 
 natural taste and instincts notwithstand- 
 ing all this, it does not necessarily follow 
 
76 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 that the Americans are absolutely in the 
 wrong, or that we are absolutely in the right. 
 The results of the American system are the 
 true criterion, and in judging it by the 
 results* we cannot affirm that the great 
 liberty given American girls, at the present 
 time, has had any more deplorable results 
 than has the European system. 
 
 The Italians say: "Our parents married 
 us as they wished ; it rests with us now to 
 act as we please." The American marries 
 as she wishes ; free in her choice, she is in 
 most cases true to it, and great are the joy 
 and honour of her home. But that which 
 above all shocks our conventional notions is 
 the fact that she is "her own mother," that 
 is to say, she assumes to take care of herself, 
 to watch over herself, and to act with dis- 
 cretion. By her early contact with com- 
 panions of her own age her imagination is 
 curbed ; there are no flights into a mysteri- 
 ous world. Hers are living types, and not 
 impossible heroes. The deceitful mirages 
 are replaced by a prosaic reality. Good 
 sense takes the place of poetic illusions, 
 and prudence of vague dreams and mystic 
 flights. The art viflirtation, which is to love 
 what the preface of a book is to the book 
 itself, which is as the love of fencing is to 
 the duel, accomplishes for her what her 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 11 
 
 public education began. She uses this art 
 with the skill of her sex, with the confi- 
 dence which the respect that she inspires 
 gives her, with the wisdom of a precocious 
 experience, and with the conviction that the 
 happiness of her life depends on the use she 
 makes of it and on her final choice. This 
 choice is dictated by no one. She takes 
 upon herself all the responsibility, having 
 been prepared for it from girlhood. Accus- 
 tomed to the flattery of men, their compli- 
 ments do not turn her head. She takes a 
 practical view of life ; she knows what she 
 may expect from it and what she wants. 
 In these unruly and what are called empty 
 brains there is more diplomacy than one 
 suspects ; a calmer heart and a cooler tem- 
 perament than appearances might lead one 
 to suppose. Moreover, on the other hand, 
 the distinguishing characteristics of the 
 Americans are seldom those which charm 
 and attract us at first sight. Cold by tem- 
 perament, reserved by instinct, indefatiga- 
 ble workers, ambitious for money and power, 
 from an early age all their energy is concen- 
 trated on one idea alone how to succeed. 
 Their ambition is as limitless as the field in 
 which they move. Not one of them, how- 
 ever humble she may be, but aspires to 
 the highest rank and the greatest wealth. 
 
78 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Planter or woodcutter, workman or farmer, 
 the American man may yet become a Rep- 
 resentative, a Senator, an Ambassador, a 
 Minister of State, or even the President of 
 the Republic. 
 
 In the liberal professions nothing bars 
 the way, or demands a long or expensive 
 delay. There exist no indispensable con- 
 ditions to advancement, no social categories 
 in which one is inclosed and confined, and 
 which paralyse his efforts and retard his 
 progress. Equality of education gives his 
 competitors no advantage over him, except 
 such as may exist in the individual and 
 intellectual ability of each. Superiority 
 belongs less to knowledge than to energy 
 and will. Each man knows this, and he 
 puts all his powers to work, avoiding by 
 instinct everything that hinders his prog- 
 ress, caring little for form and appearance, 
 and much for the realities. He is re- 
 proached for his lack of suavity, for habits 
 that are often rough, and for his scorn of 
 conventionalities and rank. Of course there 
 are many brilliant exceptions to this fact, 
 but in the main the criticism is well 
 founded. 
 
 The greater number of men have the time 
 neither to acquire polish nor to seek the 
 society of women. They have other things 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 79 
 
 to attend to. Then the absence of the dot 
 has at least an advantage which ('they do not 
 see in the rich marriage, a short' cut toward 
 wealth. Rich or poor as they are or are in 
 the way of becoming, they are seldom idle. 
 Bat leisure is necessary for the cultivation 
 of woman's society. Of all occupations 
 nothing is more absorbing than this, nothing 
 takes more time and care. Then, again, in 
 the United States the drawing rooms are 
 not, as they are in Europe, one of the great 
 roads to success, most frequented by the 
 ambitious in quest of help, of recommenda- 
 tion, of influence. They are not a centre 
 where intrigues are concocted and where one 
 discusses affairs and makes bargains. Even 
 in Washington the lobbyists who haunt the 
 Capitol and the White House rarely have 
 access to receptions, even to the political 
 ones ; and there would be difficulty in point- 
 ing out any statesman, financier, lawyer, or 
 millionaire whatever at these receptions who 
 had made his way in the world by society's 
 favouritism. 
 
 Man's natural coldness and reserve, his 
 many occupations and the energy which he 
 gives to them, the respect which he has for the 
 young girl, her experience of the realities of 
 life, her imagination, curbed at an early age 
 all these are causes which make flirtation 
 
80 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 less dangerous for the woman in the United 
 States than anywhere else. If the daughters 
 of Eve did not invent flirting itself, at least 
 they coined the word, and raised the art to 
 such perfection that it has reached the dig- 
 nity of an institution. The art was neces- 
 sary, to take the place of a system which 
 existed in Europe, though never in America 
 the restless anxiety of parents and friends, 
 their matchmaking, their discreet arrange- 
 ments ; in fact, all the strategy necessary to 
 bring together a man and a woman and plan 
 and arrange their marriage for them. 
 
 American independence could not submit 
 to this. The absence of the dot removed the 
 chief element in the affair, and left only a 
 question of personal taste. Moreover, the 
 hearts of the lovers alone being at stake, in- 
 tercessors became useless, and the simplest 
 thing was to leave the young people to their 
 own devices. And this was what was done ; 
 so it fell to the young girl to form her own 
 court about her, to make her own choice, to 
 do what seemed best for her, and to admit 
 to the number of her suitors only those who 
 seemed to her to combine the traits which 
 she desired in a husband. It was for her to 
 assure herself by the necessary inquiries of 
 the harmony of their tastes and ideas ; to dis- 
 tinguish between mere flattery (the same in 
 

 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 81 
 
 everyone) and the depth and sincerity of the 
 feeling she inspired, the intellectual and 
 moral worth of the man whose name she was 
 to take. 
 
 Flirting takes care of and allows all this. 
 Under a melancholy or playful manner 
 vows and confidences are exchanged ; serious 
 and tender conversations take place which 
 show the character and wishes and hopes of 
 each. Skilful tactician, the young girl ex- 
 cels in calming her impatience, in encourag- 
 ing attention without binding herself, and 
 in discouraging it without breaking off the 
 friendship. Is she worldly ? It is necessary 
 for her to know whether he loves the world, 
 or whether he will love it ; whether he will 
 take her into it ; whether she can " enter- 
 tain" and spend her summers at Saratoga, 
 or at the seashore. Between two sentimen- 
 tal phrases, embellished with a quotation 
 from Tennyson or Longfellow, she slips in 
 a question as to the actual position of the 
 young man, his business chances, his ambi- 
 tions ; she asks it like a sister, or like a 
 friend who is interested in him and in his 
 future. After some meetings she knows all 
 that she need know, and as means of com- 
 parison are not wanting to her, she realises 
 whether or not she should encourage him. 
 Simple in her tastes, does she hope for a 
 
82 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 calmer happiness ? Does she hold her ideal 
 to consist in the perfect intimacy of heart and 
 mind ? Will he like those whom she likes, 
 and content himself with a quiet life ? Or, 
 again, has she ambition to play a political 
 role, to shine at Washington ? Are there 
 in him the elements of a statesman, or at 
 least of a politician ? Will he know how to 
 steer his bark over the stormy sea of poli- 
 tics ? Imbued with old traditions, will her 
 pride marry her into one of those historic 
 families whose ancient origin is even more 
 prized in the United States than in Europe ? 
 She may be trusted to make her choice with 
 all the care, the prudence, and the wise 
 deliberation that are necessary. 
 
 It is not for her to accommodate herself 
 to the situation in which she is placed by 
 circumstances, or to limit her tastes or bend 
 her wishes to it. Neither hr mode of life 
 nor her education has prepared her for this. 
 She is not like those German princesses 
 whom a wisely colourless education makes 
 Catholics or Protestants, orthodox or heter- 
 odox, English or Russian, Italian or Greek, 
 according to the husband given to them 
 by the political intrigues of the moment. 
 Her ideas and tastes are formed ; and the 
 problem to be solved is the choice of a hus- 
 band who, by sharing these tastes and ideas 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 83 
 
 with her, will best realise them. She spends 
 her winter entertaining, her summer at New- 
 port, Saratoga, Long Branch, without cessa- 
 tion or intermission, following up her ambi- 
 tions with as much persistence as her hus- 
 band uses to win success. By different 
 means, the only ones within her reach, does 
 she not aim at the same results ? With this 
 difference, however : that if the man makes a 
 mistake, he can start again. If one business 
 does not fulfil his expectations, there are 
 open to him banking, politics, farming, and 
 manufacturing with many years before him. 
 But with her the case is different : one mis- 
 take affects her whole life, and her time is 
 carefully measured out. With what mar- 
 vellous art, with what consummate skill, she 
 manoeuvres on difficult ground, and guides 
 her adorers with a careless and smiling 
 manner, carrying on a bantering conversa- 
 tion in which she excels, and seizing in the 
 effusion of a carefully arranged tete-a-tete 
 some characteristic or other significant 
 detail which enlightens her. Under this 
 frivolous exterior which strikes the eye 
 alone, she is playing an important part. 
 Great presence of mind and coolness are 
 necessary to her. Her heart may be caught, 
 and foresight may be found of no avail. As 
 natural weapons she has her woman's in- 
 
84 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 stinct, her intellectual superiority, a pre- 
 cocious knowledge of men, who cannot easily 
 dissimulate, whom jealousy pricks, whom 
 vanity blinds, and who when drawn on by 
 passion are disconcerted by woman's shrewd 
 retreats and skilful advances. In this 
 perilous game does not woman risk com- 
 promising or losing her dignity, or at least 
 forgetting something which in our eyes 
 is the greatest charm of a young girl, 
 namely, the candour, modesty, and inno- 
 cence which we prize so much, and willingly 
 attribute to her ? This may be so ; but 
 given the necessity for her to make her 
 choice and the great risk which she runs 
 of being deceived, is it not permissible, all 
 things considered, that she make good use 
 of her advantages and of the weapons which 
 nature has given her? The privilege of 
 flirting is as sacred and as irrevocable in the 
 United States as the immortal principles of 
 1789 are with us French. So if it be not 
 actually an article of the American Consti- 
 tution, it is, nevertheless, thought to be a 
 part of the general Declaration of Eights, 
 and, according to woman, that which author- 
 ises every citizen of the great Republic to do 
 his best in the pursuit of happiness. Flirt- 
 ing being one of the means of attaining the 
 latter, the temporary intimacy which it 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 85 
 
 gives to young men and women is accepted 
 and respected. They can at their ease play 
 the preliminary comedy of love, a sort of 
 rehearsal before the representation itself 
 the prelude under a sentimental or jesting 
 guise to the fitful fascinations which increase 
 or vanish according as the accord or discord 
 of the characters reveals itself in this half 
 intimacy, which seeks a corner away from 
 the crowded drawing-room or in summer 
 time the beach. 
 
 Ingenious persons at Newport, Atlantic 
 City, Bar Harbor, and Long Branch have 
 made a profitable speculation from this 
 national custom. They rent out to the 
 young couple in search of a tete-a-tete a 
 huge parasol, whose iron tip is buried in the 
 sand. This parasol is a kindly shelter from 
 the rays of the sun, as well as a protection 
 against all passers-by. Ordinarily from 
 under this vast mushroom only two little 
 feet are visible, neatly clad, and two larger 
 ones ; sometimes, too, but rarely, is seen 
 a slender waist encircled by a manly arm. 
 Encouraged by his success, the Atlantic 
 City speculator has had a long strip of sand 
 levelled off on the bluff over the shore, and 
 here the lovers may see, without being seen, 
 the panorama of the sea unfolding itself at 
 their feet. Those who are especially given 
 

 86 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to flirting may spend here their long after- 
 noons. No one is astonished or offended. 
 Flirting is not the exclusive right of the 
 rich far from it. From the highest to the 
 lowest round of the social ladder it is the 
 indispensable prelude to marriage, and the 
 girl who married without it would consider 
 herself deprived of her rights. Does this 
 mean that the thing is not abused, and that 
 the temporary intimacy between young 
 people, the most dangerous of all experi- 
 ments, when they may indulge in coquetry, 
 and tender avowals, and passionate declara- 
 tions, does not at times end in disastrous 
 consequences? The abuse does exist, but 
 its consequences are rare, inasmuch as 
 American laws and customs do not trifle in 
 dealing with the subject of seduction. 
 
 In the United States no one has any 
 sympathy for Don Juans. Any thought of 
 wrong loses its charm where the fathers and 
 brothers of the young girl stand ready 
 armed, and where the courts are ever ready 
 to impose a crushing penalty. One hesitates 
 to venture upon a ground that is strewn 
 with traps. The greatest danger is not for 
 the girl, but for the man. His instinctive 
 respect for women, and the natural deference 
 paid to her weakness and attractions, protect 
 her, and shelter her even from the flights of 
 
THE WOMEN OF THB UNITED STATES. 87 
 
 her imagination and vanity. She knows 
 this fact and often takes advantage of it. 
 Her wild coquetry sometimes mocks at the 
 sentiments she inspires, the affection which 
 she incites, and the vows she whispers. 
 She breaks them when they weary her 
 binds or unbinds them according to her 
 fancy or ambition without a thought of any 
 harm she may be causing. Moralists sigh 
 over this, but neither the wisest counsels nor 
 the entreaties of her father affect her. The 
 necessity itself is there, and urges her for 
 her own good to use the privileges of her 
 sex with the greatest discretion. 
 
 "What are the limits of flirtation?" 
 queries one of the most esteemed organs of 
 public opinion ; and the perplexed editor 
 answers: " We well know where it begins, 
 but no one can say where it ends. Young 
 girls go too far. Their clever coquetry, if 
 they are to be believed, is only the innocent 
 manifestation of an ingenuous nature. Is it 
 being a coquette, they ask, if we laugh and 
 are merry, if we are dreamy and tender, and 
 if bubbling vivacity or poetic melancholy is 
 seen in our faces and makes us beautiful ? 
 Ought we to call this a crime ? It is an 
 ingenious argument, a plausible explana- 
 tion, but, nevertheless, their sentiments are 
 affected, and their gaiety unnatural. Here 
 
88 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 is a charming young girl, of good education 
 and family. She has everything to make 
 her attractive, and suitors flock about her. 
 In the number one worthy of her may be 
 found, but is it for the purpose of discover- 
 ing him that she puts forth her efforts ? 
 No, she is a disputed prize : her nervous 
 laughter, her feverish gaiety, or her proud 
 melancholy attract and fascinate a crowd of 
 adorers, whom their less fortunate rivals 
 envy. Not one of her gestures, not a word, 
 but is calculated to produce an effect. 
 Busied in winning approbation, in satisfying 
 her insatiable vanity, in increasing her 
 prestige, in hearing her name noised abroad 
 and quoted in the papers, she puts aside the 
 highest hope of woman, that of loving and 
 being loved."* 
 
 An indulgent critic, the press is an accom- 
 plice in the custom which it condemns, for 
 the indiscreet newspaper man is eager to 
 praise the charms, to describe the toilets, 
 and to give the names of the belles in the 
 South, North, East, and West. In a single 
 article we once read a list of young girls 
 whose beauty was noted on the banks of the 
 Potomac, young girls of the best and most 
 aristocratic society, and in the list, which 
 the author promised at a later date to com- 
 
 *New York Herald, January, 1889. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 89 
 
 plete, were no less than 103 well-known 
 names, each with explanatory remarks ! 
 
 "Nellie Hazeltine of St. Louis," says the 
 writer, "has just died at the age of twenty- 
 four, and such was her reputation for beauty 
 that each morning telegraphic bulletins gave 
 an account of her condition, throughout all 
 the cities of the Union, from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific. She was called the belle of New 
 York, Newport, and Missouri. She was not 
 more celebrated for her personal atractions 
 than for her exquisite taste in dress." 
 
 Is it from a Persian poet or an American 
 newspaper that we have the following por- 
 trait of Miss Mary Brown of Tennessee ? 
 " Her pure features and perfect form would 
 make a sculptor rejoice, and fill a painter's 
 soul with enthusiasm. Her complexion 
 reminds one of fleeting clouds and of the 
 mother-of-pearl whiteness of the apple- 
 blossom. In her eyes is reflected the blue 
 of a summer sky, and the sun itself seems 
 to have dropped one of its golden rays over 
 her exquisite locks." 
 
 " Miss Mary Handle," another says, "is 
 the belle of New York, Baltimore, and 
 Philadelphia. Her features are ravishing ; 
 her figure combines all the attractions which 
 the inspired poets of the East gave to the 
 houris and their enchanted paradise." 
 
90 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Surely in such paragraphs, drawn from 
 some thousands, there is enough to turn a 
 young girl's head, and to make her forgive 
 a newspaper man for his criticisms and 
 opinions, which are dictated by a kindly 
 interest, and for which, moreover, there is 
 no help. Public opinion excuses him, even 
 if his friends condemn him. 
 
 She is a coquette, a flirt, unstable and 
 fickle, capricious, and formidable ; she 
 abuses her rights and privileges, but the 
 rights and privileges, nevertheless, are hers. 
 If man imitates her, if he pretends, as she 
 does, to make light of his engagements, to 
 break ties made without thought, and, even 
 though engaged, refuses to marry, public 
 opinion brands him, the law condemns him. 
 The woman can claim damages, which the 
 court grants and which are rated not accord- 
 ing to the extent of the harm done, which 
 often is nothing, but according to the man's 
 means. 
 
 As civilisation extends throughout the 
 United States the customs change. Thirty 
 years ago these private tragedies used to 
 have a bloody ending. The " Arkansas 
 toothpick," as the bowie knife was called, 
 and the revolver, from an early date have 
 brought the reluctant suitor to repentance, 
 and avenged an injury done to the family 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 91 
 
 of a disconsolate Ariadne. To-day different 
 measures are employed. Breach of promise 
 cases, lawsuits for an unfulfilled engage- 
 ment, have fortunately taken the place of the 
 earlier methods, but in changing the system 
 woman loses nothing. The fear of exor- 
 bitant fines has more influence with some 
 men than has a well-equipped arsenal, and 
 a large amount of damages is a better con- 
 solation to some women's vanity than an 
 unproductive hecatomb. 
 
 III. 
 
 Some of these breach of promise suits in 
 the United States are famous, and, far from 
 diminishing, the number increases every 
 year. Speculation is mixed up with them, 
 as is everywhere the case where money is 
 concerned. Lawyers are educated in this 
 speciality, and their practice, nursed by 
 keen business men who are always on the 
 watch for cases of this kind, brings them 
 in great sums. A new style of eloquence 
 has made its appearance in the court room, 
 and as the verdict is based upon the sympa- 
 thies of the jury, the plea is of an entirely 
 different kind from that for which we should 
 look in a matter discussed by every clap- 
 trap orator. Comedy and pathos unite in it. 
 
 OF 
 
92 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Charles Dickens in his Pickwick Papers 
 has left an immortal parody of this kind of 
 proceeding in England. The following case, 
 which occurred in the United States, and 
 which may be compared with Dickens' mas- 
 terpiece, contrasts the English humour with 
 the practical American wit. Let us come 
 into the court where the suit is going on. 
 
 " Gentlemen of the jury : The testimony 
 which I have produced is before you. Its 
 evidence is so clear and so precise as to leave 
 no doubt in the minds of men conversant as 
 you are yourselves with masculine deceit. 
 My client has opened her heart to you. 
 You have read its doubts, its modest hesi- 
 tations. In the touching recital, which I 
 have no wish to repeat for fear of weakening 
 its effect, she confided to you to you who 
 are sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands 
 with what infernal art, with what dastardly 
 promises of intoxicating joys, of new toilets 
 and home comforts, the defendant, here 
 present, snatched from her the tender avowal 
 for which he sighed this avowal which 
 cost the modesty of her sex so much, this 
 avowal which here, you know as much as 
 I, and propriety closes my lips. Master of 
 her secret as he is of her heart, he culls from 
 those maiden lips the kisses whose sweet- 
 ness her mother alone till now had tasted 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 93 
 
 these kisses you know the rest. With 
 what satanic eagerness he returns even that 
 very night, the next day, the following 
 days ! Betrothed, he rejoices in the deli- 
 cious privilege of holding her slender, yield- 
 ing form within his arms. Her head upon 
 his shoulder, her heart beating against his, 
 she tells him of her innocent girlhood, of 
 her heart's dreams in fact, all that follows 
 in such a case. And he ? Yes, he listens, 
 he holds her close to him with sweet words, 
 with promises and vows, until the day when 
 some business I do not know exactly 
 what calls him, he says, to St. Louis. He 
 leaves her, vowing that he will return, that 
 he will write often and he never writes. 
 She becomes restless, she writes him letter 
 after letter, and in return for her tender 
 notes he maintains a scornful silence. 
 When he breaks it, it is to announce that 
 their marriage is impossible, and he brutally 
 offers her at this point, gentlemen of the 
 jury, I can scarcely contain my indigna- 
 tion he offers her I believe I see a figure 
 trembling on your lips, that which your 
 just verdict will give to my client he offers 
 her one thousand dollars damages ! " 
 
 "In cash," interrupted the lawyer of the 
 defendant. 
 
 " Yes, in cash, I understand that well 
 
94 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 enough, but it is only a thousand dol- 
 lars and what shall we get after our lawyer 
 is paid?" 
 
 Then, with a movement of rising indigna- 
 tion : "A thousand dollars ? No, gentlemen 
 of the jury, this cannot be ! A thousand 
 dollars for our broken heart, for our faith in 
 man forever lost, for our life vowed to 
 eternal singleness ! We are not of those 
 who promise irrevocable vows a second 
 time, who give to another the lips that love 
 has kissed, who console ourselves for a lost 
 love by asking from another the happiness 
 which was once ours. And for so many 
 tears shed, for such dire and bitter decep- 
 tion, one thousand dollars is offered us ! 
 Say fifteen hundred and we will close with 
 it." 
 
 The accused and his counsel consult 
 together. Then they make a sign of assent 
 and the suit is withdrawn. 
 
 One does not always get off so fortunately, 
 as a certain Southern senator discovered 
 to his cost. A widow entered an action 
 against him for refusing to marry her, 
 alleging that on the 9th of November, 1885, 
 the gallant senator had offered her marriage. 
 Up to June, 1886, she said, he wrote her 
 frequently and in the tenderest manner, 
 reiterating his offer, begging her to accept 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 95 
 
 him and to fix a day for the wedding. She 
 suggested several dates to him, one after 
 another, it appears, but for some reason or 
 other he passed them over, always offering 
 some excuse. In 1886 the loving senator, 
 notwithstanding his engagement, sought the 
 hand of another lady. Refused in this 
 quarter, he asked and obtained that of a 
 third, and was to marry her on the 2d of 
 November, 1887. 
 
 The plaintiff declared under oath that 
 during the two previous years she was 
 ready at any time to marry him, having at 
 several times mentioned a day and an hour, 
 as her letters showed. In view of her mar- 
 riage, which she had every reason to sup- 
 pose would take place immediately, she 
 spent more than she ought. She gave 
 orders to her t seamstress and her dress- 
 maker which were promptly filled, with the 
 result that she found herself provided with 
 toilets for which she had no use. Besides 
 this loss of money, which the senator 
 declared himself ready to make good, there 
 was the mortification which she felt, the 
 jests of which she was the object, and the 
 loss of her social position, the value of 
 all which she set at the round sum of 
 $50,000 (250,000 francs). This sum she had 
 every chance of gaining, since the impru- 
 
96 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 dent senator had committed himself deeply 
 in writing. 
 
 All these proceedings resemble one 
 another, and, as is natural, letters play an 
 important part in them. In default of let- 
 ters oral evidence is used, and one may ask, 
 in seeing the proportionately anxious num- 
 ber of conscript fathers arraigned before the 
 courts of justice as delinquent lovers, what 
 it is that brings so much feminine malice 
 upon their venerable heads. 
 
 Feminine office-seekers are no less for- 
 midable, and few come out of these affairs so 
 fortunately as did another senator from the 
 South from an episode which caused a 
 great sensation in Washington in January, 
 1888. For several weeks this senator was 
 followed by a widow whose bold scheming 
 nothing daunted. In the lobbies of the 
 Senate Chamber, at the entrance of the 
 Capitol, in the street, and even to his hotel, 
 she hunted him without mercy, balking 
 every plan of escape. In vain, in response 
 to the jokes of his companions, he declared 
 that love had nothing to do with the affair, 
 and that his persecutor was only seeking an 
 office. Everyone predicted that it would 
 result in a suit for refusal of marriage, 
 which could be settled only out of his well- 
 filled purse. One morning while in his 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 97 
 
 bathing dress, modestly covered with towel- 
 ling, the senator was bathing, when the 
 sound of light footsteps attracted his atten- 
 tion. Discreetly peering through the cur- 
 tain which hid him from sight, he recognised 
 the widow, who had eluded the hotel boys, 
 and had succeeded in entering his private 
 dressing-room. At this point we shall quote 
 from the indiscreet newspaper : 
 
 "Good Heavens! madame, what do you 
 want?" 
 
 " I want my office. You promised it to 
 me, and I will not leave until I have it," 
 taking a chair, and sitting down. 
 
 u But I can do nothing in this condition 
 and in this costume." 
 
 "Ah yes, you can; let us talk of the 
 affair in order that you may do something 
 when you are elsewhere," she replied in 
 a hard voice. "I will not stir from 
 here." 
 
 What was he to do ? To get out at any 
 cost ? It could not be thought of. She 
 would scream, and her cries would arouse the 
 hotel employes, who would come and surprise 
 him. In a moment he might be compelled 
 to marry her. Did he hesitate? She drew 
 from her bag needles and thread, and set- 
 tled down to knit exactly as though she 
 were at home. Then indeed he began to 
 
98 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 tremble. The position was not to be borne. 
 "I surrender," lie said meekly through a 
 chink in the curtain. u For mercy's sake, 
 let me finish dressing. Wait for me in the 
 drawing-room ; I swear to join you there 
 and look after your position." 
 
 An hour later they went together to the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, and obtained of 
 him for the widow a position with a salary 
 of seven hundred dollars a year, beginning 
 the following day. 
 
 "Sam Weller," said the shrewd Tony 
 Weller to his son, " Sam Weller, beware of 
 widows?" And a large number of Euro- 
 pean travellers imitate Tony Weller, and ask 
 those who come after them to beware of 
 young American girls, shrewd, sentimental, 
 calculating, and experienced little fools who 
 are the exception, and not the rule. In 
 the United States, as elsewhere, experience 
 is dearly bought. It is dearer there than 
 elsewhere, and certain adventures, appar- 
 ently not without attractions at the be- 
 ginning, become very serious. An Ameri- 
 can millionaire of Chicago in travelling to 
 Detroit met a young and charming young 
 girl on the train. They were alone. He 
 began a conversation, and his idol ended in 
 a couple of hours by exacting from him a 
 promise to marry her or to pay her twenty 
 
. 
 
 ITTNTV 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 99 
 
 thousand dollars.* He paid it, but the 
 lesson was a hard one for him. Hard also 
 was that of the poor devil recently con- 
 demned by the court to deduct every month 
 as long as he lived a certain sum from his 
 moderate salary to pay for a momentary 
 act of gallantry at a public ball. Between 
 these two extreme rounds of the social 
 ladder, between the millionaire and the 
 workman, there is room for a certain 
 number of victims in a country where a 
 judge is bound by the plaintiff's testi- 
 mony, in circumstances where a witness is 
 rare, and would be troublesome, and in cer- 
 tain circles where no hypocritical reserve 
 and no false or exaggerated modesty pre- 
 vent the woman's making the most of her 
 4 'weakness." 
 
 This weakness is exceptional, for Circes 
 are rarer than in Europe, and if their num- 
 ber is increasing, if for twenty years they 
 have been assuming alarming proportions, it 
 is because in the United States a rapid com- 
 mercial and industrial change has increased 
 the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the 
 poor, and made a sort of intermediate class 
 which struggles against a social grouping 
 in which they feel their position to be below 
 
 * Eight Months in America, by Duvergier de Hauranne, 
 i. p. 431. 
 
100 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 their worth. We shall return to this point, 
 but in the normal and regular life which 
 we are analysing, in the classes which 
 compose American society, breach of prom- 
 ise suits are rare. The men are careful and 
 the girls are not adventuresses, but under 
 their frivolous or serious exteriors are really 
 sedate and sensible people, who know 
 what they wish and what they are about, 
 who are sometimes a little intoxicated by 
 their youth, their beauty, and their suc- 
 cess, and who are perhaps a little foolish, 
 too, but have, like Hamlet, "a method 
 in their madness." Practicality asserts it- 
 self and the touch of folly or of eccentricity 
 disappears when they are older. Nothing 
 is more regularly arranged or better cal- 
 culated with a view to the desired result 
 than their social trilogy. The life of a 
 young society girl in New York or in any 
 other large city of the East comprises three 
 distinct seasons, each representing a winter 
 with the dissipations of a city, and a sum- 
 mer with its so-called country amusements. 
 First year. The girl makes her debut 
 in society. She has heard it talked of and 
 for a long time the date has been settled. 
 However, too much concerned with the 
 importance of her debut, she is somewhat 
 awkward and embarrassed. In this new 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 101 
 
 field she is at a loss. Her mother, fearing 
 for her a too free behaviour and the suspic- 
 ion of "bad form," has carefully left out 
 the friends and companions of her childhood. 
 Their gaiety and their familiarity would 
 scandalise serious people but little accus- 
 tomed to so noisy a gathering. This is 
 the preliminary year. The girl observes, 
 listens, and holds her peace. Out of 
 courtesy men are presented to her ; by 
 choice they ignore her. Out of her 
 element, isolated, unconscious of her real- 
 value, she causes no sensation as yet. It 
 is a tiresome season for her, this period of 
 initiation. Seated by her mother's side, 
 she rarely dances, and talks still less. 
 She is always ready to return home at the 
 least sign of weariness from her father. In 
 the summer, at Newport or Saratoga, she 
 finds some of the dancers and some of her 
 drawing-room companions. Coteries are 
 formed and girlish friendships are made. 
 Walks, excursions, drives, are planned. 
 People speak to her and she answers. 
 They notice her and she sees it. She feels 
 that she is somebody, and not something. 
 She begins the art of serious flirtation, and 
 her youthful experience only helps to facil- 
 itate her efforts. 
 Second year. This is a year of experi- 
 
102 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ments. She knows people and they know 
 her. She makes the most of what she 
 knows and guesses at what she does not 
 know. Daylight begins to dawn upon her 
 mind. She knows intuitively what best 
 suits her complexion and her style of 
 beauty. From a chrysalis she emerges a 
 butterfly. She has made her friends, and 
 on this choice, wisely made, depends in a 
 great measure the future of her matri- 
 monial campaign. According to American 
 customs, these young companions will be 
 more useful to her than father, mother, 
 brother, aunt, or cousin. Has she known 
 well how to choose them ? Their popular- 
 ity will make hers. Their kindly remarks 
 about her will bring her into notice. They 
 will help her, as she will help them. Like 
 her, even before her, they will have guessed 
 what husband she must Im've. They plan to 
 bring the two together, making opportuni- 
 ties for her to meet him by invitations skil- 
 fully suggested to their mothers. At formal 
 dinners she finds him at her side. It is a 
 case in which everything can be repaid. It 
 is an exchange of good deeds, a society for 
 mutual assistance. In the young girls' 
 conversations with one another they are 
 confidential and half admit their prefer- 
 ences. If the horizon widens, her choice 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 103 
 
 circumscribes it. She imagines herself in 
 love, but she is not sure of it. Among her 
 many admirers she thinks she can choose 
 one, but still she hesitates. 
 
 Third year. This is the decisive year 
 the climax. She is at the height of her 
 beauty, and she realises it. She has had 
 experience, and from it comes assurance. 
 Her limpid gaze, full of an instructed 
 innocence, rests on those about her with 
 as much calmness as an artist who has 
 finished his portrait for the next exhibition. 
 She knows exactly what she wants, the 
 establishment for which she is fitted, the 
 kind of life she desires. She knows how 
 to listen with an air of moved astonishment 
 to a passionate declaration, and to refuse 
 with tearful eyes the wooer who asks her to 
 marry him, but who does not offer what her 
 ambition seeks. His importunity checked, 
 she can enjoy without remorse the peace 
 of her maiden sleep. At length her choice 
 is made. Her careful flirtation, her skil- 
 fully calculated advances tempered with 
 modest hesitation, have elicited a decla- 
 ration from the man in whom she finds 
 united to the highest degree the qualities 
 which she desires in a husband. In the 
 spring she is married at Trinity Church with 
 a brilliant procession of eight bridesmaids. 
 
104 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 And the others ? 
 
 What others ? 
 
 Those who, more womanly, or womanly in 
 a different way, do not possess the art, the 
 savoir faire, of the society girl. Those, in 
 short, whom no suitors have sought, or who 
 believe in a pure love match, who will not 
 be attracted by men whom they do not 
 love, and so have refused all offers. These \ 
 are the ones whom an American writer 
 described in a series of public sketches 
 a few years ago. These are " Bouncers," 
 as Mr. Oliphant has named them, and the 
 title clings to them. The majority of 
 foreigners who visit the United States see 
 and hear only these. They are the pop- 
 ular type of the young American girl, 
 independent and scornful of public opinion 
 which indulges her perversity and tolerates 
 her eccentricities. 
 
 In Central Park and on Broadway, at the 
 seashore and at the watering place, at the 
 theatre and on ferryboats, they thrust 
 themselves upon our notice, their loud 
 gaiety attracting and holding the attention 
 of all. On the Continent one meets them 
 everywhere. In our great hotels in Paris 
 and Nice, at the casinos of Florence, in 
 Kome on the Pincio, at Naples, in Cairo 
 and in Munich, in Dresden and in Lon- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 105 
 
 don, everywhere at home, they are spoiled 
 children whose whims astonish and whose 
 free manners disconcert the public. In 
 their hearts, in spite of their odd ways, 
 they are very womanly women and very 
 honest ones. Too independent to be bound 
 by hypocritical customs of society or too sin- 
 cere to play a role, they possess what their 
 birth, education, and position have given 
 them. While waiting for love and marriage, 
 they amuse themselves with the carelessness 
 of their age and the liberty which custom 
 allows to their sex, until the. day arrives 
 when they make their choice and enter the 
 rank of the matrons, to become in their turn 
 quiet mothers. 
 
 Farewell to the noisy drives, the sleighing 
 parties, to flirting, to tete-d-tetes on the sea- 
 beach, to sentimental excursions ! They 
 have had everything that the life of the 
 young girl could give, and in their new life 
 they have no regrets for the past, no remem- 
 brance of having enjoyed too little. They 
 marry for themselves, from choice and 
 taste, and not for what they will have. 
 Moreover, as most frequently is the case, 
 they have no dot, and their family con- 
 tents itself with providing a trousseau. 
 Occasionally their father adds to a title 
 deed, according to his means, a gift of some 
 
106 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 hundreds or thousands of dollars to defray 
 the expenses of a wedding trip to Europe. 
 As to the hope of legacies, they count but 
 little on them, as being naturally uncertain 
 and remote. Except for a few large for- 
 tunes, securely invested, the majority of 
 American estates are settled in the banking 
 business, in commerce, in industry or specu- 
 lation, and are liable to such fluctuations 
 that they increase or decrease suddenly, 
 and in calculating the value of a future 
 legacy men run the risk of serious mis- 
 takes. Then, again, the head of a family 
 is free to make his will as he pleases, and if 
 he chooses he can favour one of his children, 
 or wrong them all. 
 
 Also one must remember that in the 
 United States, in the middle class, the ma- 
 jority of marriages are marriages for love, 
 and that the interested motives which weigh 
 upon one so heavily in Europe rarely 
 have any consideration. Finally, single 
 blessedness does not frighten women, who 
 find ample compensation for the many re- 
 sponsibilities which every marriage brings 
 with it in the liberty which they continue 
 to enjoy by not marrying. If the young 
 European girl wins the appearance of 
 liberty by marrying, the young American 
 girl gives up the reality which was hers; 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 107 
 
 the former enters for the first time into the 
 world, the latter ordinarily gives it up. 
 Other occupations, other cares, claim her ; 
 her life of pleasure is finished. A serious 
 life has begun for her with all its duties and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 IV. 
 
 As the young girl's life is lived under the 
 broad and glaring light of day, so when she 
 is married silence falls upon her and about 
 her. Save in exceptional cases, when pub- 
 lic attention is called to them by their great 
 fortunes, their brilliant receptions, their lux- 
 urious way of living, their toilets, or the 
 high social position of their husbands, these 
 young girls pass, without any period of 
 transition, from the publicity of the draw- 
 ing-room into the seclusion of married life. 
 Like a brilliant meteor, they trace a shin- 
 ing path ; darkness comes, and to the sanc- 
 tuary of home, where the final evolution 
 takes place, where the mirthful and rebel- 
 lious coquette is converted into the wise 
 matron, the serious and sober woman, only 
 her parents and friends are admitted. The 
 psychological study of the American woman 
 is as complex as that of the young girl 
 is simple. Outside of personal observation 
 
108 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the sources of information are at fault. Do 
 not expect from Americans half-told confi- 
 dences, fine but indiscreet remarks which 
 expose their private life, and reveal its dis- 
 appointments or its joys. They are silent. 
 They have the Anglo-Saxon temperamental 
 reserve. 
 
 Silent also is the novel, which stops at the 
 threshold of the bridal chamber and ends 
 when, after many catastrophes, the hero 
 marries the heroine. If sometimes it is con- 
 tinued beyond this point, if, imitating our 
 own novel, it undertakes to initiate us into 
 the complicated married life, do not trust it. 
 It is a guide but little to be relied upon, as, 
 under feminine sway, it is adapted to paint 
 woman not as she is, but as she would be ; 
 to preach a theory, and hot to write a true 
 history. Instinctively, American women 
 study how not to betray a single one of their 
 personal feelings, and how to avoid every- 
 thing that, by truthful detail, would permit 
 us to recognise the play of individuality or 
 the characteristics and influence of any one 
 of them. 
 
 Moreover, the American novel is seldom 
 an exact picture of life, a real impression, 
 but almost always a work of the imagina- 
 tion, written to please, distract, or convince ; 
 and when occasionally it strives to be true, its 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 109 
 
 effort is concentrated on comparisons and 
 accessories. The real feelings, impressions, 
 and sensations of the principal character, 
 who himself holds the pen, are hidden under 
 a discreet and voluntary silence. Then, too, 
 memoirs are rare, as well as autobiographies. 
 Daring the few past years, however, Ameri- 
 can publishers have touched upon this line 
 of work, and some recent publications throw 
 a new light over the social, intellectual, and 
 moral life of a generation which is extinct.' 
 There are noble types and beautiful women 
 revealed to us in the memoirs of James and 
 Lucretia Mott, in the biography of Margaret 
 Fuller Ossoli, by C. D. Warner, and in the 
 letters of Maria Child. These lives, conse-j 
 crated to useful work and worthily spent/ 
 bring out in bold relief that greatness of 
 heart and mind which is the unquestionable 
 gift and characteristic trait of a large num- 
 ber of women in the United States. 
 
 Finally, if American journalism does not 
 carry prudery as far as English journalism 
 did a few years ago ; if it does not keep 
 absolute silence on the danger which certain 
 vices entail upon society; if, by the accounts 
 given of divorce cases and of scandals, it 
 raises the vejlj}ligliiJy_a^ 
 mtoIJriSteJifej it tells only what all the 
 world knows, and the indiscretion is nothing 
 
110 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 more than a revelation of the exception 
 which proves the rule. This reserve explains 
 why the numerous volumes published in the 
 United States abound in detaiiiof the_ojang 
 American girl, painting her according to the 
 sex, age, and disposition of the writer, under 
 such varied and contradictory forms, and 
 multiplying the number of facts and ex- 
 amples, of anecdotes and comments, while 
 they are silent on the subject of the married 
 woman. It would seem from our reading as 
 if the latter did not exist. When she is 
 mentioned, it is as the hospitable mistress 
 of the house, at a ball or a dinner, as the 
 indulgent mother where the coquetry of her 
 daughters is concerned, or as the faithless 
 wife whom scandal brings into the daylight 
 of publicity. 
 
 There is, however, something else to be 
 said of her, and her life does not merely 
 fluctuate between the commonplace and 
 quiet role and these noisy digressions. Her 
 marriage, the great event of her life, de- 
 pends on her, and her alone. If the man she 
 chooses freely is, by fortunate circumstances, 
 able to marry her at once, the wedding takes 
 place without delay. From a room or two, 
 after a short wedding trip, she takes posses- 
 sion of her home, hotel, cottage, or simple 
 apartment. If, on the other hand, as is fre- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. Ill 
 
 queritly the case when personal inclination 
 alone determines her choice, the position of 
 her future husband is not yet assured, she 
 binds herself by an engagement, and waits 
 for the denouement of her story during a long 
 betrothal. It may be interminable. That 
 of one of my friends, a naval officer, lasted 
 seventeen years. Yet there was not one 
 hour in which either he or she repented. 
 They were constant in spite of years of sepa- 
 ration, during his long voyages to Oceanica, 
 Asia, and Europe, in spite of interrupted 
 correspondence, remonstrances on the part 
 of their parents, and in spite of social temp- 
 tations. This was an exceptional case, 
 but engagements of many years' standing 
 are not rare, and they are an eloquent proof 
 in favour of a choice made in earnest. 
 
 The absence of the wife's dot necessitates 
 on the man's part a position of wealth which 
 he does not always have at the age when he 
 is ordinarily married. As often as a lawyer, 
 physician, or merchant starts out in busi- 
 ness he is obliged to calculate his expenses, 
 to balance his accounts carefully. In New 
 York and other large cities of the Union 
 actual living is expensive, and if one makes 
 much, one also spends much. Rent is dear ; 
 good servants cannot be found for moderate 
 wages ; starting out in business is costly. 
 
112 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 One attains often to the most practical com- 
 bination, to that which allows the young 
 couple to calculate their expenses exactly, 
 to depend on their income and avoid all 
 debt. They take rooms at a hotel. There 
 are all kinds of these for all purses, and 
 all run with this purpose, in view of a 
 special patronage. They find according to 
 the price they can pay an apartment more or 
 less complete, with a drawing room, sleep- 
 ing-room, bath- and toilet-rooms, and with 
 board and service at a stated sum, by the 
 day or month. 
 
 For anyone who knows what American 
 hotels are, with their sumptuous decora- 
 tions, their rich reception-rooms, smoking- 
 rooms, reading-rooms, ladies' parlours, spa- 
 cious halls, vast staircases, soft carpets, 
 immense corridors brilliantly lighted, their 
 dining-rooms and the elegance of their 
 table linen and crystal, it is not to be 
 expected that for a moderately small sum 
 one can have the results of an unlim- 
 ited income and the comfort of a million- 
 aire without being one the elegance and 
 refinement which wealth alone gives. It is 
 not strange that vulgar surroundings are 
 distasteful to us, that they disconcert our 
 ideas of private life and of real happiness ; 
 but it is necessary to take into account other 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 113 
 
 things and unquestionable compensations. 
 We can scarcely imagine a young woman in 
 such a place, but in such a place she is and 
 she is queen in it. She is surrounded with 
 attention and kindness. Some are removed 
 far from home, but custom has made this 
 familiar. On a steamer which plies on one 
 of the large rivers in the United States I met 
 one day a couple who had been married 
 that very morning, and were starting on 
 their wedding trip. The captain gallantly 
 offered the bride his arm, and led her to the 
 bridal room, the special cabin kept for bride 
 and groom, decorated with floral allegories. 
 At the table, seated on his right, he paid her 
 the compliments due to her changed posi- 
 tion. The passengers drank to the health 
 of the bride, and all the disconcerting atten- 
 tion which would have frightened a young 
 woman in Europe, seemed very simple and 
 natural to the American. She meets it 
 again at the hotel, where her new dignity 
 attracts the respectful attention of every- 
 one. She lives better and at less expense. 
 For the same price in a cheap flat she 
 would have from the start to train one serv- 
 ant for good or ill, an incapable German or 
 a stubborn Irish girl. She would have to 
 order the meals, the preparation of which 
 she ought to oversee, or she must prepare 
 
114 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 them herself; she must be on her guard 
 against the tradespeople, must foresee, cal- 
 culate, master the art of housekeeping, 
 which has as little in common with the 
 demands of her new position as with those 
 of her husband, who wishes to find her upon 
 his return well dressed, elegant, and calm, 
 devoted to him, and with a mind free from 
 vulgar care and confusion. The hotel gives 
 her all this. In its comfortable shelter she 
 lives at her ease, free from material occupa- 
 tion and heavy work. 
 
 While her husband is away, she has 
 no other occupation beyond her toilet, her 
 intellectual pursuits, and visits to receive 
 and make. In the hotel are a number of 
 young women in a like position with whom 
 she can become acquainted, go out, and 
 chat. For her, as for her husband, it is 
 only a camping out, a temporary home, 
 while waiting for the permanent one. But 
 temporary as it is, it may continue beyond 
 their expectations ; and if this mode of 
 existence has advantages, it has also dan- 
 gers. More than one scandal which the 
 press has echoed has had its birth here. 
 Idleness is an evil counsellor, and in simplify- 
 ing one's duties one often comes to exagger- 
 ate his; rights and to abuse them. The great 
 liberty which the Americans enjoy is not 
 
THE WOMEN OF TBE UNITED STATES. 115 
 
 without its perils, and the difference between 
 the young girl's flirting and the young 
 woman's natural desire to please is not 
 learned in a single day. Between her hus- 
 band, who, absorbed in business, is away all 
 day, and the absence of duties which fill up 
 the long empty hours, there is only room for 
 her own occupations, or for the distractions 
 which present themselves. She receives 
 whoever seems good to her and she goes 
 wherever she wishes. Her more guarded 
 coquetry is also more dangerous, and to 
 some frivolous and fickle women coquetry is 
 second nature. They form a court about 
 them, as they did when unmarried, and to 
 this perilous game more than one succumbs ; 
 the respect of others no longer defends her 
 against her own weakness. These dangers 
 are much more frequent in the boarding 
 houses, which are so numerous in New 
 York. Here young couples of more limited 
 resources can live cheaper than in a hotel. 
 They rent a room and take their meals there, 
 meeting other guests in the general drawing- 
 room. Mr. Claudio-Jannet, who does not 
 respect these much bepraised customs of 
 the Americans, points out in his remarkable 
 work on the United States of to-day the 
 serious inconveniences of this mode of living : 
 " Ten, twelve, fifteen families live under the 
 
116 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 same roof, all brought together by chance. 
 There is no need of laying stress on the evils 
 which arise in such a promiscuous gather- 
 ing. For families to submit to it they must 
 already, necessarily, have lost all sense of 
 the proprieties of married life, and of the 
 duties of paternity." 
 
 The principal reason for this kind of liv- 
 ing is found, first, in the expense of living in 
 large cities and the impossibility of procur- 
 ing at a reasonable price servants who know 
 heir duties. Then there is the idea of 
 luxury, which is unquestionably associated 
 with that of respectability. By a strange 
 contrast this craving for luxury is as innate 
 in the American woman, whose mind is taken 
 up with appearances, as it is absent from the 
 man, who is indifferent to appearances, and 
 thinking only of realities. He loves money 
 and devotes all his physical and mental 
 energies to acquiring it, because money is 
 the tangible and visible stamp of success. 
 For himself, however, he uses but little and 
 asks for but little of it. It is the wife who 
 is his luxury, as she is his instrument for 
 spending money ; and, millionaire though 
 he be, or may become, his life is one of 
 incessant labour and of overwhelming cares. 
 On the other hand, one can with difficulty 
 imagine the great display which the wife of 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 117 
 
 the wealthy banker or well-known merchant 
 makes in her palace on Fifth Avenue, while 
 from his simple manner, and often neglected 
 appearance, the husband might be taken at 
 first sight for a merchant in less than mod- 
 erate circumstances. 
 
 It is here in the " upper ten" (a term 
 which has almost lost its value in the United 
 States since the day when an annual 
 revenue of ten thousand dollars was con- 
 sidered a fortune) that one must look for 
 the American woman in her true surround- 
 ings. These she owes, in most cases, to her 
 beauty, to her art in charming and attract- 
 ing people, to that faculty of discernment 
 which made her choose a man capable of 
 gaining the high position to which she 
 aspired. They have, each of them, their 
 separate spheres. She has the eclat of 
 wealth, worldly prominence, haughty exclu- 
 siveness. He has the power which millions 
 give a power stronger and more lasting 
 than that with which the Chief Magistrate of 
 the state is invested, who is restricted by his 
 modest salary of fifty thousand dollars, by 
 his limited power, and by his tenure of office, 
 which expires at the end of four years. 
 
 " When one of these railroad kings rode 
 from New York to the shores of the Pacific 
 in his palace car," writes Mr. Bryce, "his 
 
118 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 trip was a triumphal excursion. The Gov- 
 ernors of the States and of the Territories 
 hurried to meet him and to pay him 
 homage. The legislative assemblies gave 
 solemn receptions in his honour. The cities 
 rivalled one another in sparing no expense 
 in receiving him in order to gain his good 
 will. Unpopular as are these powerful com- 
 panies which from one end of the Republic 
 to the other work out their despotic will, 
 those who are connected with them receive 
 no lesser tribute of deference and admira- 
 tion than every American gives to whoso- 
 ever personifies a groat work." 
 
 Heads are necessary to every social organ- 
 isation. Thoroughly democratic as is this 
 race, it has its aristocrats, found in the 
 Southern States among the ancient families 
 of English or of French extraction, and in 
 the North among the descendants of those 
 who have won the first rank in society by 
 the force of their will, by indomitable effort, 
 and by success. The old aristocratic tradi- 
 tions still exist in Boston, Baltimore, and 
 Philadelphia, and instead of growing less 
 are increasing. The coats of arms prove 
 this, and the carefully recorded genealogies. 
 The Biddies have traced theirs back beyond 
 the Norman invasion ; the Whartons to 
 1546 ; the Chapmans count Sir Walter 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 119 
 
 Raleigh among their ancestors ; the Cad- 
 waladers date theirs from Robert II. of 
 Scotland ; the Novins from 1573 ; the Mont- 
 gomerys are descended from the Earls of 
 Eglinton. Mr. Charles Browning, in his 
 book entitled Americans of Royal De- 
 scent, cites as many as twenty families 
 among whose ancestors are found Edward 
 I., Henry IY., and Edward III., of England, 
 James I. of Scotland, and Philip III. of 
 France. In New York, where a moneyed 
 aristocracy predominates, it is not the 
 founders of great fortunes who hold the 
 highest rank, but their sons and their grand- 
 sons. The founders themselves have other 
 things to do. It is necessary to devote time 
 to acquiring wealth ; and every social ambi- 
 tion is excluded by their mighty task. An 
 intelligent and refined woman alone can 
 make one forget the origin of her millions 
 by veiling with grace and beauty an humble 
 origin and the vulgar toil of the founder 
 of her family. Women have accomplished 
 this in the case of the Astors, of the Vander- 
 bilts, of the Lorillards, and of many others 
 whose wealth is socially ennobled because of 
 the use they have made of it. These mil- 
 lionaires possess the revenues of kings with- 
 out any of the kings' responsibilities, and 
 it is easy to understand what their descend- 
 
120 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ants can accomplish with so powerful an 
 instrument in their hands. The fancy-dress 
 ball which Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt 
 gave on the 26th of March, 1883, in order to 
 open her palatial residence on Fifth Avenue 
 for whose decoration six hundred workmen 
 and sixty sculptors, brought from Europe, 
 had been employed for eighteen months, 
 surpassed in its lavish display of diamonds 
 and in richness of toilets the most sumptu- 
 ous affair ever seen at European courts. 
 They talk still in New York of the marvel- 
 lous apparition of the hostess dressed as a 
 Venetian princess, and of the dazzling court 
 costume worn by Lady Mandeville and 
 copied after a portrait by Van Dyck. 
 
 The natural tendency of all aristocracy that 
 has as its foundation birth, public services, 
 or the possession of wealth is to maintain 
 and defend its rights by forming a distinct 
 and exclusive circle. The wealthy families 
 of New York, the old families of Boston 
 and of Philadelphia, and the aristocratic 
 descendants of the Southern settlers pre- 
 serve the same exclusiveness. Their doors, 
 hospitably open to strangers whose reputa- 
 tion is good, are closed to parvenus who beg 
 admission. They keep aloof even among 
 themselves and among those of equal rank ; 
 and these invisible barriers of a democratic 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 121 
 
 etiquette recall in certain instances those of 
 our ancient courts. Nothing less than the 
 eclat of the Vanderbilt ball is necessary to 
 celebrate their entrance into the high life of 
 New York, and nothing less than the tact 
 and the s avoir fair e of Lady Mandeville to 
 bring Mrs. Astor, the leader of New York 
 society, to visit Mrs. William H. Vander- 
 bilt, which gave the latter the right of ask- 
 ing to her ball a family which until then 
 had affected ignorance of her very existence. 
 This social incident assumed at the time the 
 proportions of a great event. It served as 
 the subject of conversation in clubs and 
 drawing rooms, and the press was not spar- 
 ing in entertaining its readers with the de- 
 tails of the meeting. In this wealthy and 
 exclusive world the role of woman alone 
 is visible. It is about her that the ele- 
 gance of luxury and the splendour of social 
 life centre. Writers and reporters stand at 
 a distance, on the watch for her every move- 
 ment. Her toilets and her trips to the 
 country, her receptions and her journeys, 
 are duly chronicled, with full comments. 
 The complicated mechanism of this life is a 
 strange contrast to its environment and to 
 democratic institutions. 
 
 Secretary, and reader, and young lady 
 companions perform the functions of maids 
 
122 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of honour ; a world of lackeys and of maids, 
 directed as in England by a butler and a 
 housekeeper; in travelling, a palace-car, 
 which they leave at the station where they 
 stop, and the luxurious management of 
 which is left to special valets and couriers ; 
 carriages sent in advance to designated 
 places ; menus telegraphed to the large 
 hotels a whole extraordinarily sumptuous 
 system burdensome and monotonous, in 
 which nothing is left to fancy or caprice. 
 It is the tangible evidence of a moneyed 
 aristocracy, in which every customary object 
 is stamped with a special mark, as is every 
 act of life. 
 
 V. 
 
 Between these millionaires, powerless to 
 spend their income, but often powerless to 
 enjoy it, and the petty tradesman just 
 beginning, the lawyer and the physician 
 in quest of practice, the broker and the 
 employe, who demand the vulgar luxury of 
 a hotel, or at least the doubtful comfort of a 
 boarding house (which gives that appearance 
 of respectability which the American woman 
 claims), vibrates a middle class in moderately 
 easy circumstances, corresponding to our 
 bourgeoisie, though it has neither the strict 
 economy nor the moderate desires of the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 123 
 
 latter. One finds in the male American of 
 this class ambitious aims, the cold energy of a 
 race of hardy pioneers let loose on a limitless 
 continent; and in his wife these ambitions are 
 translated into social aspirations which are 
 often beyond her means, but which her con- 
 fidence in her real worth justifies in her eyes. 
 Her elegance demands a setting, just as her 
 beauty demands a toilet. Wealth is a 
 necessity, and the daily gain of her husband 
 is for both nothing but the stepping-stone 
 to a brilliant future. 
 
 They spend what they make, sure of 
 themselves and of the future, carried on 
 by the stream of prosperity, which in less 
 than a single century has made the great 
 Republic the richest country in the world. 
 They have inherited the nomadic tastes of 
 their ancestors. Nothing binds them to one 
 place more than to another. The best place 
 is that which gives them the greatest oppor- 
 tunities of attaining their end, and this is one 
 where the population increases most rapidly. 
 Chicago or San Francisco, St. Louis or New 
 Orleans, the West or the South, the new 
 Territories or the old States wherever they 
 establish themselves they will find, he 
 a wide field of activity and the same con- 
 ditions of living ; she, the same considera- 
 tion, the same attention. Wherever they 
 
 ^jBRAsp* 
 
124 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 go, her pre-eminence will follow them. In 
 travelling, in the hotels, on the railroads, on 
 the boats, her husband is nothing more to 
 her than a protector. It is she, on the 
 other hand, whose presence gives him every 
 privilege and advantage. It is because he 
 is with her that he has a right to the best 
 seats and the best staterooms, that he is 
 admitted into the "ladies' parlour," that he 
 sits as the head of the table cPJiote and is 
 served among the first. In order to avoid 
 the distressing promiscuity that one meets 
 with, and the lack of attention which in 
 America is the lot of bachelors, someone 
 has humourously suggested that the tourist 
 should travel with his cook. He would then 
 be escorting a woman, and would profit by 
 all the advantages of the position. 
 
 In every detail of social life these privi- 
 leges of woman appear. The sovereignty of 
 all heightens the prestige of the individual. 
 Once married, this prestige is hers, and in 
 order to assert itself in a narrower circle 
 her influence gains in strength all that it 
 loses in breadth. She is the secret motive 
 power, the counsellor who is heeded. She 
 excites ambition and, impatient for success, 
 often discounts the future and deserves the 
 criticism of spending far too lavishly, and 
 of not taking precautions against losses, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 125 
 
 sickness, or ill luck. In the middle class 
 especially this criticism is just, and it is 
 with reason that some American women are 
 accused of bringing ruin on their families. 
 They approach too closely to the world of 
 the rich, and often fall into the temptation 
 of imitating it. It is particularly so in the 
 refined and civilised Eastern States. The 
 West, more healthful morally, and physi- 
 cally more vigorous, has become by circum- 
 stances the reserve force of the future, the 
 place where the primitive type grows and 
 acquires renewed strength. Chamfort said, 
 "Original types are indeed necessary to 
 make a world." There enters, in fact, into 
 the social organisation of a great people a 
 multitude of different elements. In analys- 
 ing them separately we run the risk of reach- 
 ing illogical conclusions, because involun- 
 tarily our attention is more forcibly drawn 
 to those which differ from a general law 
 than to those which observe it. Intellectually 
 we are more affected by that which offends 
 our ideas than by that which conforms to 
 them, just as in the same way physically 
 our ears are more offended by a false note 
 than satisfied by a correct one. 
 
 Again, the majority of foreign observers 
 are above all impressed by what seems to 
 them a striking contrast between our own 
 
126 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 idea of woman's role and the American 
 idea. In the attention which she receives 
 across the Atlantic some see only a banal 
 courtesy, concealing a depth of moral 
 indifference and of physical coldness in- 
 herent in the race. Others discover in it 
 a devotion which no real superiority justi- 
 fies. All have noticed the perversity of the 
 idol, her coquetry, her love of luxury, her 
 too free manner, her too noisy gaiety, her 
 doubtful taste, her superficial knowledge, 
 and all these facts astonish them. There is 
 truth in all this ; but there are more and 
 better things in the American woman. 
 
 Coquetry is inborn in the American, but 
 it does not exclude deep and serious feel- 
 ings. This coquetry is only the legitimate 
 outcome of a natural instinct, which puts 
 her at the right moment on natural ground 
 in order to attain a natural result. The love 
 of luxury, inherent in almost everyone, is 
 the logical result, though exaggerated, of 
 an irresistible stream of prosperity which 
 draws the whole country along with it. 
 One cannot ask them to go back. Their 
 intrepid optimism, their faith in the future, 
 disconcert our European pessimism, but are 
 justified by their past. Their manner, 
 though too free, is the result of hereditary 
 independence, and of the respect which sur- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 127 
 
 rounds them. They use it, and perhaps 
 abuse it, but only for a time, and these 
 giddy girls, all things considered, make 
 most reasonable women. 
 
 The exuberance of their gaiety does no 
 harm to the seriousness of their mind, and 
 their intellects, if they do not excel, are at 
 least equal to those of European women. 
 Does this mean that they are perfect, that the 
 young American girl and woman realise an 
 ideal unknown elsewhere ? No, surely not. 
 They are different, and for the very reasons 
 we have shown. The starting point, the 
 surroundings, the customs, the usages and 
 laws, have contributed in their respective 
 ways to mould and make them what they 
 are. To what extent have these various 
 elements raised or lowered the moral stand- 
 ard of the young Republic during the 
 past century ? What are the results of this 
 idea of woman's role so different from 
 ours? 
 
 These are the questions which the Ameri- 
 can woman asks at the present day, discon- 
 certed by widely heralded lawsuits, by 
 scandals, by the misunderstandings and the 
 contradictions of the laws of marriage and 
 divorce, and by the growing number of 
 social outcasts. A well-put question is half 
 answered. The Americans treat this, deli- 
 
128 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 cate as it is, with an intrepid frankness. It 
 is a question worthy of thought, and per- 
 haps it will be useful to note the conclusions 
 at which they arrive, and the solutions 
 which they propose. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Marriage and Divorce in the United States Extreme Laxity 
 of the Laws Typical Cases Legislation of the Differ- 
 ent States Adventuresses Woman in the Far West 
 Story of Belle Starr. 
 
 I. 
 
 IT seems as though at certain times in 
 their history civilised nations, the advance 
 guards of humanity on the march toward an 
 unknown future, hesitate, come to a stand- 
 still, and begin to question one another. 
 In the half light through which they are 
 journeying one ray has disappeared ; a 
 great intellect has been cut down by death ; 
 the torch gives only a flickering light ; 
 some religious belief that has been trans- 
 mitted from father to son, some social insti- 
 tution that has been hallowed by centuries 
 men would begin to doubt these if he knew 
 by what they could be replaced. Are men 
 deceived, then? Yes, and for the same 
 cause that in a narrow road a broken axle- 
 tree can delay the march of an army ; for 
 the same cause that when one of the wheels 
 of the social machine grates and stops, it is 
 
130 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 necessary to repair it to the best of one's 
 ability. These accidents occur frequently, 
 and there is no lack of signals to give no- 
 tice of them nor of special workmen to find 
 a remedy. The press gives the alarm. 
 Thinkers and philosophers comment and 
 suggest, assemblies discuss and make light 
 of it, and the cumbrous machine being 
 righted for better for worse, goes on its 
 way until another stop occurs. 
 
 Sometimes it is only a false alarm ; a cry 
 of some few who are impatient and discon- 
 certed by unexpected occurrences, and who, 
 from the fact that a force which has 
 changed its direction works badly in their 
 case, conclude from this that it will act the 
 same in the case of others. So they take an 
 accidental phenomenon, and, as the result of 
 chance circumstances, they infer from it a 
 universal disorder. Thus it happens that 
 with every nation, in every age, and espe- 
 cially when the difficulty of communication 
 and of interchange of ideas increases ten- 
 fold the distance which separates them, the 
 horizon of each is limited and narrow. 
 
 Man has an invincible tendency toward 
 generalisation. He scorns the belief that 
 there is abundance elsewhere when famine 
 has him by the throat ; he scorns the peace 
 and prosperity which are beyond his own 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 131 
 
 frontiers when within them rages destruc- 
 tive war ; he will not admit that his per- 
 sonal ruin is not felt a few feet away, that 
 the adversity which holds him fast is 
 spared his neighbour, or that others suffer 
 while everything goes well with him. The 
 same doubt comes to him on the subject of 
 social institutions, in one place favoured and 
 in another injured by N political, moral, or 
 religious change, on account of the tenden- 
 cies of the age, the customs, or the laws, 
 which are changeable, while the institutions 
 are unchanged. But amazement grows, and 
 confusion increases, when, after having built 
 a costly and complicated machine, and hav- 
 ing wisely planned a social organisation, 
 he is obliged to recognise the well-known 
 fact that the result obtained is diametri- 
 cally opposed to what was looked for, and 
 that a false turn involving a retrograde move- , 
 merit retards instead of advancing it. This 
 is the feeling which is at present agitating 
 the United States with regard to the insti- 
 tution of marriage, the foundation of mod- 
 ern society. 
 
 Determined, before all else, to establish 
 marriage on the highest religious and moral 
 authority that the world has ever known, 
 American legislators believed it necessary to 
 admit that the imperfections of human 
 
132 m# WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 If-l 
 
 nature do not admit of absolute laws, or 
 unbreakable ties. Divorce seemed to be 
 only a necessary resort in exceptional cases 
 carefully foreseen and minutely determined 
 upon ; but this provision once admitted has 
 become, if not a rule, at least an exception 
 which is growing. To-day the evil cannot 
 be denied. It is increasing, and manifests 
 itself the more strongly inasmuch as it has 
 been slow in coming. Every year the num- 
 ber of divorce cases increases In the past 
 twenty years the courts have granted 328,- 
 716. The demand for them grows ; and the 
 press, in bringing these facts before the pub- 
 lic, points out at the same time the dangers 
 of defective legislation, and the reforms 
 which might be made in it. It expresses 
 wonder, and not without reason, on seeing 
 the institution of marriage imperilled in 
 the cases where more than anywhere else 
 one would suppose it to be built on in- 
 destructible foundations, and upheld by 
 every possible guarantee. How, in short, 
 can such a thing be explained in a nation 
 religious by conviction, cold by tempera- 
 ment, moral by instinct, having a deep 
 respect for women, to whom it grants, 
 apart from the equality of political rights, 
 social privileges which are theirs only in 
 the New World ? How can we admit that 
 
TEE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 133 
 
 these different elements, of which each 
 in itself constitutes a moral force in the 
 service of a social cause, and of which the 
 whole number represents the sum of the 
 conditions requisite to assure a twofold con- 
 secration, human and divine, for the mar- 
 riage tie how can we admit that these ele- 
 ments in the end relax these ties to the 
 point where one must believe that they 
 exist only by the will of the parties, and 
 not by the authority of the law ? Certainly 
 one cannot maintain but that, assailed by 
 a licentious literature, ridiculed on the 
 stage, where success is proportionate to 
 scandal, and discussed by publicists, the 
 institution of marriage is, in the United 
 States, the butt of incessant and repeated 
 attacks, and that public opinion, indifferent 
 to the rights of women, shows toward those 
 who scorn it only a sorry complaisance. 
 In fact, novelists, authors, and journalists 
 seem to have enough to do in defending 
 themselves without making any attacks. 
 They demand, with a loud voice, air and 
 room : they are suffocating, they say, in the 
 narrow limits where woman's unreasonable- 
 ness keeps them. If of late their protesta- 
 tions have become louder, their claims 
 surely are nothing extraordinary. 
 
 " Since the author of Tom Jones" wrote 
 
134 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Thackeray, u not one novelist among us has 
 been able to portray a human being as he is. 
 It is necessary for us to clothe him in a cer- 
 tain dress, to give him a certain character 
 and a conventional manner of speech. Our 
 readers, especially our women readers, do 
 not admit the natural in our art." This 
 v., was written thirty years ago, and ever since, 
 I American writers have not ceased to reiter- 
 < ate Thackeray's complaints. They blame 
 \ "the young girl," the idol for whom much 
 is sacrificed, the terror of the writers and 
 the editors of reviews, who bow before her, 
 slaves to her wishes, to her preferences, and 
 who tremble at the idea of offending her 
 modesty and delicate feelings. Rider 
 Haggard and "Ouida" in England, Boye- 
 sen, Julian Hawthorne, Lathrop, and 
 even Henry James in the United States, 
 demand a release from " this insupportable 
 tyranny." If those who are advocates of a 
 national literature think the hour is come 
 to shake off the yoke, if the most impetu- 
 ous of them declare with Edgar Fawcett 
 that "modesty is a thing of latitude and 
 longitude" and that the American novelist 
 is ' ' struggling, paralysed, in the bonds of a 
 false prudery," still the majority think, 
 with Charles Dudley Warner, that "all 
 that a writer can hope to do is not to limit 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 135 
 
 himself to writing only for yonng girls, and 
 not to admit them as judges without appeal 
 of the worth of a literary work." 
 
 Women authors go further in their affir- 
 mations. " Either the young girl or the 
 writer one of the two ought to be sacri- 
 ficed, it seems to me," writes Mrs. Gertrude ' 
 Franklin Atherton. "If an author de- 
 picts the world as he sees it, he is re- 
 proached witli corrupting innocence. If he 
 represents it as he wishes, he puts himself in 
 the wrong. Surely the young girl is not a fac- 
 tor to be overlooked, especially in America ; 
 but it is her mother's business and not that 
 of the writer to enlighten her. An author 
 owes his readers truth, and the whole truth. 
 It is for him to tell it artistically and with- 
 out offending morality." " Let us, for once, 
 dispose of the young girl," writes Julian 
 Hawthorne, with a certain brutality, "or 
 else let her make up her mind to hear and 
 to understand the truth. Her would-be 
 champions affirm that this would make her 
 no longer read us. I have an idea that she 
 would read us just the same, and find no 
 more evil in us." 
 
 For want of writers, should we blame the 
 laws and a guilty tolerance ? Neither mo- 
 rality nor the laws excuse wrongdoers. We 
 have shown above how, between a wronged 
 
136 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 family and the courts, that are always ready 
 to inflict crushing penalties on him, the pro- 
 fession of a Don Juan cannot thrive in the 
 United States. Moreover, the American 
 woman is practical, and rarely has an ex- 
 alted imagination. It is neither her weak- 
 ness, nor man's boldness, nor any excess of 
 literature, nor the press, nor the stage which . 
 must be blamed. These different causes, 
 which elsewhere have helped more or less to 
 weaken respect for the marriage tie, have no 
 influence here. Is it for want of religious 
 feeling ? Nowhere has this feeling with- 
 stood the shock of modern ideas as bravely 
 as it has in the United States. Indifference 
 to religion is riot good form any more than 
 atheism is fashionable. Universal tolerance 
 for it has not engendered universal scepti- 
 cism. Catholicism is strong, thanks to the 
 conservatism of the Irish, and Protestantism 
 plays an important role in every sphere of 
 private and public life. The evil is not, 
 then, due to a lack of religious feeling ; the 
 cause is elsewhere. It lies in the multiplic- 
 ity of the marriage and divorce laws. Each 
 State has its own, for each State, being su- 
 preme in itself, has passed laws on the sub- 
 ject, and, far from starting from the same 
 premises to reach the same conclusion, has 
 enacted different provisions. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 137 
 
 Everywhere men are inspired with the 
 same religious and moral ideas, and this 
 leads to a surprising disorder, to the most 
 absurd and confused complications, to the 
 question which many married couples may 
 ask themselves, and which the New York 
 Herald* propounds to them: "Are you 
 legally married, wife or mistress, husband 
 or lover? Have our marriage and divorce 
 laws answered the purpose which we have 
 the right to expect of them, or has the time 
 come to declare them defective ?" 
 
 This confusion explains itself, and these 
 consequences were to be foreseen. It was 
 not enough, in short, to strive separately 
 for the same result. It was desirable to 
 take account of the different elements 
 which, working unconsciously on the mind 
 of the legislators, have made them adopt 
 different limitations according to circum- 
 stances, and to consider also the moral 
 atmosphere which they breathed and with 
 which they were inspired. They legislated 
 not for a nation, but for a particular section, 
 a single State, often of small population ; 
 and the laws which they enacted, being 
 limited to this State, recorded first of all 
 the local customs and tendencies, the tradi- 
 tions and ideas of the people here urban, 
 
 * January 2, 1890. 
 
138 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 there rural, here exclusively Puritan, there 
 formed by the immigration of both Catho- 
 lics and Protestants. Again, the prosperity 
 of the State depends on the increase of 
 population, and each is interested in favour- 
 ing this increase, in drawing to itself the 
 emigrant or the American nomad, in sim- 
 plifying as much as possible by its legisla- 
 tion the accomplishment of social acts, in 
 rendering marriage easy and divorce also, 
 in avoiding those complicated administra- 
 tive formalities which are irksome to an 
 independent race, and one made still more 
 independent by an admixture of adven- 
 turers. On the one hand, an excessive sim- 
 plification of the conditions requisite for 
 a lawful marriage ; on the other, different 
 causes for divorce in each State ; every- 
 where, especially at the beginning, great 
 facilities for obtaining through naturalisa- 
 tion the civil and political rights which 
 were liberally conceded. On this point 
 logic harmonised with self-interest. The 
 starting point of the settlement had been 
 the protest of an oppressed conscience 
 against a religious autocracy ; of liberty 
 against despotism ; of civil independence 
 against the minute system of regulation 
 found in Europe ; and the youth of Amer- 
 ica, which was drawing the discontented 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 139 
 
 and the impatient to her, and recruiting- 
 partisans among her enemies, felt her own 
 strength grow as she beheld the increase 
 of her citizens. Instinctively newcomers 
 flocked whither the laws encroached least 
 on their liberty. As citizens they were 
 voters and were eligible to office, so their 
 local legislation was prompted by their 
 desires and reflected their wishes. To-day 
 it is still the same, and if in certain States 
 of dense population, civilised and well con- 
 trolled, more rigorous laws are also better 
 observed, in others, and especially in the 
 new States of the West, they are still in 
 a simple, rudimentary condition, and few in 
 number. 
 
 Of the multiplicity and variety of the 
 marriage and divorce laws the following is 
 one very marked illustration: the conditions 
 essential to marriage or divorce being differ- 
 ent in one State from those in the neighbour- 
 ing States, a marriage contracted in New 
 York has been broken by a divorce granted 
 in Connecticut, where the husband had his 
 home. A second illustration is also curious : 
 A man having lived for several days with 
 his mistress in one State, and then having 
 broken off his relations with her, and being 
 legally married later, was convicted of 
 bigamy ; this sole fact of having lived with 
 
140 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 a woman, even though not married to her, 
 making in that State a legal marriage. 
 
 In the first case the woman succeeded in 
 having the Connecticut divorce annulled by 
 the New York courts, but only so far as con- 
 cerns the State of New York. The husband 
 is none the less legally divorced from her 
 in Connecticut. There he can marry again, 
 and afterward annul this second marriage 
 in another State and make a third. Ac- 
 cording to the State in which he lives, he is 
 the legal husband of a woman from whom 
 the courts of another State would free him 
 at his request. 
 
 II. 
 
 While on this subject, let us cite an ex- 
 ample taken from the records of the Ameri- 
 can courts. 
 
 Whose wife could Miss Jane Quick have 
 been in May, 1868 ? A fortune depended on 
 the solution of this problem, and Miss Jane 
 Quick would have gone to great lengths to 
 answer it. All that she could say was that 
 on the 10th of June, 1850, she had married 
 James P. Brenton in Ohio. From there they 
 went to Nebraska, and in 1863 to California, 
 In 1864 Brenton left her without telling her 
 where he was going. He did not return. 
 She went to live with one Joseph Walker, a 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 141 
 
 distiller, and on this account she became the 
 subject of gossip in the city. The report 
 spread that Brenton was dead and that she 
 had married Walker. This report certainly 
 expressed her intention. Walker made, 
 among other things, a bitter tonic liked by 
 the residents of Stockton, and which Mrs. 
 Walker succeeded in selling. Encouraged 
 by his success, which was in part due to her, 
 and stimulated by her, he put his tonic upon 
 the market of San Francisco, and, thanks 
 to clever advertising, in which she took the 
 initiative, made a considerable sum from it. 
 The enterprise was a successful one so 
 much so that two rich capitalists took a half 
 interest in it, and in a few years Walker 
 realised a large fortune. In March, 1868, 
 Mrs. Brenton, all this time without news of 
 her fugitive husband, demanded and ob- 
 tained a divorce on the ground of desertion. 
 In November of the same year she married 
 Walker, and, consequently, in May had 
 not considered herself his wife. Then both 
 of them came to New York. But Miss Quick 
 could not be said to be happy in the choice 
 of her husbands, for shortly after, she sepa- 
 rated from Walker, who gave her an annuity 
 of eight hundred dollars. In 1881 Walker 
 died. In May, 1868, the date of his associa- 
 tion with the capitalists, was she the wife or 
 
142 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the mistress of Walker ? Were her rights 
 separate from his or identical with them ? 
 She bore his name, passed for his wife, and 
 the court decided that she was such, al- 
 though the marriage ceremony had not 
 occurred until six months later. 
 
 The examination of the marriage and di- 
 vorce laws necessitates in each State the con- 
 stant attention of the legislator. Everywhere 
 he wishes to protect and defend the woman 
 against herself as well as against man ; to 
 protect her from the snares which are laid 
 before her inexperience ; to limit the abuse 
 of marital authority, and, as a result, to 
 condemn the offender to heavy penalties, to 
 multiply the causes of divorce, to insert in 
 the laws sections which are most favourable 
 to the weaker sex, as is done in Kentucky, 
 for example, where the sole fact of a man's 
 having put the tradesmen on their guard 
 against the debts which his wife is making, 
 and of having told them that he refused to 
 pay these debts, has been held a sufficient 
 cause for a divorce. The same system is 
 criticised in other States where a man who 
 has lived with a woman, who has let her 
 bear his name, and who has treated her as a 
 legitimate wife is considered legally married 
 to her. There is seen in this system a new 
 guarantee accorded to her sex, a protection 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 143 
 
 granted to the young girl lured away from 
 her family. They even go further in admit- 
 ting that a proposition of marriage, even if 
 not carried out, could, in some cases, give 
 the woman the rights and privileges of a 
 wife. One of the most curious cases of this 
 kind is the suit brought by one Annie Clark 
 
 against a young man named K , son of a 
 
 prominent citizen of Minnesota. 
 
 Well known under her Christian name 
 Annie, the plaintiff petitioned on the 1st of 
 March, 1887, before the Supreme Court in the 
 circuit of New York, for a limited divorce 
 and an allowance for her support from her 
 would-be husband. These are the facts as 
 they appeared from her own deposition and 
 from that of the only witness whom she 
 produced. From the start she realised that 
 her reputation was much in question, as 
 she was in the habit of frequenting public 
 balls, concert-halls, and saloons ; and as 
 the young people to whom she sub-rented 
 rooms in the house where she lived had re- 
 peatedly had trouble with the police. This 
 being admitted, she said that she had mar- 
 ried Mr. K on the 24th of the preceding 
 
 April. Where did the marriage occur and 
 who were the witnesses ? 
 
 This she did not explain with any definite- 
 ness, and the accused strongly denied it. 
 
144 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 He had, it seems, made the acquaintance 
 of Annie in a barroom which he ordinarily 
 frequented. The bartender had introduced 
 them, and they drank to their better ac- 
 quaintance. Annie, a notorious drinker, 
 accepted everything offered her, and almost 
 daily they met there and passed hours to- 
 gether, emptying glass after glass. On the 
 24th of April, said the defendant, he drank 
 more than usual, and Annie took him to 
 her house. He had no remembrance of 
 having asked her to marry him ; he was in- 
 toxicated, and did not return to his home 
 until the next day. The sole witness called 
 by Annie Clark, the bartender, said that 
 
 K was an excellent customer, generous, 
 
 always paying for Annie's drinks, and often 
 giving him a dollar as a tip. On the 
 24th of April he remembered that Annie, 
 
 answering a question of K 's which he 
 
 had not heard, had said: " Don't speak 
 so. I am not a woman whom you can 
 
 marry." To which K replied: "Very 
 
 well, very well. I meant what I said." He 
 was intoxicated, added the witness, and 
 they went out together. The court, after 
 the hearing, decided that, if there was 
 any offer of marriage, or marriage itself, 
 there was no proof of it, and the defend- 
 ant, being in a state of intoxication, was 
 
T2E WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 145 
 
 unconscious of his acts, and the plaintiff was 
 overruled. 
 
 The affair is a low one, and the persons 
 themselves are of but little interest. What 
 attracts our attention is the fact that such a 
 suit is possible ; that a woman of this class 
 is able to allege her meeting with her lover 
 of one day, and the pretended offer of mar- 
 riage, the sole witness of which was a bar- 
 tender, whose testimony was ambiguous, 
 in order to claim a separation, which would 
 be a real recognition of marriage, arid which 
 would allow her to bear the name of her vic- 
 tim, and later, if she survived him, to make 
 good a claim to his property. The sur- 
 prising part is that if the bartender had 
 been less positive about the intoxicated state 
 of the defendant, the judgment would have 
 
 been different, and K would have been 
 
 declared married. It would have been pos- 
 sible, it is true, for him to demand a divorce, 
 and easy for him to obtain it, but it would 
 have rested on the payment of an annuity 
 for her support proportionate to his means, 
 and Annie Clark would have borne his name. 
 
 The Court of Appeals in New York re- 
 cently made a decision, which was, in brief, 
 that a divorced man is still the husband of 
 his wife ; at least, that he cannot marry 
 again outside of the jurisdiction of the court 
 
146 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 in New Jersey, for example. It decided, 
 on the other hand, that the sum allotted to a 
 woman in whose favour the divorce has been 
 granted shall be paid, in every case, so long 
 as the husband lives. ' ' The said allowance, ' ' 
 says the decision, " is not meant merely to 
 insure the woman's actual maintenance, but 
 to represent a fine imposed on the husband, 
 and from the payment of which death alone 
 can free him." 
 
 The circumstances under which this last 
 decision was made are characteristic. A 
 jnan married a rich widow. Shortly after, 
 she sued for a divorce and obtained it, as 
 well as a large annuity. Possessed of the 
 fortune which had accrued from the annuity 
 which her husband paid her, she married a 
 Southern planter, very rich himself. The 
 divorced husband, considering himself, un- 
 der the circumstances, freed from the heavy 
 burden of paying the pension, began to think 
 of marrying again. He fell in love with a 
 young girl, pretty and distinguished, but 
 without fortune, and not being able to marry 
 within the jurisdiction of the court, he went 
 with his fiancee beyond the limits of the 
 State and they were married. At the date 
 fixed for the payment of the annuity to his 
 first wife he refused to pay it, offering to 
 prove that she had no need of it to live, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 147 
 
 being very much richer than he. He lost 
 his suit, appealed it, and the highest court 
 of the State rendered the decision which we 
 have set forth above. 
 
 From an examination it is shown that there 
 are in New York at the present time a num- 
 ber of women who receive an allowance for 
 their support not from one husband alone, 
 but from two and three, from all of whom 
 they have been successively divorced, and 
 this is the case even when they are living 
 with their third or even their fourth hus- 
 band. If one of the unfortunate ex-hus- 
 bands does not promptly pay his annuity at 
 the time it becomes due, a simple notifica- 
 tion sent to the court suffices. The delin- 
 quent is arrested for " contempt of court," is 
 imprisoned, the costs of his arrest and de- 
 tention fall on him, and they are so great 
 that no one runs a similar risk twice. The 
 story of a well-known dramatic author is still 
 remembered in New York. Condemned on 
 his wife's complaint for contempt of court, 
 and imprisoned in Ludlow Street Gaol, he 
 was not able to pay the sum required for her 
 support, and resigned himself to remaining 
 in prison as long as it pleased his ex-wife to 
 keep him there. To while away his leisure 
 hours he set himself to work, wrote several 
 plays which had a great success, and, thus 
 
148 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 enriched, made arrangements in the prison 
 with his late wife as to his release, and his 
 exoneration from paying her annuity, by 
 means of a lump sum paid in full discharge 
 of her claims. Everywhere in the customs 
 and in the laws we find in the United States 
 this anxious solicitude, often excessive, in 
 regard to women. Where, in our European 
 cynicism, we can see only a vulgar intrigue 
 or an attempt to extort money, we can 
 hardly understand decisions of the courts 
 which in the New World astonish no one. 
 We are slow to admit that a married woman 
 should give evidence in open court against 
 herself, prove her own misconduct, produce 
 the letters of her accomplice, and all this to 
 support a suit for damages, entered by the 
 husband against the lover, and founded on 
 the fact that the defendant had turned to 
 his own profit the alienation of the wife's 
 affection. 
 
 But the fair sex has not only the privi- 
 lege of enlightening justice, and of making 
 its task an easy one. Specialists in law say 
 that among the divorce suits brought on ac- 
 count of infidelity on the husband's part 
 there is often neither an inquiry to make nor 
 proofs to be sought for, the husband him- 
 self coming forward to put them into the 
 counsel's hands, and bringing voluntarily 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 149 
 
 the letters which prove his own guilt. Some 
 go so far as to help the suit by proposing to 
 write under dictation the statement which 
 is necessary to fill out the lawyer's blanks. 
 They explain the doubtful points, tell the 
 precise locality where the offence was com- 
 mitted, and show what evidence is neces- 
 sary to remove all doubt. 
 
 For so much energy in behalf of truth 
 they impose only one condition : that the 
 woman be contented with the divorce with- 
 out exacting alimony. Thus they recover 
 their liberty and keep their money. It is 
 the silence of witnesses that greatly hinders 
 the action of justice, as is proved by a re- 
 cent and celebrated suit, in which the corre- 
 spondence of the guilty wife left nothing to 
 be desired. The husband had intercepted 
 the letters addressed to her. A frivolous 
 woman, but careful and methodical, she had 
 kept all of them, and the evidence was 
 complete. Day after day, year after year, 
 her intrigues and adventures of all kinds 
 could be traced. The high social position 
 of her husband and that of his wife made 
 this suit much talked about. The result 
 seemed certain, but the accused denied 
 everything, asserting that the letters were a 
 trust committed to her by a friend whose 
 name she refused to give, and declaring that 
 
 OF THE 
 TTTSJ TTT TTD 
 
150 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 she was ignorant of the writer of the letters. 
 The accomplices, though well known, pre- 
 served the same silence. Called as wit- 
 nesses, they swore that they knew nothing, 
 and that they did not recognise the writer ; 
 so that, despite the evidence, and from the 
 absence of all oral testimony, the court had 
 to acquit the guilty and to refuse a di- 
 vorce to the outraged husband. 
 
 Nothing less is necessary, in short, than 
 undeniable proof in order to triumph over 
 the judges' chivalrous feeling that, notwith- 
 standing all her mistakes and faults, woman 
 is more often wronged than wrongful. The 
 same judges are so much less indulgent 
 where men are concerned that it is not 
 surprising that adventuresses succeed. A 
 proof of this occurred in a case pending 
 before the United States Court in the dis- 
 trict of Brooklyn, in which Mr. Charles 
 
 C had to defend his fortune against 
 
 the intrigues of one Leonora Arnold. She 
 claimed no less than a million dollars, and 
 produced in support of her claim the fol- 
 lowing facts, told by her mother : 
 
 In 1855 there lived in New York a Mrs. 
 
 C , a widow, who had two sons, 
 
 Charles and Blaise, and a fortune of two 
 millions. Dying, she divided the fortune 
 equally between her two children, stipulat- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 151 
 
 ing that in the case of one's dying without 
 issue his share should fall to the survivor. 
 Blaise died first, unmarried, and his brother 
 became the sole possessor of the fortune. 
 At this point the claim of Leonora Arnold 
 was put forward, based upon the evidence 
 of her mother, Josephine Cregier. In 1854 
 the latter said that she had made the 
 acquaintance of Blaise C at a danc- 
 ing school where young men and women 
 met together and were taught by a mas- 
 ter. Blaise fell in love with her and 
 proposed that she follow him to Baltimore, 
 where, he said, he would marry her. Blaise 
 was young and in love. She knew that he 
 was rich, and she accepted him. They 
 started, travelling leisurely, staying at the 
 same hotels, where they passed for young 
 married people, and finally reaching Balti- 
 more, where they spent several weeks. 
 There was no longer any question of mar- 
 riage. It may have been forgotten, or 
 perhaps she never believed there would be 
 any and refrained from speaking of it, but 
 after a while they returned to New York, 
 and in 1855 Leonora was born. The union 
 was not a happy one. Blaise never ac- 
 knowledged it and never even spoke of it ; 
 his relatives and his friends ignored the 
 subject. 
 
152 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Abandoned after several years by her 
 lover, Josephine disappeared, and one fine 
 day went to Charleston, and there lived 
 with one John Jackson, as whose wife 
 she passed. She followed him to Nash- 
 ville in Tennessee, and later, hearing of 
 Blaise's death, returned to New York 
 to claim in her daughter's name her 
 rights from the last heir, Mr. Charles 
 
 C , against whom she brought suit 
 
 for the payment of the million dollars 
 with interest, claiming that her brief stay 
 in Baltimore, where she was supposed to be 
 Blaise's wife, was in itself a marriage and 
 made her child legitimate. Though it was 
 the large amount in question which gave 
 prominence to this suit, the principle is 
 the same. From her own testimony the 
 plaintiff had always lived in a questionable 
 manner. There was nothing no letter, no 
 document of any kind to prove that Blaise 
 had ever promised to marry her ; nothing 
 to prove that she had demanded marriage, 
 either at the time or afterward. It is the 
 commonplace story of the escapade of a rich 
 and idle young man and of an unprincipled 
 girl, seduced by wealth. But public opinion 
 agreed with the judge that he was the guilty 
 one, for he had led her astray. If he was 
 her first lover, he was probably the cause of 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 153 
 
 her having a second, and the reason why, 
 having once turned from the right road, she 
 could not go back to it. If the laws of 
 Maryland, in which State Baltimore is, or 
 the law of any one of the States through 
 which they passed together, and in which 
 they were taken for a married couple, had 
 admitted that this fact alone constitutes 
 a valid union, Leonora Arnold would be 
 a legitimate child, and could claim the 
 
 million left by Blaise C , and to which 
 
 his brother was the apparent heir. 
 
 III. 
 
 What is the remedy for this confusion of 
 laws, which results in a confusion of morals ; 
 for this excessive simplification of legis- 
 lation relating to marriage, which leads 
 to a multiplicity of divorces, as in Con- 
 necticut, where there is one divorce for 
 every ten marriages, as there is one in seven 
 in California 1 
 
 The most efficacious and the simplest rem- 
 edy without a doubt would be to substi- 
 tute for the local laws which are passed 
 in the different States, and which regulate 
 in each the conditions for marriage and 
 divorce, a single Federal law common to all 
 and the same in all. This was done in a 
 
154 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 different case when the increase of business 
 and the multiplicity of business transactions 
 caused constant trouble as to the jurisdic- 
 tion of different States : a uniform law of 
 bankruptcy was substituted for the many 
 contradictory ones. But simple as this 
 remedy seems, and efficacious as it might 
 be, it is, and will be, impracticable. The 
 eighth section of the first article of the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, which treats 
 of the powers of Congress, confers no right 
 of legislation in a matter regarding which 
 each State is supreme. In order to grant 
 this right an amendment to the Constitu- 
 tion is necessary, to be voted on by the two 
 Houses of Congress and ratified by the 
 legislatures of three-fourths of the States, 
 which is actually, in the opinion of every 
 intelligent man, an impossibility. Taken 
 individually, every State in the Union 
 would vote in favour of this measure if she 
 were assured that her own local regulations 
 would become national, and that her laws 
 on the subject would be extended to all the 
 other States ; but apart from this impos- 
 sible case not one will have her right re- 
 moved to legislate at her own free will, and 
 in accordance with her own interests. Noth- 
 ing shows more clearly how insurmountable 
 is this difficulty than what occurs in the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 155 
 
 State of New York, where the law recognises 
 only one cause for absolute divorce adul- 
 tery, but where they are frequently forced to 
 admit other reasons. The press has in vain 
 insisted on the fact that a husband's infi- 
 delity is not the only cause which can make 
 marriage insupportable to a wife ; that there 
 are [others, physical and moral, which are 
 just as troublesome, if not more so. The 
 law has resisted every criticism, arid one 
 could no more obtain the consent of the 
 State of New York to admit other causes 
 for divorce than that of other States to give 
 up one or two of the ten or a dozen causes 
 which are recognised in their codes. 
 
 Granted the impossibility at this point of 
 proceeding by amending the .Constitution, 
 one sets his ingenuity to work to investigate 
 the difficulty, and thinks he has found in 
 the Constitution itself the means sought. 
 The tenth section of the first article stip- 
 ulates that no State can u enter into any 
 treaty, alliance, or confederation, grant let- 
 ters of marque and reprisal, coin money, 
 emit bills of credit, make anything but gold 
 and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, 
 . . . or pass any law impairing the obligation 
 of contracts, or grant any title of nobility." 
 
 Although the context of the article seems 
 at first sight to avoid all connection between 
 
156 THE WOMEN OF TEE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the article itself and the question of mar- 
 riage and divorce laws, one may appeal to 
 the fact that State legislatures are forbid- 
 den from passing any "laws which impair 
 a contract," in contesting their right to 
 legislate on the question of marriage and 
 divorce, which is of a contractual nature. 
 We must admit that by this clause, inserted 
 in a section which neither directly or indi- 
 rectly treats of the question, the original 
 legislators might have intended to take 
 away from the States and reserve .for fed- 
 eral power alone the right of legislating on 
 the question. The unreasonableness of the 
 supposition will probably make this view 
 untenable, but, were it admitted, at the 
 most it would justify the passage of a law 
 declaring valid and positive in every State 
 a divorce pronounced by one of them. 
 
 This alone would not remove the existing 
 complications, although it would be a step 
 away from the actual state of things. It is 
 likewise proposed to reserve equally to the 
 Federal courts alone the right of hearing 
 divorce suits in all cases in which the two 
 parties are not originally from the same 
 State. This measure avoids any conflict 
 of jurisdiction and the disagreeable conse- 
 quences resulting from a divorce granted to 
 one of the parties in one State and refused 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 157 
 
 to the second in another, valid here and 
 invalid elsewhere. The most important 
 point to be regulated is the actual system of 
 " notification by publication," rich in fraud 
 and in evasion of the law, which permits one 
 of the parties to claim a divorce unknown 
 to the second, to obtain it without a hearing 
 from the interested party, so that for 
 several years she does not even know that 
 it has been granted. These cases occur fre- 
 quently, and one often meets a married 
 woman who hears by accident, and a long 
 while after, that her husband has been 
 divorced from her. The most recent of these 
 cases is the following : 
 
 After a very lively dispute between a cer- 
 tain husband and wife, caused by the hus- 
 band's conduct, people noticed a compara- 
 tive tranquillity existing between them. 
 Both were anxious to avoid a scandal, and 
 so they decided to separate amicably. 
 With a sufficiently large sum which her 
 husband put at her disposal the wife left 
 with her mother for a long European trip. 
 Shortly after her departure the husband 
 began a suit for divorce. A copy of the 
 said petition and of the allegations made 
 having to be sent to his wife, it was 
 necessary to give her address. He did 
 not know it, he said ; his wife was abroad, 
 
158 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATE 8. 
 
 and was not stopping for any length of time 
 in any place known to him. Such a case is 
 foreseen by the law. The judge thereupon 
 ordered the insertion of the request and of 
 the forthcoming decree in two local papers 
 one a special and legal one, read by lawyers 
 alone ; the other of only a small circulation 
 outside of the State. The necessary time 
 having expired, the suit was heard. The 
 husband alone produced evidence. Ignorant 
 of what was going on, the opposite party 
 was not represented, and the divorce was 
 granted. Eighteen months later, upon her 
 return to the United States, the wife was 
 told of what had been done. Her husband 
 had married again, and her place had been 
 legally filled by another. 
 
 An analogous case recently took place in 
 Kentucky. In the absence of the husband, 
 whom business had called to Australia, his 
 wife demanded and obtained a divorce on 
 the simple allegation, this time, that she 
 was a member of a religious order which 
 demanded absolute continency. This clause 
 occurs in the code of laws in Kentucky, 
 which are more rigorous than in the neigh- 
 bouring States so far as concerns marriage. 
 A young girl is not able to marry there be- 
 fore the age of twenty-one without the con- 
 sent of her parents. From this fact, to 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 159 
 
 which the amorous Kentucky youths sub- 
 mit with but an ill grace, arises a special 
 business, which has its headquarters at 
 Jeffersonville, a city on the border of the 
 neighbouring State of Indiana. 
 
 The following announcement appeared in 
 the American papers of January, 1889 : 
 "For sale, at Jeffersonville, Ind., a matri- 
 monial bureau, well patronised. The situ- 
 ation is agreeable and easy, allowing pleasant 
 acquaintances, and pleasing to a young and 
 active man. Address the proprietor, Wil- 
 liam Kratz, matrimonial agent, who will 
 guarantee a profit, and will give access to his 
 accounts. " Jeffersonville is, in short, the 
 Gretna Green of this part of the Union, and 
 William Kratz plays the role of the legend- 
 ary blacksmith. Every Thursday, autumn 
 and winter, every day in spring and sum- 
 mer, William Kratz is at the wharf of the 
 Louisville steamers. With a glance of the 
 eye he takes in every passenger, and quietly 
 hands out his card, on which is inscribed : 
 " William Kratz, matrimonial agent, pro- 
 cures for those desiring marriage all neces- 
 sary information and assistance." "There 
 is nothing easier," he says, " than to recog- 
 nise a couple who are in love. They have 
 a way of descending the gangplank and 
 exchanging tender looks. They have an 
 
160 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 embarrassed manner, as though seeking in- 
 formation which they dare not ask, but to 
 which they listen eagerly when I give it 
 to them. It sometimes happens, although 
 rarely, that I am mistaken, and speak to 
 couples who are thinking of anything ex- 
 cept marriage, but I never complain of their 
 manners. The young men laugh and the 
 young women blush. I can mention some 
 who return for good cause, and so be- 
 come my clients."* Mr. Kratz thinks that 
 an elopement in Kentucky, followed by 
 a marriage in Jeffersonville, would cost 
 exactly $9.20, or 46 francs 1 franc for 
 the journey, 10 francs for the permit (19 
 francs 50 when one wishes it " gilt-edged," 
 with certification), 25 francs for the law- 
 yer, and 10 francs for the agent. " For 
 this price these affairs are comfortably ar- 
 ranged," Mr. Kratz adds ; but these prices 
 may be reduced. A reduction may be 
 obtained from the lawyer, and the agent 
 may be contented with five francs if one 
 promises to entertain him on his next visit 
 to Kentucky. This is what Mr. Kratz gives 
 us to understand in speaking of " pleasant 
 acquaintances." Why is Thursday the best 
 day of the week ? This he did not tell us, 
 
 * Louisville Journal, January 19, 1889. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 161 
 
 but lie said so, and we can believe him. 
 "Every Thursday," he said, " I have much 
 to do, and you do not know all that my 
 agency does for Jeffersonville. It is a true 
 blessing for the ferries, for restaurants, 
 lawyers, and hotel men." Mr. Kratz is 
 convinced that he is a benefactor of man- 
 kind, and that his paid intervention, which, 
 after all, brings about a legal marriage, 
 ought to be encouraged. 
 
 That which is more surprising is that a 
 man can openly brave the law of the State 
 in which he lives, and that to do it with im- 
 punity costs him only three cents (fifteen 
 centimes). This case happens not once, but 
 a hundred times. Mrs. Smith had serious 
 reasons for suspecting her husband. Hav- 
 ing discovered him en flagrant delit, she 
 sought a divorce before the court of New 
 York, and obtained it, with a decree for- 
 bidding him to marry a second time. It 
 cost Mr. Smith only the small sum stated 
 above to cross the river to the neighbouring 
 State of New Jersey, and there contract 
 legally another marriage. This done, he 
 returned to New York and busied himself 
 with his own affairs. On one side of the 
 Hudson River he is divorced, on the other 
 side he is married. In New York his second 
 wife is only his mistress ; on the other side 
 
162 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 she is his legitimate wife ; a bigamist here, 
 he has there acted with perfect legality. 
 
 The case of Isabella Davis is more compli- 
 cated. For fifteen years married to Amos 
 Johnson, she married in succession R. Mac- 
 Lane, Abram Elmore, Paul Hatton, William 
 Ferguson, and Samuel Nickson. They wore 
 all alive at the same time and living in dif- 
 ferent States without being divorced from 
 her. For the time being, and while waiting 
 for something better, she passed for the wife 
 of Samuel Nickson, with whom she lived in 
 North Carolina. The other five husbands 
 put in a claim for thejr wife or their liberty, 
 and the suit was pending before five distinct 
 courts. 
 
 If one enters into the study of the divorce 
 laws in the forty-four States of the Union, 
 one finds himself in the midst of an inextri- 
 cable maze of causes and limitations from 
 which are deduced, not without some trou- 
 ble, sixteen principal ones which are gener- 
 ally recognised. Some States, like New 
 York, recognise only one, others as many as 
 ten ; but no two of them have decreed quite 
 the same ones. 
 
 The sixteen causes are : adultery, bigamy, 
 voluntary desertion, the time of which varies 
 according to locality, continued absence for 
 five years, the husband's living with a col- 
 
/ 
 
 I tJN 
 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 163 
 
 oured woman, madness or imbecility, assault 
 and battery, being a vagabond, serious in- 
 juries, imprisonment for crime, habitual 
 drunkenness or the use of opium, impotence, 
 refusal of the wife to live with her husband, 
 refusal of the husband to support his wife, 
 misconduct, joining a religious sect which 
 prescribes continence. 
 
 To these numerous causes several States 
 have added a clause that is more indefinite, 
 more elastic, by which the door already ajar 
 is still more widely opened to the two par- 
 ties, in leaving to the courts the right to 
 grant divorces at their own discretion. From 
 these facts we see what a careless legisla- 
 ture, composed of representatives who obey 
 local prejudices and the capricious demands 
 of a people who are often but little enlight- 
 ened, can do in the United States regarding 
 the institution of marriage, by all held 
 sacred and considered by the founders of the 
 Republic as one of the indestructible pillars 
 of the social organisation. This confusion, 
 sanctioned by the laws, is in strange con- 
 trast to the moral and religious theory which 
 holds marriage to be immutable, with its ap- 
 parent professed respect for the marriage tie 
 and the solemn ritual which binds and sanc- 
 tifies it. The contradiction lies between the 
 point of departure and the point attained ; 
 
164 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 between that which we wish and the results 
 which we secure. It is much more notice- 
 able if we observe to what consequences un- 
 swerving logic can lead misguided spirits, 
 even when acting in good faith. 
 
 In the face of the weakness of the laws, and 
 the dire confusion in the midst of which men 
 struggle in vain, arises negation, the radical 
 solution, destroying past traditions, sweep- 
 ing away useless laws and unobserved enact- 
 ments, in order to give on the one hand free 
 play to human passions, and on the other to 
 substitute rigorous and immutable limita- 
 tions for shifting and ineffective legislation. 
 Some, like the Shakers, profess absolute 
 continence, advocates of superhuman and de- 
 structive virtues ; others, like the Mormons, 
 return to ancient traditions, to polygamy 
 and rapid procreation ; still others preach 
 Free Love. All of these rally partisans and 
 recruit followers. What more favourable 
 statute for Free Love can one make than the 
 actual divorce law of Indiana, which frees 
 the husband from the duty of supporting his 
 wife from whom he separates without emo- 
 tion and without reason, and whom he leaves 
 to the mercy of chance. Mormon polygamy 
 at least obliges the husband to look after 
 the needs of his harem, and to support his 
 wife and children. What would marriage 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 165 
 
 be in the United States if it were set aside by 
 a hostile press, if it were assailed by all anti- 
 religious and anti-social literature, and by the 
 teachings of anarchists impatient to destroy 
 that which exists, with nothing but unfet- 
 tered lust and brutal instinct to offer as substi- 
 tutes ? How much more to be opposed would 
 the present state of things be, how much more 
 justified the fears that we have expressed ! 
 The situation as it is revealed to the ob- 
 server's eyes is serious, and if the cause is 
 not yet lost, the results on which the Amer- 
 icans flatter themselves are at least compro- 
 mised. To a period of moral and intellectual 
 development, and of prosperity without 
 precedent, a season of confusion and uncer- 
 tainty has succeeded. Doubts have arisen 
 in the presence of the results already at- 
 tained, as to the excellence of their institu- 
 tions. They ask themselves if some mis- 
 take has not been made when they see the 
 cult of woman and the exaggerated respect 
 paid to her resulting in such unexpected 
 consequences. 
 
 Unexpected they are ; and if the states- 
 men, the lawyers, the thinkers, and the 
 philosophers of the United States have never 
 professed to suppress vice and to make vir- 
 tue supreme in the land, at least they have 
 wished to establish a social system superior 
 
166 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 to that of Europe, to profit from the lessons 
 of the past ; and during more than half a 
 century the facts have justified their hopes. 
 The disappointment is only the more bitter 
 in seeing the same instincts tending to the 
 same results, and in having pessimists affirm 
 once more that virtue is a purely human 
 institution, while passion is a divine one, 
 and that the existing social organisation is 
 powerless. 
 
 Better results were expected from the 
 Constitution than it has given. Men saw in 
 it a universal panacea, the reconciliation of 
 every man's rights and duties ; and as for 
 woman, her recognition and her freedom. 
 We cannot justly deny that the great Repub- 
 lic has striven with every effort toward this 
 result, and that for the moment she appears 
 to have reached it. If it is slipping from 
 her, the fault is not wholly hers, and already 
 she returns undismayed to find out new 
 paths that she can follow toward the end 
 that she aspires to attain. 
 
 IY. 
 
 It is, indeed, time, for the evil is increas- 
 ing. Powerless to remedy it, the marriage 
 and divorce laws only aggravate it by their 
 very multiplicity and incoherence. In as- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 167 
 
 similating them to a single type, in elim- 
 inating enactments suggested by a solicitude 
 more zealous than intelligent, one may hope 
 to limit, if not to suppress, the abuses which 
 they sanction ; but what a reform of this 
 nature does not of itself know how to check, 
 is the spread of false ideas and a moral 
 confusion, long delayed by the simple and 
 healthful life of the first colonists, by their 
 being scattered over a sparsely popu- 
 lated continent, by the relative isolation of 
 their lives, by their general comfort, and by 
 the fact that luxury and poverty were 
 equally unknown. The sudden change 
 which induced foreign imigration and re- 
 cruited a working army among the ranks of 
 an agricultural population ; which every- 
 where called into being great factories and 
 industrial centres ; and which substituted 
 enormous fortunes and great distress in place 
 of a limited but general comfort, brought 
 about at the same time a series of social 
 phenomena. The same causes have at last 
 produced the same effects as in Europe the 
 agglomeration of the working classes, the 
 hatred of wealth, the threatening socialism, 
 a desperate battle for existence, the rule of 
 money, bitter competition, and, as a conse- 
 quence of all this, the subjection, or even the 
 degradation of woman, who, unable to do 
 
168 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 battle, is stripped of her former sanctity 
 and made subject to man's beck and call. 
 Nothing can be a better proof of how far 
 social phenomena are independent of any 
 political system, and of the illusions into 
 which one is beguiled, so that he thinks 
 them realities, in attributing a magical vir- 
 tue to one or another form of government, 
 according to his personal preferences. 
 
 Democracy is of no more avail than abso- 
 lute power in sheltering itself from evils 
 of which neither system is the cause and 
 which neither is able to remedy. Where 
 less than in the United States does it seem as 
 though the leprosy of prostitution could be 
 propagated and spread, against which every- 
 thing seemed to unite at the very start in 
 guarding the young Republic ? How many 
 other barriers have since been added to the 
 original religious and moral safeguards ! 
 How much energy is devoted to strangling 
 the evil at its birth, to checking it and cir- 
 cumscribing it, to opening to woman new 
 paths, and to assuring her independence by 
 offering remunerative employment to her in- 
 telligence and to her work ! American de- 
 mocracy was the first to give woman access 
 to various administrative and public func- 
 tions, and to assert for her an equal right 
 with man in the so-called liberal professions. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 169 
 
 So, too, this democracy took the initiative 
 in granting her the right to vote in certain 
 cases, and the day is drawing near when this 
 right, more widely known, will permit her 
 to enlarge her circle of influence. Surely 
 we should not reproach the American legis- 
 lators for having quite unconsciously accel- 
 erated the progress of an evil which they 
 have done everything to banish, any more 
 than we can censure public opinion for 
 having been indifferent to it. 
 
 Private effort also has effectively la- 
 boured in the cause of social purity, and 
 we see noble women, honoured by the poor 
 of New York, who have spent millions to 
 aid their lost sisters, and who have founded 
 homes of refuge for young girls, and spread, 
 even to the most distant parts of the Union, 
 the benefits of their inexhaustible charity. 
 
 It is at the centre and at the two extremes 
 that the social evil chiefly flourishes : in 
 large cities, like New York, where there are 
 no less than thirty thousand prostitutes ; 
 in the great industrial centres, like Chicago, 
 and in distant localities beyond the con- 
 fines of civilisation and legislation, swarm- 
 ing with adventurers, with desperadoes 
 and cowboys, who voluntarily live a lawless 
 life, and give free play to their drunken 
 desires, their brutal instincts, and their 
 
170 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 savage passions. Here is a world apart and 
 little known, wholly foreign to our European 
 manners and customs. From time to time 
 a series of murders, bloody orgies, or fright- 
 ful deeds of vengeance recall its existence 
 and raise a corner of the veil which hides it, 
 and then silence again falls ; its isolation, 
 its remoteness, and the unsocial humour of 
 its inhabitants baffle curiosity and defy 
 control. 
 
 This society is waiting for its historian, 
 for a Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte in 
 one ; and, as a fact, it is well worth the 
 labour of description. From the part which 
 woman plays in it, it falls within the scope 
 of our present work. In a few years 
 it will have disappeared, the flood of civi- 
 lisation will have submerged it, and from 
 these strange types legends will have sprung 
 into existence. 
 
 Who will then believe the astonishing 
 adventures of Belle Starr, the idol of the 
 Western bandits, a living defiance of the 
 law, incarnating in herself the audacity, the 
 vices and the intrepid courage of these out- 
 laws who, from father to son, boast of 
 " dying in their boots," knife and revolver 
 in hand, as she herself did on the 3d of 
 February, 1889, at the age of thirty-five, 
 after the strangest existence imaginable, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 171 
 
 leaving a son and a daughter who have fol- 
 lowed in her footsteps ? From detached 
 fragments of her diary (for Belle Starr had 
 received the education of every Western 
 girl), we are able to reconstruct her ad- 
 venturous career, incomprehensible in our 
 world, and impossible anywhere else than 
 in America. 
 
 Belle Starr was born at Carthage in the 
 State of Missouri. Her father, chief of the 
 Southern guerrillas, took an active part in 
 the War of Secession ; and from infancy 
 Belle Starr showed a passion for blows, for 
 acts of violence, for the pillage and the 
 murder of that bloody period. After the 
 war her father emigrated to Kansas with 
 what was left of his band. She went there 
 with him. An intrepid Amazon, from the 
 time that she was ten years old she handled 
 the revolver, the lasso, the carbine, and the 
 bowie-knife. A girl brought up by rough 
 companions, by men expert in these matters, 
 she showed the enthusiastic boldness and 
 the courage of a child. In such a school 
 she developed rapidly. Hatred rankled in 
 these fierce spirits the hatred of the con- 
 quered for their conquerors, the hatred of ad- 
 venturers and rebels against order, law, and 
 social regulation. Having revolted against 
 the North, they continued in revolt against 
 
172 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 everything that personified the North ; they 
 shut themselves up in the solitudes, whence, 
 like wolves, they came out only to make 
 their presence known by some brutal defi- 
 ance of the civilisation they hated, by some 
 act of brigandage in which they took part 
 often at the loss of life. Belle Starr was 
 not the least bold or the least daring of 
 them, and hardly had she passed from 
 infancy before her name, her boldness, and 
 her beauty were celebrated from the borders 
 of Arkansas to those of the Platte River. 
 Precocious in all things, she fell in love at 
 the age of fourteen with Bob Younger, a 
 famous bandit. Her father refused his con- 
 sent to their marriage, so she made him 
 elope with her, and married him on horse- 
 back, surrounded by a score of desperadoes. 
 One of them, John Fisher, on whose head a 
 price had been set, held the bride upon her 
 horse, while a judge more dead than alive 
 was roused from his house in the middle of 
 the night to marry them. Three weeks later 
 Bob Younger, pursued by the law, had to 
 flee, and Belle Starr returned to her father. 
 In the hope of baffling the search made for 
 her by her fugitive husband the father put 
 her in a boarding school in Parker County ; 
 but Bob Younger was not long in making 
 his appearance. He again ran off with her 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 173 
 
 and gained the borders of Missouri ; but, 
 tracked by the officers of the law, he was 
 forced to return to Kansas. From that 
 moment, as his companion, she lived only 
 as he did, by robbery and rapine. Dressed 
 as a man, she rode by his side, followed by 
 desperadoes whom she subdued by her 
 bravery and captivated by her charms. To- 
 gether they pillaged isolated farms, carried 
 away horses and cattle, which they sold in 
 distant towns, burned the houses of those 
 who denounced them, cutting off by their 
 Indian cunning the pursuit of the troops, 
 or, when driven into a corner, facing about, 
 and fiercely engaging in battle. Close 
 pressed by a detachment of United States 
 soldiers, Bob Younger was compelled once 
 more to take to flight. Belle Starr did not 
 follow him, but gave him a successor, 
 choosing as her lover James Eeed, a worthy 
 bandit, whose skill was proverbial. With 
 him she went to Texas, which they travelled 
 over in every sense of the word, stopping to 
 plunder stages, and pushing their boldness 
 as far as to rob the Federal courier in day- 
 light at the very gates of the city of Austin. 
 Belle herself in her memoirs relates one of 
 their boldest strokes : 
 
 " We arrived," she writes, "Reed and I, 
 at Eufaula, where by chance we met one of 
 
174 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Heed's friends, Tom Roberts, at the hotel. 
 He spoke to us of a man named Wat Grey- 
 son, who lived on a lonely farm. He was 
 said to be rich, and also to have in his pos- 
 session funds intended for the Indian tribes. 
 We decided to put them into circulation, so 
 at nightfall, armed to the teeth and pro- 
 vided with fresh horses, we knocked at his 
 door. Disguised as a young Cherokee In- 
 dian, I introduced myself as a poor wander- 
 ing boy who asked hospitality. The door 
 was immediately opened and I entered, 
 quickly followed by Reed and Roberts. To 
 seize the Indian servant who had opened 
 the door, and to bind him, was the work of 
 an instant. In the next room was Mrs. 
 Greyson, who began to cry as soon as she 
 saw us, screaming loudly for help. I ap- 
 proached her bed, placed my revolver on her 
 forehead, and said : 4 One word more and 
 I will blow your brains out. ' ' She was silent, 
 but at her cries a young man ran up. Just 
 as he crossed the threshold Reed laid him 
 low with a single blow. He rolled on the 
 floor like a slaughtered ox. 
 
 " Awakened by the noise, Wat Greyson 
 entered ; but in the face of our three revolvers 
 he could make no resistance. We called 
 upon him to tell us where the money was, 
 but he refused. Bent on forcing him to do it, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 175 
 
 we resolved to try hanging first, and while 
 my two companions held him I looked about 
 and found a strong cord, with which I tied 
 his feet, and passed a loop around his neck. 
 This done, we hoisted him to the branch of 
 an oak ; he began to strangle, and signed to 
 us to take him down. Thereupon he showed 
 us his hiding place, pointing out the table 
 in the centre of the room, and under a wolf- 
 skin rug a trap-door. We raised it, and I 
 discovered a ladder leading down into a 
 cellar. I descended, Roberts accompanying 
 me with a lantern, while Reed took care of 
 the old man, who was half dead. At once 
 I discovered two boxes full of gold pieces. 
 The second time I came up with an old 
 kettle also filled with gold, and on the third 
 trip I brought up three bundles of bank- 
 notes, thirty-four thousand dollars in all. 
 Then we untied the old man, but, maddened 
 by the loss of his money, he took the cord, 
 passed it about his neck, and said : ' Hang 
 me now ; I am ruined.' His death would 
 have been no advantage to us, and we left 
 him. The next day we gave Roberts his 
 share, and, well knowing that the affair 
 would cause some talk, we agreed to return 
 to Texas. It was just in time. In crossing 
 the Red River, the first thing we saw was a 
 placard pasted on a tree, with these words : 
 
176 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 6 Seventeen thousand dollars reward for 
 James Reed, alive or dead.' They were on 
 our track ; to balk those who followed us we 
 separated, making Texas the rendezvous.'' 
 Belle Starr changed her costume for that 
 of a young farmer. Wearied by a long 
 horseback ride, and weighed down by the 
 weight of gold hidden in a chamois-skin belt 
 which she wore, she reached with difficulty 
 the town of Bonham. There she went to an 
 inn and ordered supper, deciding to start out 
 again that evening and travel all night. 
 Meanwhile she fell asleep by the corner of 
 the fireside, but suddenly a storm arose and 
 wakened her, and there before her, sitting 
 at the table $ Jiote, the first person she saw was 
 Judge Thurman, whom she knew by sight. 
 He did not recognise her in her borrowed 
 clothes, but during the entire meal the judge 
 and his friends talked of nothing but the 
 robbery that had been done to Wat Grey son, 
 of James Reed, and of Belle Starr, who her- 
 self took part in the conversation. In vain 
 the nervous innkeeper begged them to talk 
 of something else. "Who knows if the 
 walls have not ears ? The vengeance of Belle 
 Starr and her companions is implacable." 
 They did not heed him, and passed the 
 evening in predicting the certain capture of 
 the fugitive. They were on her track ; the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 177 
 
 judge knew her, and he would expose her if 
 he met her. Careful not to arouse suspicion 
 by leaving the inn in so heavy a rain, Belle 
 Starr gave up all thought of continuing her 
 journey; but the hotel was full, the landlord 
 said ; beds were wanting, and the host sug- 
 gested that Judge Thurman, who was very 
 large, and the young farmer, who was slen- 
 der and small, room together. Both agreed 
 to this plan, Belle Starr with the most 
 perfect indifference, and the night passed 
 without the judge's having a shadow of 
 suspicion. 
 
 At daybreak he was roused by the land- 
 lord, who said that the young man was 
 about to leave and wanted to see him down- 
 stairs ; he had something to tell him about 
 Belle Starr. The judge dressed hurriedly, 
 went down, and found the farmer equipped 
 for riding. 
 
 " You are leaving early, young man." 
 
 " At once.' ' 
 
 "And do you know where Belle Starr 
 is?" 
 
 " Perfectly. Come near and look at me 
 closely. I am Belle Starr, and you you 
 are an old fool ! Last evening you said you 
 would know me, no matter where or under 
 what disguise ; and you have eaten with me, 
 roomed with me, and suspected nothing. 
 
178 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Dallas County should be proud of such a 
 sharp-sighted judge. Go and boast of your 
 knowledge, and take this to remember me 
 by," she added, slashing his cheek with a 
 vigorous blow of her whip as she put spurs 
 to her horse. Belle Starr understood rid- 
 ing, and no one could overtake her. 
 
 Her adventures would fill a volume. Dis- 
 covered at Younger Bend, where her retreat 
 was made known, she escaped and reached 
 San Diego, in southern California, alone and 
 on horseback. Weary of her wandering 
 life, she tasted there the charms of rest for a 
 few months, but her love of adventure once 
 more returned. 
 
 " I tried in vain to settle down to this new 
 life," she says in her manuscript. "The 
 ^ remembrance of my past life haunted me. 
 I fhirsted for freedom, for movement and 
 action. For a time I fought against these 
 feelings, but at length I yielded to an 
 impulse that drove me on. I read one day 
 in the local paper that some races were to 
 take place at Oakland races for men and 
 women. I wanted to go and try for the two 
 prizes offered. I bought for $175 a superb 
 black horse, which they let me have for this 
 price as no one else dared to ride it, and I 
 started for Oakland. It was while making 
 this purchase that I met Charlie Boyd, then 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 179 
 
 well known in San Francisco. He went 
 with me." 
 
 " 4 You have no idea of competing for the 
 two prizes/ he said to me the evening before 
 the race. I said yes, and asked him to get 
 a closed carriage for me, so that I could 
 change my costume without being seen. He 
 did so, and I entered the track in the garb 
 of a Mexican caballero, with long mous- 
 taches and a wide sombrero with a gold 
 cord. At the given signal fourteen compet- 
 itors presented themselves, but I alone at- 
 tracted attention. The spirited behaviour 
 of my horse and the boldness with which I 
 managed him provoked shouts ; everyone 
 asked who the young Mexican was. I won 
 the race, which was strongly disputed by a 
 gray-haired Calif ornian, an intrepid rider. 
 He told me his name was William Carleton, 
 and asked me mine ; I said that I was 
 William Lee of Loredo." 
 
 The race over, she slipped away and 
 reached her cart, and reappeared in the 
 dress of a woman, an Indian vest embroi- 
 dered in silver, and in this new costume held 
 the attention of all. On the same black 
 horse she won this race without striking a 
 blow. 
 
 " They all surrounded me, crowding about 
 me, and congratulated me, overwhelming 
 
180 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 me with compliments, but none was so ur- 
 gent as William Carleton. In love with me 
 at first sight, he asked me to marry him. 
 I escaped as well as I could from his atten- 
 tions, rejoined Charlie and the carriage, put 
 on my first costume, and then left. No one 
 for an instant suspected that the winners of 
 the two races were one and the same, Belle 
 Starr.' ' 
 
 She returned to Texas again, and, being 
 short of money, procured some at the ex- 
 pense of the State by " holding up," with 
 the aid of James Reed, who had rejoined 
 her, the stage-coach from San Antonio, 
 which was carrying to the city the sum 
 of $3000 for the government. They drained 
 the travellers' pockets, and found $2150 ; 
 but after this last exploit she was dis- 
 covered with her companion while they 
 were supping at an inn. She succeeded, 
 however, in escaping, although wounded ; 
 bat James Reed, less fortunate, was killed 
 after a desperate resistance. 
 
 Belle Starr had many lovers among the 
 desperadoes and outlaws of Texas, Kansas, 
 Nebraska, and Nevada. Left a widow by 
 Reed, she married Sand, son of a Cherokee 
 Indian, whom she soon left after an ex- 
 pedition in which he was stupid enough to 
 be caught. Belle thought little of stupid- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 181 
 
 ity, and Sand had lost all prestige in her 
 eyes. She then chose John Middleton and 
 resumed with him her life of adventures ; 
 but, tracked by the police, Middleton tried 
 to cross the Potomac River and was 
 drowned. Then she married one Jim, a 
 cousin of her third husband, and at last 
 died, killed on the borders of Canada in an 
 ambuscade. It was the death for which she 
 had hoped, always having had, she said, a 
 horror of dying in bed. 
 
 Strange as such a life may appear, and 
 full as it is of wild incidents, of violent 
 and brutal scenes and bizarre adventures, 
 it is no more extraordinary or strange 
 than that of many others. Amid peculiar 
 surroundings, in the midst of rebels against 
 society, she brought into relief some of 
 the characteristic and salient traits of her 
 race, traits exaggerated, but otherwise ex- 
 isting as latent germs. Belle Starr is in 
 some respects the descendant of the settlers, 
 of the frontier women, as intrepid as men, 
 and as ready as they to fight the Indian or 
 to use his stratagems. The .type of another 
 age, led astray in the nineteenth century, 
 with a brain confused by the surroundings 
 in which her youth was spent, at war with 
 humanity, civilisation, and laws, she still 
 proved the superiority of woman among the 
 
182 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 outlaws who surrounded and followed her, 
 obeying her wishes, deferential to her sex, 
 subjugated by her audacity and beauty. 
 Among other surroundings, in a different 
 place, we shall find, though to a much less 
 degree, and softened by education and civ- 
 ilisation, a love of independence, romantic 
 tastes, a desire to rule, and a disdain, now 
 concealed, of social conditions. 
 
 The study of some types of women in 
 this curious American world will allow us 
 to discover, apart from exaggerations of 
 the hereditary instincts, favoured or re- 
 pressed by circumstances, the actual tend- 
 encies of the modern American woman, 
 refined by nature and surroundings, yet 
 utterly unlike the European, from whom she 
 is separated by a whole world of ideas, of 
 instincts, and of traditions a wider and 
 deeper barrier than the ocean which rolls 
 between the two worlds, and is obliterated 
 by the steamers which now cross it in a 
 few days. 
 
CHAPTER IY. 
 
 Money in American Society Adaptability of the American 
 Woman Her Qualities and Her Defects Various 
 Types Elizabeth Patterson American Critics of 
 American Women The American Woman of To-day 
 Her Position and Her Influence. 
 
 I. 
 
 AFTER having in the preceding pages 
 noted the various elements which help to 
 make the modern American woman, we are 
 interested in showing how, by birth and 
 tradition, by nature and education, she was 
 the absolute antithesis of the woman of the 
 Orient, of whom the Hitopadeqa says : " A 
 woman should be under her father's care 
 during her infancy, under her husband's 
 daring her girlhood, under her son's during 
 her old age, and never independent." In 
 the United States she is under no one's in- 
 dividual protection, but under that of every- 
 one. We have shown by what countries, 
 under what social conditions, and as the re- 
 sult of what religious and political crises, the 
 colonies of the New World were peopled. 
 
184 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 By the help of historical documents we 
 have run over this colonial period as it was 
 at the beginning ; we have shown that man 
 was absorbed by daily outdoor work, woman 
 by household duties, and that the equality 
 of the two sexes was the result of the equal- 
 ity of their duties and responsibilities ; 
 then, as prosperity grew, that woman's task 
 became less important, while man's re- 
 mained the same, the leisure of one being 
 contrasted with the heavy labour of the 
 other. 
 
 Her own intelligence has developed and 
 broadened ; that of man has become special- 
 ised and concentrated ; his early education 
 is limited, and remunerative work waits for 
 him and claims him at an early age. As to 
 woman, man's equal and companion from 
 the start, little by little she has become 
 his superior through the leisure which he 
 has created for her and through the use 
 which she has made of it, by intellectual 
 culture, by her many and varied accomplish- 
 ments, and by the stand which she knows 
 how to take and to hold. She is the result 
 of many circumstances which nowhere else 
 are found united to such a degree, and all 
 of which have contributed to make her the 
 superior type of her race. In her are com- 
 bined the characteristic traits which with man 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 185 
 
 are more special, and which therefore appear 
 more accentuated, and more exaggerated, as 
 well by the free play of natural instincts as 
 by the necessity of making weapons of them 
 in the struggle for existence, and of secur- 
 ing their full reward and practical utility. 
 With the woman these characteristics exist, 
 but they are softened and held in check ; 
 she rounds their angles, smooths their sur- 
 faces, and out of a dull pebble makes a 
 precious gem ; the constituent parts are the 
 same, but a skilful cutting brings the 
 brilliancy and the beauty of the stone into 
 bold relief. 
 
 If we examine in detail these primitive 
 elements which make a type of the citizen 
 of the United States clearly distinct from 
 the European of which he is the issue, of 
 the Anglo-Saxon and of the Dutchman, of 
 the Irishman and the Frenchman, of the 
 Spaniard and the German, of the Italian 
 and of the Scandinavian, whose blood min- 
 gles in his veins, we are surprised at the 
 small part that heredity seems to have 
 played in the formation of the race. The 
 few traits that one finds here and there, and 
 whose direct relation to one another can be 
 demonstrated, seem to be allied and in jux- 
 taposition ; they depend but slightly on 
 a central base ; they break away from it 
 
186 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 without an effort, and can disappear without 
 changing the whole. On the other hand, 
 nowhere is the influence of the motive 
 power better comprehended and understood. 
 So, as in a faithful mirror, one sees in the 
 American, in his faults and in his character, 
 in his thoughts and ideas, the influence of 
 his native soil, of his climate, and of the 
 early conditions of his existence. In this 
 mirror appear the factors of which the 
 powerful and constant play, sometimes ex- 
 cessive, has determined the superiority ; 
 just as in the case of a blacksmith one notes 
 the abnormal development of the muscles of 
 the arm, or as one marks the flexibility of 
 an artist's hands, or the breadth of the 
 shoulders of a wrestler. 
 
 In the first place, there is the will, per- 
 severing, persistent, the same to-day as it 
 was yesterday and as it will be to-morrow. 
 Having the work to do and the obstacles 
 to overcome, this faculty entered first into 
 play, with its inevitable merits and faults, 
 of firmness and also of rigidity. The con- 
 ditions of its milieu did not weaken it, the 
 results obtained did not discourage it, but, 
 on the contrary, they developed it, stimu- 
 lated its activity, and better adapted the 
 well-tempered implement to the strong hand 
 of the workman. The aim, simple and 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 187 
 
 limited in the beginning, did not go beyond 
 the material conditions of existence ; but, 
 this first goal reached, the horizon became 
 widened, and ambition grew with acquired 
 experience, with the means of freer action, 
 and with the assured foundation, so that 
 the object at last grew definite. In a demo- 
 cratic society as this was, thoroughly ab- 
 sorbed in the thoughts of purely material 
 order, as is every growing society, this object 
 could only be money. 
 
 They had eliminated rank and social dis- 
 tinction, caste and privilege ; intellectual cul- 
 ture as 'jet existed only in exceptional 
 cases ; public employment was rare, and, 
 being poorly paid, was little sought after. 
 Neither by genius nor by arms could men 
 rise, as was the case in the ancient repub- 
 lics : the only road leading from the crowd 
 to the foremost rank was that of fortune, 
 the natural and material result of labour 
 and of will. 
 
 The citizens of the United States have 
 often been reproached for their worship of 
 the Almighty Dollar ; but one has too often 
 neglected to show that for them the dollar is 
 above all a representative sign. With re- 
 gard to their energy in winning wealth, such 
 an energy that with them the Jews could not 
 gain a footing and would not know how to 
 
 OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
188 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 prosper, enough has not been said of the 
 inexhaustible generosity of this people who 
 were eager for gain largely because the 
 gain was for a long time their only mark of 
 success, the sole end toward which their am- 
 bition could strive. Notwithstanding the 
 growing pre-eminence of material interests 
 in Europe, we should have trouble in con- 
 ceiving of a social organisation where money 
 alone ruled. People are pleased to say that 
 we have reached this ; at heart we do not 
 believe it, even while willingly repeating this 
 pessimistic axiom. In France, more than 
 elsewhere, we consider a great scholar, a great 
 artist, a great writer, to be rich in all respects, 
 however rich or poor materially he may be. 
 Above wealth we place many things ; in 
 reality we consider so many qualities in our 
 appreciation of others that their money is 
 only a secondary consideration, and no one 
 feels this more than those very ones to 
 whom wealth is the only title to considera- 
 tion. If in the United States, if in England, 
 money has appeared to hold the first rank, 
 it is because in the United States it was for 
 many years the one criterion of success, it 
 was because in England, where the limits of 
 social consideration were accurately defined, 
 money seemed the leveller of barriers, as the 
 instrument of those who, starting from noth- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 189 
 
 ing, aspired to be something. It lias not 
 been so since the barriers have been lowered, 
 and since, by the setting to work of other 
 faculties than that of making money, the 
 man of energy and talent can open for him- 
 self better ways which harmonise with his 
 natural desires, can leave the highway 
 crowded by the mob, and reach his aim by 
 different paths. In sketching in a series of 
 articles published by the Remie des Deux 
 Mondes, and since collected into one vol- 
 ume, the history of the great fortunes in the 
 United States and in England, we were forced 
 to state how rarely the ruling passion for 
 building up a colossal fortune has put in mo- 
 tion the higher faculties of those who have 
 succeeded in so doing. Money has come to 
 them by accumulation, by the very force of 
 circumstances, but few, very few, of these 
 founders of financial dynasties have had as 
 their aim in life the accumulation of millions. 
 A problem to solve, an invention to intro- 
 duce, an economic idea to launch, a new in- 
 dustry to create, a conquest to add to the 
 common inheritance of humanity these 
 were the points of departure, the motive and 
 the object. In attaining the latter they 
 gained at the same time wealth ; but for 
 most of them wealth was only an aid, a tool, 
 a means of giving wings to the will, of tri- 
 
190 TEE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 umpiring over obstacles. Alone, by itself, 
 wealth did not satisfy any of their highest 
 aspirations ; and those whom humanity will 
 remember were prouder of the labour they 
 had accomplished than of their piled up mil- 
 lions. It is too true that these high aims 
 may be the lot of a particular few. It is no 
 less true that, considering American society 
 as a whole, the homage paid to money is not 
 so universal as one might imagine, and that 
 we must take into account this fact : that the 
 role which money plays comes from this, 
 that it alone proclaims the success whose im- 
 portance is measured by its possession. 
 
 To those who denounce the so-called ex- 
 clusive worship paid in the United States to 
 the Almighty Dollar the moral and social 
 ostracism which Jay Gould encountered, 
 king of gold though he was, the one who 
 still personifies the most mighty accumula- 
 tion of capital in the hands of a single man, 
 is an unanswerable reply. We know what 
 this pirate financier was, in whom existed to 
 an excess the two motives of which we speak, 
 the implacable will power and the love of 
 gold, for the accumulation of which his spec- 
 ulations could not win pardon even in his 
 private virtues. Notwithstanding all this, 
 this same man, who in 1869 threw the financial 
 market of the United States into a frightful 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 191 
 
 panic in which twenty-seven of the largest 
 banking-houses went down, dragging in their 
 fall some hundreds of commercial firms, he 
 who came out of this great fight "king of 
 gold and of railroads," this unmoved specu- 
 lator whom nothing daunted, not even the 
 tragic death of the friends whom he sacri- 
 ficed, was kind and gentle to his family, sim- 
 ple in his tastes, irreproachable in his mor- 
 als, and one who bowed his head in resigna- 
 tion before the ostracism which smote him. 
 He died without knowing why he was hated 
 and despised. He felt the scorn and suffered 
 from it, but it had no effect upon him. He 
 sought neither to conquer it nor to overwhelm 
 it by his millions, which he was unable even 
 to enjoy. The human heart has strange 
 mysteries. This redoubtable financier, this 
 master of money whose one word revolution- 
 ised the New York Stock Exchange, knew 
 misery and bravely bore it. This cold calcu- 
 lator, whom neither threats nor prayers ever 
 moved, was hesitating and timid before the 
 woman he loved. His few letters, which we 
 have at hand, show him in such a light that 
 one asks whether he is the same man, and by 
 what strange contrast such incongruous feel- 
 ings could exist in one inexplicable individ- 
 uality. Gould was, in his way, a represent- 
 ative man, a characteristic type, in certain 
 
192 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 marked respects of that which the will and 
 the desire can produce when these unbal- 
 anced instincts are let loose without any 
 restraint from surroundings favourable to 
 their full development. He was also a 
 living proof of the fact that gold does not 
 stand quite supreme in the United States, 
 and that public opinion does not bow like a 
 slave before those who possess it, even when 
 they join to its envied possession private vir- 
 tues such as one rarely sees in mere money 
 makers. Because of these various standards 
 the man himself is worth describing, and 
 their contrasts also are worthy of note. 
 
 In his youth, anxious to learn and con- 
 scious of his ignorance, this farmer's son rose 
 at four o'clock on winter mornings to study 
 mathematics. At the age of fifteen he trav- 
 elled as a land surveyor, poorly clad, with- 
 out money, small, thin, wretched, going, 
 however, as many as sixty miles a day. He 
 writes in these words to one of his friends (he 
 had friends then) the touching story of his 
 misery, of his trials, of his failures and his 
 persistent labour : 
 
 "I had nothing; that is to say, every- 
 thing I possessed in the world consisted of 
 a dime, with which I was determined not 
 to part. The winter was approaching, and 
 despair was gaining on me. If tears could 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 193 
 
 have filled an empty purse, mine would have 
 indeed been full. Weakness and hunger 
 were telling on me cruelly, when a farmer 
 stopped me, and, knowing that I was a sur- 
 veyor, asked me to dine with him, and in 
 the afternoon survey his field. With what 
 joy did I accept, having eaten nothing but 
 a hard biscuit the night before, and being 
 hardly able to stand upright. After dinner 
 I did the work. He asked me what he owed 
 me. ' Nothing,' I answered, thinking my- 
 self sufficiently paid by the dinner which had 
 saved my life. But he insisted, and made 
 me accept half a dollar, saying that his 
 neighbour had paid twice as much a few days 
 before for the same work. The discovery of 
 a new world could not have made me hap- 
 pier than did this half dollar. I felt myself 
 rich, having something with which to sup- 
 ply myself with food for two days, and it 
 was with revived spirits that I left him. He 
 spoke of me to other farmers, who employed 
 me, and at the end of my stay I had actually 
 six dollars in my pocket." 
 
 Ten years later he had $150,000. Stopping 
 once in New York, he chanced to pass the 
 Everett House, one of the large hotels of the 
 city. At one of the windows he saw a young 
 girl, whose regular features, sweet manner, 
 and appearance of goodness charmed him. 
 
194 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 From that time Miss Miller often met in the 
 hotel parlours or at table this young man, 
 whose eyes followed her everywhere, but 
 who, silent and timid, hesitated to begin a 
 conversation with her father or approach 
 her. A chance occurrence accomplished 
 what he dared not do, and several months 
 later Miss Miller became Mrs. Gould. She 
 did not regret it, for never was any husband 
 more faithful and affectionate. Jay Gould's 
 most bitter slanderers have always done jus- 
 tice to the purity of his morals and the rec- 
 titude of his private life. After his mar- 
 riage he established himself in New York, 
 and commenced in Wall Street his phenom- 
 enal career. In 1870 he was the richest man 
 in the United States, and perhaps in the 
 whole world. The terrible panic on the Ex- 
 change in March, 1869, his taking possession 
 of the lines of the Erie, the Saratoga, and of 
 the Western Union, the great rise in Pacific 
 Railroad shares, made him the best known 
 and the most hated personage in the United 
 States. 
 
 Two men had predicted from the begin- 
 ning Jay Gould's astonishing capacity and 
 limitless cupidity. One, John B. Alley, a 
 Member of Congress, said of him, when he 
 was only twenty-four years old, and after 
 half an hour's conversation with him : U I 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 195 
 
 never want to do business with Gould ; he 
 is the only man I ever met who makes me 
 feel afraid." Yanderbilt, who understood 
 men, wrote at the same time to one of his 
 friends : " I met one Jay Gould ; remember 
 his name ; he will succeed ; but he has in 
 him the making of a bandit." One of his 
 few, very few friends, has made an exact 
 portrait of him. He shows the complex 
 physiognomy, the double individuality, of 
 his subject ; the mixture of sobriety and 
 cupidity, the sweetness of disposition and 
 the indomitable will, the simplicity of tastes 
 and the immeasurable ambition, the courtesy 
 and the cynicism, which characterise this 
 strange individuality. This portrait, like 
 that by Mr. Poultney Bigelow, sketched in 
 the Speaker, throws a new light upon this 
 strange nature. With the aid of these docu- 
 ments, and of some letters in which the true 
 man reveals himself, we can reach the con- 
 stituent elements and the various factors 
 which set in motion this powerful intelli- 
 gence, which carried so high the fortune and 
 placed so low the name of Jay Gould. 
 
 A weak and sickly body, an inflexible 
 will, a wonderful foresight, a faultless mem- 
 ory, and a faculty of abstraction which, in a 
 crisis, allowed him to isolate himself, indif- 
 ferent to external panic, to clamour, and to 
 
196 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 threats, absorbed in his combinations and 
 calculations such he was in 1869, directing 
 from his private office his formidable opera- 
 tions, fearlessly planning his evolutions on 
 the most treacherous soil, as calm as a 
 checker player, having foreseen everything, 
 calculated everything, and made sure of his 
 result. He was, as we have said, short, thin, 
 and taciturn. He had a jet-black beard, 
 hair, and eyes, regular features, a high and 
 massive forehead. Of quiet manners and 
 few gestures, unmoved and cold in business 
 and in public, at heart he was affectionate, 
 and no cares or anxieties ever crossed his 
 threshold. With his family he was always 
 sweet and amiable ; with strangers he was 
 invariably courteous and perfectly self- 
 possessed ; and this weak body had nerves 
 of iron and an ever-lucid brain. At the time 
 of his start in life he had to fight with 
 misery, but he did not fear it, convinced 
 that if it were to happen again he should 
 know the reason. From his contact with 
 wretchedness and his victory over it a 
 mournful conviction remained to him : that 
 wealth was for the strongest and the clever- 
 est, and that everything was permissible in 
 order to attain it. Son of a countryman, he 
 nevertheless held in great esteem superiority 
 of birth, of knowledge, of position. He en- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 197 
 
 vied them, and admired them from a dis- 
 tance, without daring to pretend to them, 
 for he did not consider that gold took their 
 place. A parvenu, he remained humble 
 before that which he knew he was unable to 
 buy or pay for, recognising that he was 
 different from those whom he considered 
 socially his superiors, and who scorned to 
 treat him as an equal. He understood 
 nothing of the ostracism of which he was 
 the object, of the repulsion his name and 
 the methods by which he had built his col- 
 ossal fortune inspired. He knew that he 
 kept within the laws. Had he not bought 
 the expounders of them, had he not paid 
 the judges and witnesses, and bribed the 
 press, giving, as he did in 1873, a check for 
 ten thousand dollars to the editor of a paper 
 to suppress a paragraph of several lines 
 directed against him ? 
 
 Mr. Bigelow relates as follows the one in- 
 terview which he had with Jay Gould. It 
 confirms what we say. " Chance," he says, 
 " brought about our meeting. A friend, 
 whose country seat was next to Jay Gould's, 
 and with whom I was spending a few days, 
 invited me to take a trip on the Hudson in 
 his steam yacht. We were waiting at the 
 wharf when Jay Gould arrived. He was 
 going to the same place as ourselves, but his 
 
198 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 yacht was not read y. Although my friend 
 did not know him, seeing him in difficulty, 
 he offered to take him on board his yacht. 
 It was an act of ordinary courtesy, which 
 demanded nothing further, and during the 
 trip he abstained from talking with him. 
 As for me, I had not the same reasons, being 
 only a temporary guest in the place, and 
 I began a conversation with this man, of 
 whom I had heard so much and so often. 
 We talked for some time of everything 
 except the Exchange, and I was strongly 
 impressed by the social isolation in which 
 Gould seemed to have lived. A child could 
 not have questioned me as greedily as did 
 he about unknown countries, about Europe, 
 its institutions, its customs. He questioned 
 me as a man does who seeks to corroborate 
 facts previously learned, but which he 
 doubts. He spoke of well-known people 
 and places, but he pronounced their names 
 hesitatingly, as though they were not 
 familiar to him. His questions betrayed a 
 naive ignorance of all that the world knows, 
 and those which he asked me about the role 
 and the attributes of a Prime Minister of 
 England were like those one would ask a 
 traveller just arrived from the heart of Asia 
 about the position and functions of the 
 Grand Lama. Everything that had not to 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 199 
 
 do with the one aim of his life seemed to 
 him a hidden science or something reserved 
 for scholars. And, nevertheless, the man 
 impressed me by the breadth and depth of 
 some of his thoughts, by an intellectual 
 superiority which was reflected in the quiet 
 simplicity of his language. For two hours 
 he held me under this impression, and I 
 could not help comparing his position in the 
 financial world with his absence of every 
 pretension, with the tact with which he 
 avoided those subjects which he under- 
 stood better than anyone, and the marvel- 
 lous comprehension with which he grasped 
 all that was said to him." 
 
 He lived then in a splendid residence 
 at Irvington-on-the-Hudson, as well known 
 as is Washington Irving, whose modest 
 villa he had bought, enlarged, and beauti- 
 fied. Every day he came to New York, 
 leaving in the morning, returning at night, 
 by an express train which the railway com- 
 pany had arranged purposely for him, and 
 of which his neighbours had the benefit. 
 They were almost all rich bankers or mer- 
 chants, and had a special parlour car for 
 themselves, to which their little aristocracy 
 alone had access. Jay Gould asked them 
 to let him share it. They refused, and this 
 made him painfully sensitive. He resigned 
 
200 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 himself, however, without a word. Every- 
 where about him he met with this ostracism, 
 which hurt him without making him indig- 
 nant. He attributed it to his low birth and 
 to his ignorance of the usages of the world. 
 It was done, he thought, to the common and 
 envied parvenu, not to the evil speculator, 
 and as to that he had nothing to say. He 
 had no desire, however, to answer the inso- 
 lence of scorn by the insolence of his wealth. 
 He could have done it, but he did not at- 
 tempt it. By taste, by nature, he was sim- 
 ple, loving neither ostentation nor display. 
 In New York he lived in a palace, in the 
 country in a villa, because his fortune de- 
 manded it, because others, much less rich 
 than he, lived so, and he did not wish to be 
 odd. But palace and villa were closed ; the 
 world did not have access to them, and 
 would not have gone there in any case. He 
 understood this, and avoided the insult of 
 being refused, asking himself naively why 
 he had deserved it. An indefatigable 
 worker, he was gifted with marvellous apti- 
 tude, and few human brains were as power- 
 fully organised as his. He left nothing to 
 chance, and kept in his vast memory a 
 whole world of definite information and 
 carefully classified facts. 
 
 "This man is a sorcerer," said of him 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 201 
 
 once a large Western proprietor, who had 
 unexpectedly come to submit to him a 
 project for certain branch lines, which would 
 increase the value of an immense tract of 
 land still uncultivated for want of roads 
 connecting it with the Pacific Railway. 
 Gould received him and listened to the end ; 
 then, taking up each argument in succes- 
 sion, setting aside some, and approving 
 others, he marked the distances, the turns, 
 and the planes, the artificial work necessary, 
 and the embankments, and showed himself 
 so complete a master of the subject that the 
 narrator of the story added : " I have lived 
 in this region for twenty-five years, and I 
 thought I knew it better than any man 
 living, but Jay Gould proved that he had 
 known it one hundred times longer than I. 
 Not an error in his assertions, his calcu- 
 lations, or figures, I have since verified 
 them, and where his estimates differed from 
 mine, where I thought they were faulty, it 
 was I who was wrong, and he who was right, 
 although he did not know of my coming, 
 and was not told in advance of my proposed 
 visit, or of what I wished to talk with him 
 about." 
 
 We have often heard of his office in Wall 
 Street. It was, in its way, a curiosity. It 
 united all that modern comfort, the most 
 
202 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 careful forethought, and science could put 
 at the service of a man who had unlimited 
 capital, who had every reason to fear for his 
 life, and whom neither time nor distance 
 hindered in the carrying out of his com- 
 mands. The latter were registered by 
 stenographers ; special wires brought and 
 carried them ; special telephones permitted 
 instant correspondence with his brokers. 
 Iron doors, covered with hangings, a suite 
 of rooms occupied by secretaries, clerks, 
 detectives, like so many posts of inspection, 
 were obstacles to the criminal attempts with 
 which he was constantly threatened in 
 anonymous letters. More than once he 
 might have fallen a victim to them. 
 
 In 1882 a strange thing happened in his 
 office. From the year 1880 on, numerous 
 enemies had attacked him venomously, 
 forcing him to strain his credit. There was 
 a report that Jay Gould was in danger, that 
 he was converting everything into money to 
 meet his losses ; some articles skilfully in- 
 serted in the newspapers heightened the 
 effect of such reports, and they increased. 
 The fall of the money king, they said, was 
 only a question of time. But that which 
 but moderately affected public opinion, and 
 but feebly moved the money market when 
 other questions arose, became very sei ious 
 
OF 
 
 TJNIVE 
 
 CALIFORHVI 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 203 
 
 when that of the great regulator of the 
 money market was mentioned, his ruin 
 would involve numberless others with it, so 
 that, from every portion of the Union, tele- 
 grams poured in upon Gould, anxious, des- 
 perate, threatening. It was necessary for 
 him to act and to end the panic. He called 
 a meeting in his office of the prominent 
 bankers of New York and some of the edi- 
 tors of the principal newspapers. In a few 
 words he explained to them the situation, 
 asking them to be the judges of it. By his 
 orders his private secretary opened one of 
 the safes and placed on the table a bundle 
 of papers and certificates of stock receipts. 
 Jay Gould asked those present to proceed 
 to an inventory of the first bundle of papers. 
 The total was fifty-three million dollars. 
 
 "And now, gentlemen," he said, "we 
 will, if you please, verify the amount in 
 coin, the sums now due me, the government 
 bonds, and my current accounts." 
 
 The result of the inventory revealed a 
 condition that they could scarcely believe 
 the fact that his personal income at that 
 time exceeded twelve million dollars. Rus- 
 sell Sage had been right when, questioned a 
 few days before in regard to the reports, 
 he had answered: "There is not a word 
 of truth in them. Gould could not possibly 
 
204 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 reach the limit of his income. I do not 
 believe his annual expenses amount to two 
 million dollars, and he should be able to set 
 aside eight or ten millions every year." On 
 the following day the New York papers 
 told in full of this visit to Aladdin's palace. 
 Nothing more was necessary to stop the 
 panic. 
 
 Jay Gould lost his wife in 1889, and 
 from that time on he seemed heart-broken. 
 This cold speculator dearly loved his family, 
 and especially the faithful companion whom 
 the world did not know, and whose hus- 
 band's name closed to her the doors of 
 drawing-rooms. There were two men in 
 Gould the Irvington Gould, and the Gould 
 of Wall Street ; his wife knew only the 
 former, and was devoted to him to the last. 
 For her and with her he was the husband, 
 the affectionate head of the family, who left 
 his business at his office, with his terrible 
 greed for gain, his implacable will, his cruel 
 hardness of heart. 
 
 His wife dead, he left Wall Street for 
 Irvington, where she no longer was, but 
 where everything spoke of her. For his 
 love of gold he substituted a love of the 
 flowers that she, too, had loved. He en- 
 larged his conservatories, which he made 
 the largest in the world ; he finished his 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 205 
 
 grove of palms, valued at more than a mil- 
 lion dollars, and completed his collection of 
 orchids and of rare plants, for which he 
 spent no end of money. In this way he 
 managed to exist, surrounded by his two 
 sons and his two daughters, until death 
 came. 
 
 "The man had good qualities," writes 
 Bigelow. His private life was pure, and he 
 was generous without ostentation. Had he 
 lived twenty years longer, his faults would, 
 perhaps, have been forgotten. He would 
 have opened his doors to those very persons 
 whom we have seen begging invitations from 
 the plutocratic Vanderbilts, The papers 
 would have spoken of him in terms worthy 
 of a millionaire philanthropist ; like others 
 he would have bought for cash the social 
 notoriety which one wrongly confounds with 
 respect. " Jay Gould is dead," writes the 
 New York Herald, " not as he expected to 
 die, from an assassin's blow, but as a man 
 who falls asleep, surrounded by his children, 
 in the room where his wife breathed her 
 last. As a private individual, criticism can- 
 not touch him ; he was an irreproachable 
 husband and father. As a public man he 
 was the world's most detestable example. 
 No one envied his success, for he paid too 
 dearly for it. A financier by nature, a spec- 
 
206 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 ulator without a rival, he was also une- 
 qualled in his sovereign indifference to the 
 consequences of his acts. He has left count- 
 less millions and a great moral lesson. His 
 wealth will go to his heirs ; but to those 
 who are tempted to envy him or to imitate his 
 example it seems as though a voice from 
 the tomb cried : ' Stop ! do not do as I have 
 done.' Whatever we may say, the world is 
 fair and just ; in its eyes honour is worth 
 more than all else. And the world has 
 judged Gould and has condemned him." 
 
 There is no more leniency in the United 
 ^ States than in Europe for ill-gotten gains, 
 large though they may be. It is wrong, 
 however, from this fact, to deny that this 
 leniency may be found to a greater degree 
 in the United States than elsewhere, or to 
 deny that the influence of money is less 
 there than elsewhere. Such as it is, this 
 influence is excessive ; it is less the re- 
 sult of the transmission of ideas than the 
 lack of any counterbalance to establish in 
 public opinion a proper equilibrium. 
 
 We have shown above how the persist- 
 ent pursuit of money, the one proof of 
 success, is incompatible with intellectual 
 culture, how the latter became the aim of 
 the women, as wealth was that of their 
 fathers and husbands, and how by this fact 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 207 
 
 women advanced beyond the men and 
 won prestige in the eyes of the latter. In 
 the modern American women we find devel- 
 oped in another direction the characteristic 
 traits that we have described : the will, the 
 energy of a race of settlers ; and the taste for 
 getting money has been transformed into a 
 taste for spending it. The woman of the 
 United States is, we have said, the means of 
 spending, as man is the means of getting ; 
 the luxury of the one announces the success 
 of the other. But as the conditions of actual 
 life change, as the conditions of new coun- 
 tries disappear, in which everything is and 
 seems to be possible, as careers become em- 
 barrassed, and as the chances for rapid 
 wealth decrease, other ideas arise, other 
 factors enter into play, the slow and con- 
 tinued operation of which suffices to 
 change the earlier conceptions and to lessen 
 whatever there is in them, excessive or 
 outre. The originality of the race suffers, 
 perhaps, from this, but its active forces will 
 accomplish none the less for being curbed 
 and disciplined. In any case the American 
 woman loses nothing by it, and especially 
 the young girl ; far from decreasing, her 
 influence grows ; she makes herself strongly 
 felt in Europe, even in France, where by 
 the fact of traditions, customs, and morals 
 
208 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 she appears as the first among revolutionary 
 elements, changing rapidly our ideas on the 
 education of a young girl, while her inde- 
 pendence and liberty arouse at once our 
 envy and astonishment. 
 
 A few years ago several women of high po- 
 sition met in one of the waiting-rooms of the 
 German Empress. Stopping in Berlin, they 
 had begged the favour of an audience, 
 through their respective ambassadors, and a 
 letter from the Grand Chamberlain had ap- 
 pointed a day and hour when the Empress 
 would receive them. They did not know 
 one another ; English, Russian, Austrian, 
 Italian, the chances of travel had thrown 
 them together for the first time. The hour 
 for the reception passed, and the sovereign 
 did not appear. Addressing one of her 
 neighbours, one of the ladies expressed her 
 surprise at the delay, excusing her impa- 
 tience by the fact that, as an American, she 
 was not familiar with court etiquette. 
 
 The other replied smilingly that she, too, 
 was an American by birth, but had lately 
 married an Austrian nobleman. The others 
 drew near, entered into conversation, and 
 were amazed to find that all six were from 
 the Western States or from New England. 
 This singular and significant fact proves 
 what we have said of England, where a 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 209 
 
 number of historical titles are to-day borne 
 by American women. It is the same in 
 France, in Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, 
 and it is not only among the aristocracy 
 that these marriages occur, but in the upper 
 and middle classes. We Europeans have 
 often taken this as a text to joke more or 
 less on the taste of the American women 
 for distinctions of nobility, and on their 
 inconsistency in priding themselves on their 
 republican institutions while at the same 
 time boasting of their monarchical titles. 
 But apart from the fact that they are not the 
 only ones who act thus, these are in reality 
 only the exceptions. These marriages be- 
 come more frequent every year in every 
 large city of the Continent, and introduce a 
 new social element, the influence of which 
 is more and more felt, and is explained by 
 considerations of a more general kind. If 
 there is no country in the world where the 
 young girl, protected by the respect of all, 
 enjoys so much independence and liberty as 
 in the United States, and occupies in her 
 family and in the world so prominent a po- 
 sition, however much praised, courted, flat- 
 tered, and free in her choice, this royalty 
 exists only for a time, and a short time. 
 The brilliant public life of the American girl 
 ceases, as a rule, on her wedding day, 
 
210 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and the French girl, who is disconcerted 
 by the flirting, by the wise strategy, by the 
 independence of the other's manner and 
 speech, hardly recognises her in her new 
 role of married woman. Yet she does not 
 give it up without regret. She resigns her- 
 self with difficulty to the married life, so 
 quiet, by comparison, after having been the 
 belle of the drawing-rooms. Then the 
 American woman secretly envies the foreign 
 lady, whom she had eclipsed for several 
 years, but whom marriage frees at the same 
 time as it fetters herself. 
 
 To add to the advantages in the life of 
 an American girl those of the married 
 woman in Europe is an enticing ideal, and 
 it suffices to explain the frequent marriages 
 which the Americans make upon the Conti- 
 nent. It explains also the rapid American- 
 isation of Europe, the progress which the 
 influence and the example of the United 
 States are making in our customs, in our 
 educational ideas concerning young girls, 
 and in the degree of greater liberty they 
 enjoy every day. 
 
 But Europe in its turn reacts upon Amer- 
 ica ; civilisation is the result of such contacts 
 as these; and now for several years past we 
 can note in the higher classes in the United 
 States a tendency to adopt some of the 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 211 
 
 European ideas regarding the privileges of 
 married women. On this road they cannot, 
 however, travel far, on account of the diffi- 
 culty of taking away from young girls an 
 ascendency consecrated by a century of pos- 
 session, and by a swarm of habits, customs, 
 and traditions. If changes occur, it will be 
 due to another order of ideas, as we shall ex- 
 plain below, in showing the characteristic 
 change which takes place on the subject 
 under discussion, and already negatively 
 treated, that of the dot. 
 
 Like every essentially progressive race, 
 the American is eminently adaptable ; it has 
 kept neither the rigidity nor the prejudices 
 of the English. If American men accommo- 
 date themselves to the life of Paris, London, 
 or Florence, if they easily conform to differ- 
 ent conditions of life and surroundings, 
 American women are still more cosmopoli- 
 tan. Europe charms them, attracts them, 
 and holds them by its intellectual and artis- 
 tic culture, by its historical associations, and 
 also by its relative cheapness and its less 
 costly pleasures. One has to live a long time 
 in American surroundings, where nothing 
 appeals to the imagination, where the past 
 dates from yesterday, where the actual cost 
 of living is expensive and the labour inces- 
 sant, where time is money and where one 
 
212 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 must economise, in order fully to appreciate 
 our artistic enjoyments, our museums and 
 our galleries, our monuments and the memo- 
 ries which they evoke, our great cities, every 
 stone of which has its own history. All this 
 is so much a part of ourselves that we imagine 
 ourselves biases at the attractions before us, 
 and do not appreciate them until we have 
 been separated from them for a time. Yet 
 this for quick and active imaginations has a 
 powerful attraction, and you will easily dis- 
 tinguish in the Court of the Louvre, in the 
 Uffizi at Florence, the Campo Santo at Pisa, 
 and the Coliseum at Rome, the American 
 woman from the English, by the admiring 
 and contemplative look of the former, and 
 by the absent-minded glance of the latter, 
 turning over the leaves of her Baedeker. 
 The one gazes, the other reads up ; one has 
 impressions, the other reminiscences. 
 
 As is the English, so is the American 
 woman the daughter of Europe, and neither 
 time nor distance has lessened in her the cul- 
 ture of the past. She is more attached to it 
 the farther she gets away from it, because 
 her memory is less burdened by dates and 
 facts, and because, in turning over the pages 
 of history, she satisfies a curiosity aroused by 
 the traditions that are preserved in books. 
 Surely, neither the Seine nor the Thames, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 213 
 
 nor the Po nor the Arno recalls the Missis- 
 sippi, which rolls its turbid waters for 
 over 1800 miles ; it would take 160 Lake 
 Lemans to equal the surface of Lake Super- 
 ior, and the summit of even Mont Blanc 
 does not reach to the height of the topmost 
 point of the Rocky Mountains ; but the 
 American woman does not forget that among 
 these limited surroundings great things are 
 accomplished ; if the theatre is smaller, the 
 actor appears larger. This remarkable fas- 
 cination which Europe has for the Amer- 
 icans, and especially for the American 
 woman, is not a recent thing, any more than 
 the varied causes of this attraction are new. 
 The study of certain types, taken at different 
 times, will better exhibit in their proper light 
 with the American woman's faculty of adap- 
 tability, the good and bad qualities inherent 
 in the race, and in the subject we are study- 
 ing. There are representative women as 
 well as representative men, and the history 
 of one of the women a history which min- 
 gles with our own, and which her letters 
 allow us to reconstruct will show us, better 
 than any general observations, the attraction 
 which these surroundings have for women ; 
 it will also bring into relief the two prim- 
 itive elements in her which we have noted 
 in the man, in whom they attain their 
 
214 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 maximum intensity: on the one hand an 
 energetic will, and on the other, the love 
 of money. 
 
 II. 
 
 On the 4th of April, 1878, Elizabeth Pat- 
 terson, the lawful bat repudiated wife of 
 Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, 
 died at the age of ninety-three years. Her 
 beauty, her undeserved misfortunes, her 
 sharp and bitter spirit, and the events of 
 her life give her a place in the history of 
 her times. Born in Baltimore, February 6, 
 1785, Elizabeth Patterson began life under 
 the most favourable circumstances. From 
 the age of fifteen her great beauty was cele- 
 brated far beyond the little city in Maryland. 
 Her father, a clever and upright merchant, 
 held the first position among the merchants 
 of Baltimore. She was eighteen years old 
 when in 1803 Jerome Bonaparte, brother of 
 the First Consul, visited New York, and 
 at Commodore Barney's invitation went to 
 Baltimore. There at an entertainment given 
 in his honour he met Elizabeth Patterson 
 and fell in love with her at first sight. 
 
 He was young, in love, and surrounded by 
 that aureole of glory which crowned the 
 name of Bonaparte. Three months later their 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 215 
 
 civil marriage was performed before the con- 
 sul of France, and a religious marriage by 
 the Bishop of Baltimore. We know that this 
 marriage was not recognized by the Emperor, 
 and was arbitrarily annulled in 1805, and 
 that Prince Jerome married in 1807 Princess 
 Frederica of Wurtemberg. We know, too, 
 with what energy and perseverance Elizabeth 
 Patterson defended her rights and those of 
 her son Jerome Napoleon. Forced to bow 
 before the all-powerful will of her brother-in- 
 law, before her desertion and her husband's 
 second marriage she suppressed her tears 
 and anger. The victim of politics and a state 
 policy which raised her husband to the rank 
 of kings, and drove her without title or 
 civil position to Baltimore, into an obscurity 
 which was hateful to her, Elizabeth Patter- 
 son had to submit, but she never became 
 resigned. Deceived in her dreams of love 
 and ambition, she centred in her son all her 
 hopes of greatness. Jerome had his father's 
 name and a future before him ; a day would 
 come when altered fortune would repair the 
 wrongs done to Elizabeth Patterson, and 
 when her son would return to her what his 
 father had taken away by submitting to 
 his brother's orders. 
 
 For twenty-five years she lived in this 
 hope, following with attention the events 
 
216 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of which Europe was the theatre, standing 
 aloof, a powerless yet not disinterested on- 
 looker at the prodigious growth of the Em- 
 pire, at its perilous success, at its reverses, 
 and finally at its fall. The Emperor's des- 
 potic will cut her off from access to the Court, 
 a cruel privation for a woman who thought 
 she was called there to play a great role. In- 
 genious in converting her tastes into duties, 
 she said to herself that there alone was her 
 place, her true sphere, and that the future of 
 Jerome Napoleon, the Emperor's nephew, a 
 king's son, imperiously demanded a rich and 
 powerful alliance. She caressed this hope, 
 striving in every possible way to awaken am- 
 bition in her son, in whom her own rebellion, 
 her bitterness, and her hopes found not the 
 slightest echo. In her letters we can pene- 
 trate the deep irritation which at last ended 
 in apathy. She was so thoroughly identified 
 with the role which circumstances refused 
 her, yet of which her imagination dreamed, 
 that she spoke, acted, and wrote as a deposed 
 sovereign, haughtier and prouder in adver- 
 sity even than in prosperity. 
 
 In spite of everything and everybody, she 
 gained the society of the Imperial family, 
 but was rejected, persecuted, and repu- 
 diated by the Emperor. She extolled his 
 genius to the clouds during his prosper- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 217 
 
 ity and defended his memory after his 
 death. 
 
 With her husband it was different. She 
 refused the title of Princess of Schmalcalden 
 and a dowry of two hundred thousand 
 francs from the hand of the King of 
 Westphalia, but accepted a modest pension 
 from the Emperor. To her husband, who 
 complained at having his offers rejected and 
 those of his brother accepted, she wrote : 
 "I prefer to hide under an eagle's wing 
 rather than hang from the beak of a gos- 
 ling. " Later when he suggested a home 
 in Westphalia: " Your kingdom is large, " 
 she proudly replied, "but not large 
 enough for two queens. " A Frenchwoman 
 by marriage, she was also a French- 
 woman at heart. No trace remained of her 
 American origin or her family affection. 
 She abjured both nationality and family ; 
 she wished to forget them, to make those 
 about her forget them, particularly her son, 
 whom she took to' Geneva, to finish his 
 education. It was a strange choice, for she 
 wished him to be a Catholic, "the only 
 religion possible," she wrote, "for princes 
 and kings." She herself was a Protestant, 
 but to so small a degree that it is not worth 
 mentioning. To her intense passion for 
 greatness, she added that of economy ; we 
 
218 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 shall see, later, how far she carried the latter. 
 At Geneva she flattered herself that she need 
 spend but little. We have tried the same 
 thing ; she asserted the fact, at least, and 
 avenged herself by one of those unjust re- 
 marks which are familiar with her : "Have 
 you noticed," she wrote her father, u that 
 there are no Jews at Geneva ? What could 
 they do there ? They would die of hunger ; 
 one Gene vese is worth four Jews. ' ' Regard- 
 ing her family she was ungovernable. She 
 never pardoned them for having condemned 
 her marriage, any more than for the recep- 
 tion they gave her when she returned to 
 Baltimore after her marriage was broken. 
 Wounded in her love, exasperated in her 
 pride, she found but little sympathy from 
 them. Their advice to give up her dreams 
 of greatness, and to shut herself up in the 
 quiet, monotonous life of a little American 
 city, however wise it might have been, 
 served only to intensify her regrets and 
 increase her bitterness. 
 
 The Emperor's marvellous success, the 
 rapid rise of her husband, glory, kingdoms 
 conquered at racing speed, the brilliant 
 assemblage of sovereign allies conquered or 
 deposed all these echoes of a world from 
 which she was excluded and in the midst of 
 which she considered herself called to live, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 219 
 
 made her more intolerant and more bitter, 
 more disdainful and scornful. On the fall 
 of the Empire she went to live in Florence, 
 and we find her there in 1829. Jerome 
 Napoleon was then twenty-four years *old. 
 Without ambition, but with good sense, he 
 preferred to the wandering life of an adven- 
 turer in Europe the quiet of his native city, 
 and a simple life, yet one worthy of his 
 grandfather. Yielding to his prayers, for 
 he influenced her by his strong will, his 
 mother at length allowed him to return to 
 Baltimore ; as to her following him she did 
 not dream of it. She stayed in Florence, 
 entirely absorbed by her idea of making a 
 marriage for her son that should be worthy 
 of the name he bore. Already, in 1826, she 
 had hoped to marry him to his cousin Char- 
 lotte, daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, and 
 whom she describes in no very flattering 
 terms. "A hideous little creature, and 
 having the disposition of a devil." It 
 is true that when she spoke thus the mar- 
 riage project had come to naught, Princess 
 Charlotte evincing a very strong liking for 
 another suitor. It is necessary to add that 
 the marriage negotiations were dragged out 
 to a great length. Mme. Bonaparte had 
 charged one of her friends of the Rothschild 
 house to make minute inquiries as to 
 
 OF THK 
 
 TTNTVR'R CTT'-V 
 
220 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Joseph's fortune. "They spoke," she said, 
 " of a dot of 3,500,000 francs : for myself, I 
 did not believe it, but I had decided not to 
 give Jerome for less than a million, in cash. 
 They shall not deceive me with promises and 
 hopes." When the needed information 
 arrived, it was too late. " Moreover," she 
 added, "it was not satisfactory." 
 
 She looked elsewhere and thought she had 
 reached the goal of her efforts when, early in 
 September, 1829, she received a letter from 
 her father announcing Jerome Napoleon's 
 engagement to Miss Williams, daughter of a 
 Baltimore merchant, and that the marriage 
 ^vvould take place in October. This news de- 
 stroyed all dreams for the future ; it was the 
 ruin of her last hope ; after the father, the 
 Spn had betrayed her. Then one sees in her 
 letters that had she been able to break the 
 union, as the Emperor had broken hers, she 
 ! would not have hesitated to take the most 
 Arbitrary measures against whose illegality \ 
 jin her own case she had been fighting for a/ 
 quarter of a century. Her answer to her 
 father was a cry of despair. Were she on 
 her death-bed, she said, in suffocating agony, 
 God would, by a miracle, give 4 her power to 
 protest against the marriage. Never with 
 her consent should Jerome marry an Amer- 
 ican. Napoleon's nephew, she said, had no 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 221 
 
 equal in America. In England he could 
 choose a woman from the most aristocratic 
 families. Had she not herself had twenty 
 chances to make a rich marriage and she 
 had refused, for how could she marry with 
 the name she carried ? " God knows," she 
 wrote, "if I hate poverty and isolation, I 
 have accepted both, and neither has broken 
 my pride or made me bend my will to the 
 point of accepting a husband of inferior 
 position. I will never consent to my son's 
 marrying Miss Williams or any other Amer- 
 ican miss. The marriage has not yet taken 
 place ; let him invent any pretext whatever. 
 Above all, let no one speak to me of the 
 rhapsodies of love and passion. Do I not 
 know with what ease men and women dis- 
 pose of love, and that only imbeciles re- 
 main chained by these pretended bands, and 
 marry for something else besides a great 
 fortune or high position ? " 
 
 Is this the woman who in 1803 answered 
 thus the remonstrances of her father on the 
 occasion of her marriage: " I love Jerome 
 Bonaparte, and I would rather be his wife, 
 if only for one day, than make the happiest 
 marriage in the world." 
 
 Since then it is true that twenty-six years 
 had passed, and her letters tell us that La 
 Rochefoucauld was her prayer-book. Again 
 
222 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 she says : "I am convinced that an immense 
 fortune is better for a woman than high po- 
 sition ; yet still this fortune must really be 
 immense to excuse a mesalliance. And what 
 are these fortunes in Baltimore, and what is 
 this large family of Williams ? I myself at 
 my age would never marry an American, 
 however rich he were, and surely my son 
 has a right to look higher than I. If Miss 
 Williams had five hundred thousand dollars, 
 and if Jerome could bring her away from 
 America, never to return, I might perhaps 
 yield," and so forth. This was in 1829, and 
 five hundred thousand dollars meant two 
 million and a half francs. Even at this price 
 she hesitated ; but Miss Williams' dot was 
 an income of about six thousand dollars in 
 her own name, and which in case of her 
 death did not revert to her husband. 
 
 Moreover, she understood women, espe- 
 cially American women, she wrote her 
 father. "In every country in the world 
 women are endowed with a marvellous in- 
 stinct and know how to manage men. In 
 America they are more tactful than any- 
 where else, and they are one century in ad- 
 vance as far as strategy is concerned. If my 
 son were to die, his wife would have only 
 one thought to marry again, and my son's 
 children would be dependent on their step- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 223 
 
 father." How could her father have let 
 Jerome venture on such a chance ? Did he 
 not know her wishes, her desires, so often 
 and so distinctly expressed, her hatred for 
 America and American women ? If Jerome 
 were put to it by necessity but he was not ; 
 surely she had but little money, yet the 
 amount she gave him and the twelve hun- 
 dred dollars income from her family were 
 enough to live on. "I am covetous, I 
 know," she wrote, "but the love of money 
 which I carry so far never made me lose 
 sight of my son's interests. On the con- 
 trary, was it not I who dragged from the 
 Bonapartes this income of twelve hundred 
 dollars, which still continues, and which 
 they would have stopped before now had not 
 the fear of what they are pleased to call my 
 infernal tongue restrained them ? Is it not 
 due to me that he obtained a legacy of four 
 thousand dollars from his aunt the Princess 
 Borghese?" 
 
 We see that Elizabeth Patterson had no 
 high opinion of American women. She re- 
 fers again to her son in a letter dated October 
 17th. If this marriage takes place in spite 
 of her resistance and remonstrances, she ex- 
 presses the desire that at least Jerome may 
 not bring his wife to Europe. " Here," she 
 said, "it is a well-known fact that the 
 
224 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Americans who come here turn out badly." 
 To every rule there is an exception, and if 
 she set small value on her fellow-country- 
 women, she thought very differently of her- 
 self. "My ambition, my beauty, my intel- 
 ligence, never had their proper surroundings 
 in America. After my marriage it was evi- 
 dent to all who were interested in me that 
 my true place was in Europe. I could not 
 live elsewhere. Providence did not endow 
 me with that mixture of imbecility and nar- 
 row-mindedness without which life in Balti- 
 more is impossible. You are right if you 
 think I shall never return to America if this 
 marriage occurs. Certainly I shall prefer 
 to live among strangers. Here, at least, they 
 consider me a woman of good sense and de- 
 termination. In America you treat me like 
 an old fool, of no use except to darn stock- 
 ings and mutter prayers. Here I am con- 
 sulted in the most delicate affairs, yet you 
 think me incapable of deciding the questions 
 which are nearest my heart.' ' Her hatred for 
 the United States was a passion unequalled 
 / save by her love of Europe. "Happy coun- 
 try!" she said, "where women are never 
 treated like old fools ! " On this subject she 
 waxes eloquent. c ' In the European courts, ' ' 
 she wrote her father, "the terms 'old man' 
 and ' old woman ' are banished from the die- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 225 
 
 tionary. Women of forty or fifty years 
 marry under as advantageous circumstances 
 as silly young girls of sixteen. I have seen 
 them marry men of all ages, even those 
 younger than themselves." 
 
 Florence, where she then lived, was the 
 elegant haven for victims of the triumphant 
 coalition. The great changes which had 
 once more upset Europe, overthrown an 
 empire, established a monarchy in France, 
 and restored in Italy deposed dynasties, had 
 also overthrown lives. Diplomats without 
 employment, great dignitaries without insig- 
 nia of office, discontented ones waiting for 
 a new day and the changes it would bring, 
 went to seek in Italy a less expensive home 
 under a happy climate. Men formed con- 
 spiracies, but did not act ; intrigued, slan- 
 dered the visitors of the day among them- 
 selves, and took their revenge in jokes on 
 adverse fortune. 
 
 Mme. Bonaparte was held to the van- 
 quished by the name she bore, and by her 
 broken alliance ; by her friendships and her 
 bitterness she was attached to the victors ; 
 thus she was on both sides. At the age of 
 forty-four she was still very beautiful, and 
 Baron Bernstetten could say without flat- 
 tery, but not without fatuity : " If she is not 
 the Queen of Westphalia, she is at least the 
 
226 THE WOMEN OF TEE UNITED STATES. 
 
 queen of our hearts." It is true that he 
 added : ' ' Her eyes attract us, but her tongue 
 drives us away," 
 
 In the midst of this elegant, witty, and 
 frivolous society she was in her true element, 
 admired, respected, but especially feared by 
 all, following up with equal obstinacy her 
 ambitious dreams and her notions of econ- 
 omy. In her letters to her father she gives 
 a curious picture of this strange life. She 
 sees that the hated marriage is about to take 
 place, that her efforts are powerless to pre- 
 vent it, and suddenly she turns about. Yet 
 on no account must he bring to her her 
 daughter-in-law ; upon this condition she will 
 use all her efforts toward the continuance of 
 the twelve hundred dollars income which the 
 Bonaparte family gave the son. They would 
 not dare refuse it ; they fear too much her 
 bitter words. Then she added : ' ' They know 
 well enough there is not a single ball or 
 soiree given in Florence without me. They 
 know that I am on an intimate footing with 
 all the foreign ministers, that I miss no court 
 reception, and they esteem me highly. 
 There is not one distinguished person of 
 whatever nationality whom I do not know, 
 and who will not do me any favour. My days 
 and nights are spent in society." Then she 
 modifies her plans for the future ; for whom 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 227 
 
 and for what should she continue to econ- 
 omise any more ? "I will spend my income, 
 I will buy wood to burn and candles ; I will 
 have better food, and will be more comfort- 
 able than I have ever been before. I have 
 deprived myself of everything, going with- 
 out fires in the winter, economising in lights, 
 and ordering my scanty dinner from the 
 wineshop. I will buy books and I will sub- 
 scribe to magazines instead of borrowing 
 them from the neighbouring cafe. I will put 
 an end to this sordid system of economy 
 which I have imposed on myself. I will 
 have a dinner such as others have. I will no 
 longer be compelled to write my letters on 
 the blank sheets of those that I receive ; I 
 will have paper of my own on which to write 
 to friends." 
 
 We can judge from these details what her 
 life must have been. Pride and worldly 
 love have their voluntary martyrs, and let 
 us not be deceived. Her dominating char- 
 acteristic at this time was avarice and love 
 of society. At first maternal ambition, the 
 wish for a great marriage for her son, had 
 been the principal motives. She economised 
 and pinched herself that his fortune might 
 be large, and so help his chances of a brilliant 
 marriage ; later she economised for the sake 
 of economising. " Money," she said, u is 
 
228 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the only reliable friend," but avarice and the 
 need of society carried her beyond bounds. 
 "I do not understand life," she wrote on 
 October 27th, 1829, " outside of the courts 
 and in the company of great personages. I 
 must go into society every day. I consider it 
 more sensible to pass one's time at balls and 
 dinners than to spend it as do the American 
 women, in having children, the only possible 
 distraction at Baltimore. If I had a daugh- 
 ter, I would rather introduce her at court, 
 and let her dance every evening in good 
 society, than to see her married to a penni- 
 less man, and giving to the world poor little 
 devils who would curse their very existence. 
 I hate mediocrity and the so-called domestic 
 hearth. When I was compelled to live 
 in America, the idea of suicide entered my 
 head, but courage failed me. I have sacri- 
 ficed everything to ambition : you know it ; 
 how can you think, then, that I could 
 ever approve of my son's marrying in 
 Baltimore?" 
 
 The English novelist and humourist Wil- 
 liam Makepeace Thackeray, in his New- 
 comes, has perfectly described this type of 
 an ambitious and worldly woman, whom 
 even age is powerless to call back to the 
 realities of life, who understands life only 
 in the midst of courts and intrigues, always 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 229 
 
 on exhibition, measuring her importance by 
 the number and quality of her relations, 
 and dying, like Lady Kew, on the field of 
 honour that is to say, in a drawing-room, 
 where Death touched her with his finger 
 and said : " Let us go ; the hour is come." 
 
 In reading these letters of Elizabeth Pat- 
 terson one cannot help thinking that she 
 was really predestined to live among these 
 surroundings, and that she would have 
 played the role of sovereign as well and 
 perhaps better than many others, with con- 
 viction and not without grandeur. Haughty 
 in prosperity, she would have been in- 
 flexible in adversity, energetic in resist- 
 ance. She would not have bowed before 
 misfortune ; she would not have bent her 
 head even before destiny. With what calm 
 serenity this American woman judges from 
 her point of view both her son and the 
 imperial family from which she is cut off ! 
 " I hope to live," she wrote, " to see Jerome 
 make a name in the world and live with 
 great people. He has no ambition, he is 
 without energy ; he is a rock of Sisyphus, 
 which I have tried in vain to roll to the 
 summit. You must have noticed that he 
 has none of the qualities which make men 
 aspire to a high rank. I knew it, and I 
 saw it; but my mother-love drove me to 
 
230 THE WOMEN OF TEE UNITED STATES. 
 
 fight against all evidence and his puling 
 nature. For years I tried everything to 
 make a superior man of him, to inspire in 
 him sentiments worthy of the nephew of 
 the greatest genius the world has ever seen. 
 This great man left to his relations only a 
 great name. Genius, ambition, will power 
 he carried them all with him to his tomb ; 
 not a spark of one survived. The Bona- 
 partes are a mean family, without high 
 ambitions, mediocre in everything, con- 
 demned to the obscurity of a purely animal 
 life, good only for living well, to be repro- 
 duced, and to decay. ' ' Twenty-five years did 
 not soften her anger and bitterness, but one 
 sees that strength and greatness retain all 
 their prestige in her eyes. Weakness, want 
 of energy, found her pitiless. She entirely 
 forgives the author of her woes ; in her place 
 she would have done the same ; if she could, 
 she would act the same toward her son. 
 She does not forgive those who submit and 
 bow down. She was born to command, and 
 also to despise those who obey. At length, 
 on the llth of November, 1829, she let a scorn- 
 ful assent escape her. Jerome could marry 
 his Miss Williams, he had been married on 
 the 3d, but a phrase in a letter from her 
 father did not pass without protestations. 
 " You ask me if I still have the right to 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 231 
 
 blame Jerome, I who deserted my family 
 and my country. When after twenty-four 
 years I returned to that country, to that 
 family, what did I find ? A cruel and brutal 
 reception. Perhaps God will forgive you, 
 but do not expect that I can forgive. I owe 
 nothing to my family and I have a right to 
 remain away." Then she is amazed that 
 anyone of good sense should reproach her for 
 having left a place where neither her beauty 
 nor her intelligence was admired. She holds 
 to this point and keeps returning to it. The 
 less one alludes to her voluntary exile the 
 better it is for all. She refrained from 
 every complaint, she killed her griefs arid 
 sufferings, she never spoke of them, and 
 does not now except with respect : this is 
 all that anyone can ask of her. If her son 
 should die before her and without children, 
 she will leave her fortune to her family ; 
 but for God's sake let him have the sense 
 to believe that she judges and appreciates 
 to their fall extent the marks of interest 
 she has received from her family. Her son 
 being what he is, perhaps after all his grand- 
 father had a right to marry him in America ; 
 but let no one speak to her of what he does 
 to her, at odds with her family. She 
 understood how to live as she wished and 
 where she wished, in the only place where 
 
232 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 she could forget the griefs with which she 
 has been overwhelmed. 
 
 She then begs her father to send her a 
 copy of her will drawn up in favour of her 
 son, without any possible reversion to her 
 daughter-in-law. She was to survive him 
 by seven years, and leave to her grandchil- 
 dren a fortune of seven millions and a half. 
 
 Her correspondence discloses in a cruel 
 but true and clear light the character of this 
 American woman whom circumstances hin- 
 dered from playing an important role. Of 
 no use outside the circle where the destiny 
 of Europe was in question, she was a grand 
 figure within it. The quiet and obscurity of 
 private life did not suit her : she said so, and 
 we cannot contradict her. Sister-in-law of 
 an emperor and wife of a king, with a crown 
 on her forehead she would have defended it 
 with a hero's energy. Prince Gortschakoff 
 was not deceived when he said : " With that 
 woman on the steps of the throne the fall 
 of the Empire would have given us much 
 more trouble." And Talleyrand added : 
 " What a queen she would have been!" 
 Napoleon did not know her ; he was mis- 
 taken in thinking his brother had made a 
 mesalliance. She knew that he had not, 
 and did not hesitate to say so and to set it 
 down in writing. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 233 
 
 III. 
 
 Since the time when Elizabeth Patterson 
 spoke so disdainfully of the mediocrity of 
 American fortunes, and of the quiet role of 
 the married woman of the United States, 
 many changes have taken place. These 
 American fortunes have become the greatest 
 in the world, and the society whose portrait 
 she traced, animated by spite, and which 
 she accused (sometimes wrongly) of relegat- 
 ing women to the tamest occupations, has 
 opened to woman a field much larger than 
 the one she occupies in Europe. 
 
 No one has better brought out this last 
 point than Professor Bryce in his interest- 
 ing work entitled The American Common- 
 weaWi, wherein he notes with ah unerring 
 precision the contrast between the social 
 and legal position of the American woman 
 and that of the English woman a contrast 
 all the more striking because the United 
 States have received from England, with their 
 social conditions, their morals, their cus- 
 toms, their legal code and their common law. 
 But this common law originally made woman 
 a mere thing, the chattel of man, inferior to 
 him, subordinate in everything. They were 
 one, but man alone personified the union ; 
 
234 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 he was the one and she was the zero, with- 
 out rights, incapable of buying or selling, 
 of directing or even of controlling the educa- 
 tion of her own children. If, since then, 
 successive modifications introduced into 
 England in the common law have modified 
 what then was excessive and evil in it, the 
 Americans have not waited for this gradual 
 change, due to the progress of civilisation, 
 to repudiate from the start the greatest part 
 of these traditions of another age. And it 
 is not only in the legal domain that they 
 have acted thus ; socially it is the same. 
 ^ Nowhere else," writes Mr. Bryce, confirm- 
 ing the assertions of all those who have 
 lived in the United States, "has a woman, 
 and especially a young girl, such a happy 
 life. The world is at her feet. Society 
 seems formed for her pleasure. Father, 
 mother, uncles, aunts, friends, give up 
 their convenience and their tastes to hers. 
 The young woman has a much less share 
 of worldly pleasure, because, except among 
 the rich classes, she is more absorbed than 
 the European woman by home duties, the 
 servants being relatively costly and only 
 imperfectly trained. But," says Mr. Bryce, 
 and on this point wejdiffer a little from him, 
 " the position which she occupies in her 
 home is superior to that of the English or 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 235 
 
 even of the French woman. We do not 
 speak now," he says, "of the German 
 woman, whose role is absolutely inferior." 
 He proves his assertion by the surprise 
 which the relations existing between English 
 husbands and wives excite in American 
 women. When it happens that they re- 
 ceive English friends, they are struck, they 
 say, by the excessive deference which under 
 all circumstances the English woman pays 
 her husband. She consults his conven- 
 ience and his tastes, in amusements, in 
 going out, in making visits, in shopping. 
 It is not perhaps absolutely the same in 
 France, where the woman moves more freely 
 in a larger sphere. American women recog- 
 nise this, but they think that, if the result 
 is in France different, the starting point is 
 the same. It is to the skill and wise tact 
 of the French women that they attribute an 
 /equality which, according to them, is only 
 Apparent, whereas in the United States the 
 duty and the desire also of a husband is to 
 consult his wife's tastes, and to do for her 
 what the Englishman expects his wife to do 
 for him. The contrast is stronger, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Bryce, in the social life of the 
 drawing-rooms, where, he says, the fine ear 
 of the American lady perceives in the voice 
 of the European who speaks to her a note 
 
236 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 of condescension to which she is not accus- 
 tomed, and in his manners a shade of supe- 
 riority which surprises her. "Then, even 
 when a woman has the advantage of rank 
 over him, of social position, of intelligence 
 and of wit, the European considers himself 
 above her, simply because he is a man, and 
 lets her understand it. Such an idea never 
 occurs to an American. He speaks to a 
 woman as he would speak to an equal, with 
 more deference in the form, choosing by 
 preference subjects which interest her, but 
 treating them as he would with a man, whose 
 opinion in his eyes would be as valuable as 
 his own. On her side, the American woman 
 does not expect him to sustain the whole 
 burden of a conversation ; she considers it 
 her duty to be agreeable, to converse, and to 
 please. If it is a question of courtesies, 
 she claims the rights belonging to her sex." 
 Indeed, she never gives them up, and even 
 exaggerates them at times ; and a curious 
 connection may be made out between the 
 oft-merited praises which Mr. Bryce, Eng- 
 lish as he is, gives to American women, and 
 the frequently harsh criticisms of American 
 writers ; and that not for the pleasure of 
 contradicting observations made in equal 
 good faith, but to note once more one of 
 these characteristic traits which to some 
 
TEE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 237 
 
 extent form the heart of a character, side 
 by side with that which is more apparent, 
 and which has harmed American women 
 m'ore than more serious faults. In the 
 North American Review of September, 
 1890, an article appeared which caused a\ 
 sensation in the United States as much by I 
 the ability of the author, Mr. 0. Fay Adams,/ 
 as by the title he chose: The Mannerless^ 
 Sex. "I have to do with women," said Mr. 
 Adams in his first sentences, " and I know 
 beforehand that I am going to oppose all the 
 accepted ideas ; but what can I do if these 
 ideas rest on a purely imaginary basis? 
 For a long time we have heard in every 
 form that women exert a good influence 
 over our manners, that by their example 
 they refine and polish them. Many people 
 end by believing this in spite of evidence. 
 The men believe it, or affect to believe it, 
 through gallantry ; as to the women, they 
 are thoroughly convinced of it." 
 
 There is absolutely nothing in this claim, in 
 the United States at least, says the author ; 
 and if the men in their intercourse with one 
 another adopted the manners which the 
 women exhibit outside of their homes, their 
 bold egotism and unpleasant manner, it 
 would soon make social life impossible. To 
 justify his assertions Mr. Adams cites a 
 
238 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 number of cases taken from the details of 
 every-day life, and notes the following 
 points : 
 
 First, the indifference with which woman 
 subordinates the convenience of others to 
 her caprices ; and this especially in the case 
 of young girls 
 
 Second, the scornful tranquillity with 
 which she makes her men and women 
 visitors dance attendance upon her, a char- 
 acteristic trait of women who are no longer 
 young. 
 
 Third, the impossibility of her allowing a 
 speaker to finish what he or she is saying, 
 before speaking, a trait common to all 
 women, as is : 
 
 Fourth, the impossibility of being exact, 
 and their rudeness toward one another. 
 
 For reasons on which the author says 
 there is no need of insisting, because every- 
 one knows them, this rudeness is less 
 noticeable toward the men. It none the 
 less exists, he says, only it appears in 
 another form. Enter a railway station and 
 take your place in line. A woman arrives 
 and goes right through the gate without the 
 least thought of those who are waiting for 
 their turn. She calls for a ticket, says she 
 is in haste, and asks of the agent, whom she 
 has under her thumb, so to speak, the end- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 239 
 
 less information which he can give. If any- 
 one requests her to take her place in the 
 line, she thinks him impertinent and lets 
 him know it. She wishes neither to wait 
 nor to hurry ; the thought does not occur to 
 her that she is encroaching upon the rights 
 of those who have come before her ; and if 
 the impatient ticket-agent asks her to make 
 way for those behind, and to ask her ques- 
 tions of some other official, she goes off 
 indignant at the man's insolence. The same 
 manner and the same unreasonableness she 
 shows in every public place in the post- 
 offices, at concerts and at the theatres, says 
 Mr. Adams. Everywhere she claims the 
 first place without the least thought of 
 others, monopolising the time and attention 
 of clerks whom she besets with questions 
 without always listening to their answers. 
 "But," he adds, "it is in the dry -goods 
 shops that we see her unconscious egotism. 
 From the moment when she crosses the 
 threshold, and carelessly lets the door 
 swing back on those who are behind her, to 
 the hour when she leaves, there is not one 
 minute when she does not show the deepest 
 disdain for the convenience of her fellow- 
 beings. For hours she compels the unhappy 
 employes to unroll dress-goods which she 
 has not an idea of buying ; she makes in a 
 
240 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 loud and strident voice insulting remarks on 
 the slowness and stupidity of the clerks ; 
 she displaces and drops things with the 
 utmost indifference ; she stares insolently at 
 her neighbours from head to foot ; she ob- 
 structs the aisles ; and her umbrella is an 
 everlasting threat to the eyes of those about 
 her. When at last she leaves, having 
 accomplished nothing of what she should 
 have done, and much that she should not 
 have done, she goes home with as easy a con- 
 science as a saint of the Middle Ages after a 
 day given up to pious works ; in her home 
 she says with complacence that men under- 
 stand nothing of the art of buying, and that 
 women alone possess it. Let us thank God, 
 my brethren, that it is so." The author 
 says, and we shall leave to him the respon- 
 sibility of his assertions, that if among his 
 equals the men seemed as rude as many 
 women, their day would not end without 
 their receiving some well-merited lessons. 
 
 So strong a criticism could not pass un- 
 noticed. A Mr. Croffut has answered Mr. 
 Adams, but is it really an answer? " We 
 admit," he says, " the truth of these facts, 
 and we appreciate how much is lacking in 
 the manners of a large number of American 
 women in public. But the fault is less 
 theirs than the men's, whose absurd gal- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 241 
 
 lantry and ridiculous tolerance have en- 
 couraged this unreasonableness. We only 
 need mention as proof of this the fact that 
 the American woman alone is considered 
 here the cause of it, and we cannot reproach 
 European women of the same class for a 
 similar manner." He adds that one rarely ' 
 sees in Europe a woman accept a man's 
 offer of a seat without a word of thanks, 
 or presuming on her sex to sustain her in 
 ignoring the obligation of taking her place in 
 a crowd, at the theatre, in a car, in a post- 
 office or a bank. Nothing is more simple, 
 be it understood, than to put American 
 women in their proper place, and to convert 
 them, like their European sisters, into dis- 
 creet and courteous persons. It is the 
 man's affair and not the woman's. 
 
 In noting these caprices, which the major- 
 ity of travellers in the United States have 
 remarked with more or less insistence, 
 we have gone by preference to American 
 sources, which are without a doubt less to 
 be suspected of prejudice. The one that 
 Mr. Adams advances is a true one, and Mr. 
 Croffut's no less so. What they say con- 
 firms our former assertions as to the exces- 
 sive liberty which young girls and women 
 enjoy in the United States, the exaggerated 
 idea which they have of their rights and 
 
242 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 privileges, and the men's extreme courtesy 
 toward them. But it would be a great 
 /error to see in the criticism of Mr. Adams a 
 I true and faithful portrait of the American 
 woman, to regard these characteristics uni- 
 versal, and to attribute to all the unrea- 
 sonableness which shocks the Americans 
 themselves just as much when they con- 
 trast it with the manners of the most of 
 their countrywomen. Those who find more 
 to blame than to approve of in American 
 women, and girls especially, those whom 
 their free manners shock with their inde- 
 pendence, their taste for luxury, and their 
 craving for admiration, often make a text of 
 all this in order to bring an indictment 
 n gainst the democratic institutions of the 
 United States. All things considered, the 
 result could not be otherwise, the starting 
 point being given, namely, the constant 
 between young men and girls, the 
 
 equality of the sexes, made into an axiom, 
 
 the withdrawal of the parents, the children's 
 
 independence, the preferences freely de- 
 
 clared, and the choice freely made. The 
 
 . caprice that is so marked is, according to 
 
 / them, the inevitable consequences of a de- 
 
 mocracy instinctively opposed to the prin- 
 
 ciple of authority, striving in everything to 
 
 reduce to a minimum any active control, and 
 
THE WOMEN Of 1 THE UNITED STATES. 243 
 
 extolling equality with an apostle's zeal and 
 practising it with the fervour of a proselyte. 
 But then would these pretended apostles 
 of equality, these would-be levellers of 
 privileges, ask to re-establish inequality to 
 the advantage of woman, to make her the 
 privileged one par excellence, and, taking 
 the reverse of the Asiatic conception, raise 
 her to despotism and convert man to the 
 position of a subject? We all greatly 
 exaggerate the influence of political insti- 
 tutions over social customs. Unstable and 
 fickle, the former change according to the 
 play of passion or the necessity of the 
 moment. It is not so with the other, with 
 the usages and customs which rely on un- 
 broken traditions, and on a long transmis- 
 sion. They change but slowly ; they are the 
 result of an experience of a hundred years, 
 and in their evolution do not act by sudden 
 jerks. There exists at heart more than one \ 
 imagines common to the American and the / 
 Englishman in their relations with women, 
 and the largest part in the woman of the 
 United States, that greatest independence 
 which she enjoys, comes as much from the 
 change of surroundings as from the intel- 
 l^ctual superiority which she knew how to 
 attain from the start, and which she has for 
 a lon; time retained. 
 
244 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 But as the United States grow and become 
 refined the space between the two sexes 
 decreases. The time has passed when the 
 fight against nature absorbed the American ; 
 the forests are cut down, the land cultivated, 
 the Indian reservations are dying out ; the 
 great rivers, once obstacles to communica- 
 tion, are converted into mighty arteries of 
 commerce ; an immense network of roads 
 and railroads connects all parts of the Union ; 
 and the public school system, largely en- 
 dowed and widely extended, has consider- 
 ably raised the intellectual level, and restored 
 a part of his superiority to man. The United 
 States possess to-day illustrious scholars, 
 eminent lawyers, celebrated physicans, pro- 
 fessors known and appreciated in Europe, 
 writers of the first rank ; and if from an 
 artist's view-point they cannot yet rival the 
 Old World, we must take into account the 
 relative youth of their civilisation and the 
 promise of the future which we saw in the 
 exhibit of their paintings at Paris in 1889. 
 If, then, from an intellectual standpoint, 
 man has to a great extent taken possession 
 of the territory which woman occupied, if he 
 has not only shortened the distance which 
 separates him from her, but also gained an 
 advantage which more strongly developed 
 faculties, a more robust constitution, and a 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 245 
 
 more evenly balanced will give him, there 
 is, nevertheless, a social province of which he 
 neither can nor wants to rob her, because 
 this province is one of traditions, of conces- 
 sions made by him, and accepted and ex- 
 tended by her. Just here appears the con- 
 trast between the ideas of the Anglo-Saxon 
 and of the Latin race the antithesis between 
 the Eastern conception and that of the West, 
 the two extreme points of which are Asia and 
 t h _g_U nl 'M ft fqfag , W1 ' f fr Central and South- 
 ern Europe as the middle term. A maximum 
 and a minimum of human individuality 
 correspond to these two extremes. No where 
 is this individuality so marked as in the 
 United States, nowhere is it so dimly seen as 
 in the extreme East. England has trans- 
 mitted to the United States, with this stock 
 of individuality characteristic of the race 
 and more marked than elsewhere in Europe, 
 that respect for individuals which was early 
 seen in the laws and institutions of Britain. 
 It is to her everlasting honour that she 
 first proclaimed the rights of individuals, 
 and by the habeas corpus laid the corner- 
 stone of her Constitution. In the social 
 organisation, in morals and customs, it was 
 not so ; certain contradictions existed in- 
 herent to these historic causes, to feudal 
 traditions and monarchical usages ; class 
 
246 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 distinction, primogeniture, the authority of 
 the head of the family, woman's subordinate 
 i J position all these had but little in common 
 with^the principle of individuality and 
 equality, but in this classic land of com- 
 promises their Harmony was bound to come, 
 / and it was only a question of time ; the idea 
 of justice deeply rooted in the conscience, 
 and the mind little by little removed the 
 obstacles which hindered its realisation. 
 Harmony was brought about in England, 
 more in the groundwork itself than in the 
 form ; the exterior remained unchanged 
 feudal and monarchical, but behind this 
 decoration of another age rose a new world. 
 Of class distinction only that was kept 
 which was thought necessary to the preserv- 
 ing of the monarchical form ; the hereditary 
 peerage opened its doors to the intellectual. 
 From their birthright came the independence 
 of the younger sons of a family freed from 
 paternal authority which was despotic from 
 the day when it existed without compensa- 
 tion for the future. Finally, woman without 
 a dot became freer in her choice, more inde- 
 pendent in her manner, in one word, more 
 individual, than she was in any other Euro- 
 pean country. What was more logical? 
 The homage rendered changed its object ; 
 it was given to her, to a distinct individuality 
 
V 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 247 
 
 more than to her sex in general. There was 
 something personal and limited in it, of dif- 
 ferent degrees, excluding all disrespect from 
 its gallantry, which had but poorly hidden 
 vulgar desire under a vulgar form. Thus in 
 the sphere in which she moves the English- 
 woman is more protected than the woman on 
 the Continent. That which survives of class 
 distinction binds her to an order of things 
 where she has the position she desires. She 
 is screened and sheltered. Great lady or 
 servant, urban or rustic, she has her own 
 world, her equals, whose idea is her law, 
 whose good or bad opinion has much weight 
 with her in that she cannot appeal from 
 their verdict to any other social tribunal. 
 From this comes the need of harmony in the 
 class to which one belongs ; from this also 
 the concessions often hypocritical, and which \ 
 are often called "English cant." It is the 
 love of exterior decorum, of form and appear- 
 ance. We find at every round of the social 
 ladder, with man as with woman, every- 
 Avhere, a human being at the mercy of his 
 passions and social demands, striving to 
 unite the satisfaction of the one with respect 
 for the other. 
 
 If it is not peculiar to England, this 
 hypocrisy is more common there than else- 
 where, sure, as it is, of a tacit accomplice in 
 
248 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 public opinion, disarmed, it seems, by the 
 " homage which vice pays to virtue." The 
 press assents to it, not without an occa- 
 sional murmur of dissatisfaction ; it affects 
 to ignore debauchery and vice, and forms a 
 conspiracy of silence about them. In order 
 to show the extent to which these are carried 
 it would have to run the risk of driving 
 away its readers, especially the women, and 
 of being accused of pandering to prurient 
 curiosity. 
 
 Nothing, moreover, is a better proof of 
 the influence that woman exerts on English 
 / literature than the English novel. It is she 
 \J I who makes its reputation and decides its 
 success ; it is she for whom the novelists 
 write, anxious before all else for her approba- 
 tion, which they win only by avoiding in- 
 delicate situations and by veiling too glar- 
 ing pictures. Their books must be able to 
 be put into any hand, to lie on the family 
 table, and must respect accepted ideas and 
 moral conventions. Whatever may be the 
 inconvenience of this affectation of virtue, 
 it has its advantages ; and above all else it 
 is comfortable ; it allows certain social ques- 
 tions to remain unnoticed and to be hidden 
 in shadow, so that we might conclude from 
 the silence about them they do not exist, 
 or at least that they exist only in exceptional 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 249 
 
 and accidental cases. It is useful, in so far 
 as it suppresses notoriety and the scandal 
 that in other countries is made over a world 
 which the greater world despises. 
 
 This English cant is found in the United 
 States modified by the existence of the 
 religious element ; here it is less an affecta- 
 tion of good taste than the manifestation of 
 a moral instinct. It was once the fashion 
 to jeer at the excessive prudery of Boston 
 women, with their intolerance of certain 
 customary terms, and who were shocked at 
 the mere mention of a masculine garment. 
 There were exaggerations, but less, however, 
 than many suppose, of an ultra-puritanism, 
 now vanished, the traces of which are hard 
 to find. What survives is only a degree of 
 reticence and the delicacy which woman has 
 a right to expect from every well-bred man. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Secluded in her family and social environ- 
 ment, the American woman has up to this 
 time made but few and timid journeys 
 into the sphere of politics. It does not 
 appeal to her, and when the authors of 
 the two celebrated novels Democracy and 
 Through One Administration represent 
 her among these surroundings, they avoid 
 
250 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 giving her an active role. She figures only 
 as an onlooker and supernumerary, and 
 from these very stories it may be inferred 
 how little real connection there is between 
 her and the political world, and how little 
 influence she really has over it or even pre- 
 tends to have. It is not so of that world in 
 which she ordinarily moves ; and when we 
 examine closely the various phases and 
 details of life in the United States, we are 
 struck by the part which woman plays and 
 by the important place which she occupies 
 in it. This is still more true in the case 
 of those in moderate circumstances in the 
 middle agricultural class, in the farms and 
 settlements, and in the industrial centres, 
 than in the large cities. Not that the latter 
 do not possess curious types for study that 
 are essentially original, and unite in the 
 highest degree the demands of modern 
 social life with the highest aspirations and 
 an active philanthropy. 
 
 One expects little on meeting, in a large 
 city like New York, a young girl, beautiful, 
 rich, courted, flattered, who deliberately 
 wards off all suitors and yet lives a social 
 life, consecrating her existence and her for- 
 tune to the satisfaction of two unusual 
 passions charity and a taste for the beau- 
 tiful. Such was Miss Catherine Lorillard 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 251 
 
 Wolfe, who recently died at the age of sixty- 
 two, the richest woman, while she lived, in 
 the United States. Notwithstanding her 
 great charities she left a fortune, diminished 
 it is true, but still more than five million 
 dollars. It is estimated that she gave at 
 least an equal amount in bequests to chari- 
 ties, donations to charitable institutions, 
 to asylums and schools, and spent more 
 than two million dollars upon the works of 
 art which she collected in her home in New 
 York, in her Newport villa, "Vineland," 
 next to Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt's, the 
 building of which cost more than three 
 hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 She held a high position in New York 
 society, and a still higher one in the hearts 
 of the poor, who greatly mourned her death. 
 Surely charity, a human instinct, is not a 
 special virtue of the American. We see it 
 in every country of the world and at every 
 round of the social ladder. It is more often 
 than we imagine associated with the posses- 
 sion of great wealth ; it is its excuse, the 
 reason for its existence ; but it is here that 
 this virtue is enshrined in a woman whose 
 age, beauty, wealth, and tastes seem to 
 incline toward a brilliant marriage and to- 
 ward a successful worldly life, and who, 
 without renouncing the rank which she 
 
252 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 holds by force of her position and wealth, 
 makes of her fortune the most noble and the 
 most generous use. 
 
 If from the world of those who are called, 
 and often wrongly, the fortunate ones of 
 this earth, we pass to those other numer- 
 ous beings to whom work is a necessity 
 and strife a daily task, here again, more 
 than anywhere else, woman's influence is 
 revealed, filled, as was hers whose life we 
 have briefly mentioned, with the inspiration 
 of her mission, doing it without faltering, 
 with helpful hands, and elevating and beauti- 
 fying the souls about her. Her humble life 
 is that of many another woman in many a 
 far Western village which is fast becoming a 
 populous city, in many a settlement in which 
 a strong and healthy generation is rising 
 reserved for the future, and which, like a 
 flood, engulfs the new States of the North- 
 west. It has been our privilege to see the 
 work of some of these representative women, 
 and to measure the extent and importance 
 of their work ; and if among the examples 
 that we remember, and those still more 
 numerous which the history of the colonisa- 
 tion of the West during the past thirty 
 years gives us, we prefer to stop before that 
 mentioned by the author of a book entitled 
 Tendencies of American Life, it is because 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 253 
 
 by the simplicity of the outline and the 
 minute exactness of detail he brings into 
 bold relief the kind of influence and its 
 simple and efficacious methods to which we 
 allude. 
 
 She was the daughter of an ordinary East- 
 ern farmer, poor, honest, religious, and bur- 
 dened with a family. Like her sisters and 
 her companions, she became engaged at the 
 early age of sixteen, and her lover being 
 poor also, she went out to service on the 
 neighbouring farm, working as he worked 
 with the view of making a modest sum of 
 money, with which they might go West and 
 create a home. This took them three years, 
 at the end of which time they married and 
 settled four hundred miles away in the 
 southern part of Kansas. The land there 
 was cheap, the population sparse ; the set- 
 tlement consisted of only a dozen log cabins, 
 scattered over an area of thirty miles. At 
 first, everything went well ; she helped 
 him, kept house, and attended to the 
 poultry. The first harvest was a good one, 
 and the log cabin gave way to a comfortable 
 farmhouse. About them the country be- 
 came populated, immigration set in from the 
 East and the West, and the farm improved 
 and became of greater value. But new ele- 
 ments entered into this farming district. 
 
254 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Miners, disappointed in California, ranch- 
 men from the prairies, outcasts from the 
 great cities, came, drawn there by the suc- 
 cess of the first settlers. The husband was 
 among the number of the latter, a little un- 
 balanced by his prosperity and by nature 
 very social. Little by little he allowed him- 
 self to be led away, he worked less and spent 
 more, frequented barrooms and deserted 
 his home. Trouble entered the home. His 
 wife saw him as he was ; but at twenty-two, 
 far from her relatives, her parents, without 
 friends, without advice, first sadness and 
 then discouragement seized upon her. She 
 found the necessary consolation in her re- 
 ligion and in the remembrance of home 
 teaching. She undertook to save her hus- 
 band, to remove him from temptation, to 
 bring back their former happiness. She suc- 
 ceeded with time, with patience, and with 
 perseverance. Not without trouble and ex- 
 treme economy she settled the debts, won 
 back the husband, more weak than vicious, 
 and spared him all reproach, only helping 
 him by words of encouragement. After a 
 few years sad years, too, but not without 
 glimpses of hope she accomplished her task 
 and regained the modest ease beyond which 
 her ambition did not look. The first use she 
 made of this was, having won her husband's 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 255 
 
 consent, to adopt two little homeless or- 
 phans. She had no children of her own, 
 and the adopted ones filled their place. To 
 them she devoted all the affection of an in- 
 telligent mother-love, and all unconsciously 
 to her her example, like a seed sown in good 
 soil, took root and grew. She was con- 
 sulted, for her advice was honest ; she was 
 heeded, for she was sincere ; she was loved, 
 for she was good ; and her influence broad- 
 ened and grew. 
 
 The day came when she had another and a 
 higher duty to perform, and she undertook 
 it with the same serenity and courage. 
 Thinking it too heavy to bear alone, she 
 looked about her for aid and comfort, first to 
 her husband, whose love and confidence and 
 respect she possessed, and then to the village 
 physician, for the settlement had become a 
 village. Without hesitating he became her 
 ally, such was the sympathy she inspired. 
 To eliminate or reform the dangerous ele- 
 ments from their neighbourhood, by the 
 church and the school, to fight the wicked, 
 to arouse and elevate the rising generation, 
 to eradicate false ideas by good books, to 
 create a social life, which would draw men 
 away from the saloon, and to bring woman 
 out from her solitude such were her aims, 
 
256 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and she attained them by the same methods 
 whose efficaciousness she had proved. 
 
 " To-day," writes her biographer, " she 
 consecrates to others and to her own intel- 
 lectual development the leisure which ease 
 gives her, which she did not seek, but which 
 came unasked. She reads much, she writes 
 well and clearly, and Eastern newspapers 
 have often published letters in which she 
 shows a remarkable knowledge of the needs 
 of the farming class. I had the opportunity 
 of driving with her on some of her trips. As 
 far away as the workers in the fields could 
 see her they dropped their tools and ran to 
 her, begging her to come into their homes 
 and see their wives and children. There is 
 nothing more touching than the affectionate 
 homage of these rough men, nothing more 
 charming than her manner toward them and 
 the clasp she gives their rough hands. I 
 dined with her friend the doctor ; he told 
 me the details of her life, and in so doing 
 had difficulty in hiding his emotion. When 
 he had finished, his wife uttered only one 
 word : ' Here, you see, all women love her, 
 and all men adore her.' ' 
 
 Let us change the place and the condi- 
 tions. Among other surroundings, starting 
 from a different point, let us note the same 
 forces still at work. Here no longer do we 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 257 
 
 talk of an exceptional case, but of a com- 
 monplace, because it is true and has no 
 startling incidents one of those private 
 dramas that one meets everywhere, uncon- 
 scious of its existence. The woman whose 
 life the same observer writes belongs by edu- 
 cation to the higher class. As a young girl 
 she lived in ease. She chose for a husband 
 a merchant of her own age, an honourable 
 man, and on the road to fortune. The first 
 years of their married life were prosperous ; 
 their reverses date from the business depres- 
 sion which followed the War of Secession. 
 Anxious about the future, the husband con- 
 verted into money what property he had, 
 and leaving New York went, after the South 
 became quiet, to live with his wife in one of 
 the Carolinas. He bought there for a low 
 price one of the many estates left by ruined 
 proprietors. But he realised nothing from 
 agriculture. The soil of the farm required 
 enriching and intelligent labour to make it 
 of value. He took account of this, but not 
 until too late ; and, being unable to meet 
 the necessary expenses, he sold the farm at a 
 loss and went to live in a little neighbouring 
 village, where he put all that remained of 
 his money into the purchase of a house, of 
 which he could pay only half the price, 
 giving a mortgage on the furniture for the 
 
258 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 remainder. He counted on settling liis 
 debts with the money owed him, but this 
 was not paid, and he was compelled to leave 
 this last home, which represented all that 
 was left. In the meantime two children 
 had been born to them, and it was with 
 difficulty that the father could support them 
 by his labour. The wife resolved to help. 
 She sold her piano, her last luxury, and 
 bought a sewing-machine ; but fifteen hours 
 a day of constant toil brought her only 
 three or four dollars a week, and the work 
 exhausted her. To cap the climax, her hus- 
 band was taken ill, and often during a long 
 winter they lacked food and fuel. She 
 struggled on, without giving up, with the 
 unconscious heroism of good women in des- 
 perate situations. At this point we will 
 quote the words of her biographer. He gives 
 us a conversation which he had with her 
 later on : 
 
 4 'And did no one come to your assistance ? ' ' 
 " No one knew how poor we were. I told 
 no one. I might have met with more sym- 
 pathy, perhaps, if I had spoken, if" her 
 voice trembled and her eyes filled with tears 
 "if I had made up my mind to expose 
 our misery ; but that I could not do, and 
 my clothes, though mended a score of times, 
 were never ragged." 
 
THE WOMEN OF TEE UNITED STATES. 259 
 
 " Do you regret the past ? " 
 
 "My marriage? No. As to the rest, 
 what good would it do ? I have no time to 
 give to useless regrets." 
 
 " Did not your friends and neighbours 
 seem selfish and cruel to you?" 
 
 " No. They had kind hearts ; but they 
 did not know, they could not guess and I 
 cannot blame them." 
 
 "Have you found support and help in 
 religion ? " 
 
 " Yes. Without that I should have given 
 up, for the burden was so heavy to bear. I 
 am not what they call a pious woman, but I 
 had faith, and I believed in the justice and 
 pity of God." 
 
 Her faith was simple, her heart brave. 
 Fallen from a higher position, she was still 
 ajvojnan, careful of her family and of her- 
 self, hiding her misery, bearing it without 
 faltering. Being well educated, and an 
 artist, she made a distinguished woman of 
 her daughter, who to-day manages one of 
 the largest schools for women in the United 
 States. She made of her son a man whose 
 career promises to be brilliant. In her 
 dauntless independence she looked only to 
 God and to herself, never to another, not 
 even to her own husband and children. 
 
260 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 A country which produces such women 
 has the right to be very proud of them. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Given the starting point of the American 
 woman, her equality with man, her intellec- 
 tual and social superiority, the charm of sex 
 refined and developed by natural selection, 
 and by the marriage of young girls, free in 
 their choice, with a race of settlers, energetic, 
 vigorous, profoundly imbued with religious 
 conviction and with respect for the marriage 
 tie, woman should necessarily appear, at any 
 given moment, as the definite expression, 
 the superior type, of the race and of her sur- 
 roundings. She is all this to-day, and it is 
 with a true pride that the American exhibits 
 her to Europe as the most perfect work of a 
 civilisation two centuries old. 
 
 And on this point Europe admits that he 
 is right. The American woman is as popular 
 there as the man is unpopular, notwithstand- 
 ing his exceptional qualities. The proof lies 
 in the reception which Europe gives to the 
 American woman, and which is not given to 
 her supposed fortune alone. Without doubt 
 the traditions from across the Atlantic are 
 modifying our view of the dowry, and the 
 millionaires of the New World appear in 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 261 
 
 this more generous than our capitalists ; but 
 still there are exceptions to this rule. If the 
 Princess Colonna, stepdaughter of the mil- 
 lionaire Mackay, received from her father-in- 
 law a dowry which was double that which 
 Baroness Burdett-Coutts brought by mar- 
 riage to Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, a Member of 
 Parliament, if we see in the far Western 
 States in Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada 
 rich miners who put their daughters on their 
 wedding day upon one scale of a balance, 
 and on the other an equal weight of gold 
 bullion, this plutocratic generosity and the 
 parvenu display are not the rule. They 
 cannot explain the undisputed success of 
 the American woman, the attraction which 
 she inspires, the charm which she possesses. 
 It seems as though on this essentially demo- 
 cratic soil nature reveals herself, in that 
 which concerns her, as more aristocratic than 
 elsewhere, and that the spirit of her choice 
 is perpetually working there to the advance- 
 ment of those she favours. 
 
 Of all the gifts which the soil affords one 
 of the most characteristic is undeniably that 
 of adaptability. Few European women pos- 
 sess to the same degree as do the Amer- 
 ican the faculty of identifying themselves 
 with such marvellous ease with new sur- 
 roundings, change of country, climate, and 
 
 OF THE 
 
 TTTsriVF/RSTTY 
 
262 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 conditions. Better than all others does 
 she accommodate herself to circumstances 
 while still preserving her individuality. 
 The ties which bind her to her native city or 
 village are not strong. She breaks them 
 without pain ; she emigrates without hesita- 
 tion. A native of New York or Boston, of 
 Baltimore or Philadelphia, she follows her 
 husband to the Far West, or travels with 
 him to London or Paris, to Munich or Rome, 
 with perfect ease. Distance does not alarm 
 her nor long journeys restrain her. It seems 
 as though she had no native country, so 
 easily does she adopt as her own the land 
 whither destiny leads her Melbourne or 
 Hong Kong, Chile or the Indies. Every- 
 where she carries her happy disposition with 
 her, her optimistic ideas of life, her gift of 
 finding some good in everything. She is the 
 true daughter of a nomadic race, given to 
 roving, indifferent as to where she is, holding 
 fast to that which helps her to accomplish 
 her ambition, to that in which her husband's 
 energy finds a wider and freer field. The 
 American girl does not hesitate for one in- 
 stant to marry the man that pleases her, 
 even if she must follow him to the Antipodes, 
 and spend there the best years of her life. 
 The same future which would make a French 
 girl, and perhaps still more her parents 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 263 
 
 hesitate, has no deterrent influence upon the 
 American. For years she has been familiar 
 with this possibility ; she knows by experi- 
 ence that the American "home" is not a 
 fixture, that it is easily moved, and that 
 nothing in the United States is rarer than a 
 life spent in a single city. She sees about 
 her the incessant movement of emigration, 
 from one State to another, from one city 
 to another. 
 
 It is only possessors of assured wealth 
 who do not move thus; but even with them 
 the nomadic instinct prevails. Europe at- 
 tracts them, and they go there with a readi- 
 ness which astonishes the European, holding 
 as nothing the fatigue and discomfort 
 of an ocean voyage, crossing the Atlantic 
 as a tourist crosses Lake Leman, pitching 
 their tents in all places and in all cities. 
 Thus the American woman is English in 
 London, French in Paris or Nice or Cannes, 
 and Italian at Rome or Naples or Florence. 
 In short, she is cosmopolitan. The tie which 
 binds her to her own land is very slender, 
 and no less slender is that which holds her 
 to her relatives and family. Early she is 
 imbued with the idea that her surroundings 
 are only temporary, that they are the result 
 of chance circumstances in which her wish, 
 her individuality, herself, have no part, that 
 
264 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 the time will come when other elements will 
 enter into play, and that then and only then 
 she will have to make a decision. For that 
 she must free herself from every habit, from 
 every troublesome attachment, and in the 
 considerations which determine her choice 
 she, and she alone, must assign to each its 
 true place and real importance. By her 
 woman's instinct she will ordinarily assign 
 the first place to her personal inclination, to 
 her heart, and next to her ambition. Before 
 these two considerations the others fade 
 away, or at least become secondary. Her 
 education has developed her powers of dis- 
 crimination and strengthened her sense of 
 responsibility. 
 
 In all this she differs greatly from the 
 French girl, otherwise brought up, accus- 
 tomed to see in marriage, before all else, an 
 association of interests and an emancipation 
 from guardianship. With the French the 
 home does not change ; if the language has 
 not the word, the people have the thing. 
 About the home permanent friends and 
 associates are found ; they sustain and 
 mutually uphold one another ; they are part 
 of a community, a large or small city, in 
 which each member of the collective body 
 has his relations, his occupations, his inter- 
 ests, and his friendships. Again, the family 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 265 
 
 ties are strong ; they both retain and sus- 
 tain one. Here the French girl lives, grows, 
 observes ; she is imbued with the ideas of 
 her surroundings, and rarely has any others ; 
 her ambition, for her and hers, consists on 
 her wedding-day in adding a new home to 
 those already existing. The nearer it is to 
 the one she leaves the more desirable it 
 seems. They wish it to be, if not in the 
 same house, at least in the same street, in 
 the same quarter, and at any rate in the 
 same city. To extend this choice of a hus- 
 band over the whole of France is much to 
 expect of her and hers ; over Europe, too 
 much ; over the world, not to be thought of. 
 This limitation of choice does not exist in 
 the United States. Independence is too 
 great there, one's personality is too strong 
 for one to accustom one's self to such close 
 ties. Everything that impairs individual 
 liberty is avoided as an obstacle which 
 hinders action, as an artificial barrier which 
 limits the horizon. This horizon must be as 
 wide as possible, that man's activity may 
 have free play. From the moment when one 
 thinks that life is, by the fact of social 
 organisation, for the greatest number a 
 field open to every effort, two solutions 
 arise : to meet the unknown boldly, relying 
 only on one's self, on one's intelligence, 
 
266 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 will, and perseverance, and possessing cour- 
 age and room for its exercise, as did the 
 settler and the emigrant ; or to advance 
 only cautiously, setting aside many a 
 favourable opportunity, upheld and sus- 
 tained by one's kindred, hemmed in by a 
 special career, itself supported by certain 
 conditions of advancement which have been 
 foreseen and justified by precedent, marked 
 by regular steps, among the number of which 
 is marriage, which establishes the man in 
 classifying the woman, and which strength- 
 ens his position and increases the property 
 of the one by the dot of the other. 
 
 This last is the French idea, wise, pru- 
 dent, conforming to traditions, having only a 
 moderate ambition, seeing most often only 
 one aim, not far off, putting established 
 interests and a tranquil life above all. 
 The other is the point of view of the Ameri- 
 can man and woman. If to save their reli- 
 gious faith and their individual liberty their 
 ancestors did not hesitate to leave their 
 fatherland, to cross the Atlantic at a time 
 when such a voyage was long and danger- 
 ous, and to engage in a war against nature 
 and the Indians, no more do their descend- 
 ants hesitate to emigrate from the shores of 
 the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, to the 
 Indies, or to Australia. 
 
jr 
 
 w 
 
 f UNIVERSITY 
 
 ^^>~^ rti icno 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 267 
 
 It is another motive which makes them 
 act, but it is as powerful as that which 
 moved their fathers, and they use many 
 other means of action. As is the woman so 
 is the American man cosmopolitan, more 
 awkwardly than she, and in appearance less 
 adaptable than she, yet like her indifferent 
 to his environment so that it offers him the 
 chances of success which he desires. Among 
 new surroundings, whatever they are, he 
 makes himself at home ; his individuality, 
 more marked than that of his companion, and 
 far less refined, persists ; cosmopolitan in 
 fact, he will remain American, and as such is 
 more angular, more positive in his ideas, 
 his wishes, and his tastes, and also less 
 pleasing and less popular than she ; but he 
 cannot help this, and he goes forward with 
 his eyes fixed on his goal. The considera- 
 tions which predominate with the French 
 girl when her marriage is spoken of, the 
 only act of her life in which her will can act 
 and ought to be consulted, are not at all 
 those which appeal to a young American 
 girl: Necessarily their conception of life 
 is different. The American girl applies her- 
 self with all her strength to the precepts of 
 the Bible ; she leaves her family, her friends, 
 her country, to follow the husband whom 
 she chooses, and in doing this she imposes 
 
268 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 no painful sacrifice, no sad separation. 
 Together they commence the struggle for 
 existence, but without asking or expecting 
 anything from others. According to their 
 ideas and traditions it is not the parent's 
 duty to provide for the needs of the chil- 
 dren when the children leave them to make 
 a home for themselves ; it is not for the old 
 to stint themselves for the young. These 
 axioms are familiar to both. Later on they 
 will apply them to their children as they do 
 now to themselves. It is for them to choose 
 their home, their surroundings ; the world 
 is open to them, nothing interferes with 
 their choice, and nothing is required for 
 their aid and assistance. 
 
 Thus one explains how the progress of 
 even the most advanced civilisation is recon- 
 ciled by the American with his persistent 
 and primitive nomadic instincts. He seems, 
 we might say, to have no country. He has 
 one, however, but it is centred in an intel- 
 lectual and moral domain, independent of 
 soil, of climate, and of the outward and 
 material aspect of nature. This fatherland 
 follows him, it does not hold him back ; it 
 exists in his love for his institutions, for 
 their political forms which the American 
 thinks superior to all others, in his religious 
 convictions, and also in his traditions and in 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 269 
 
 the history of which he is so proud, in the 
 astonishing prosperity of the Union of 
 which he is a part, and from which he 
 never breaks away, however far he may go. 
 It is an ideal country, but for him a real 
 one, of which, wherever he is, he is both a son 
 and a representative, in which he openly 
 claims citizenship, which he defends vigor- 
 ously against every criticism, and which he 
 loves as much as any European loves his 
 own, but without being tormented by the 
 wish to see it once again or to end his days 
 within its boundaries. 
 
 On this point the American woman has 
 the same feeling, but shows it with more 
 reticence and tact. Her patriotism is less 
 aggressive as she is more cosmopolitan ; and 
 this very quality tends to soften and even to 
 smooth away the angles of nationality, to 
 prevent them clashing, and to substitute for 
 anything antagonistic a vague nationalism 
 resting not on the difference of races, and 
 of soil, of languages and of beliefs, but on 
 similarity of social position, of fortune, 
 of tastes, and of worldly conditions. This 
 explains that which we said above, that she 
 is more adaptable and more popular than he. 
 
 Few nations increase so rapidly in popula- 
 tion as the American, and this is the result 
 of the complete accord between man and 
 
270 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 woman. Both consider nationality as inde- 
 pendent of the soil, holding that emigration 
 and voluntary exile are only a test or a 
 piece of self-denial, and that they are not a 
 confession of impotence. One of the causes 
 which most hinders the growth of French 
 colonies is the instinctive repugnance of the 
 French girl and of her family to the idea of 
 emigration, as being associated (and this has 
 a show of reason) with that of the out- 
 cast. As long as emigration to our distant 
 colonies continues to recruit itself almost 
 exclusively from the petty trading classes, 
 the incompetent, the adventurous, or the ad- 
 venturers, just so long will families refuse to 
 recognise, save in exceptional cases, the fit- 
 ness of a young girl's marrying a man who 
 will take her away from all her relatives. 
 
 Whether this feeling is just or not is of 
 little importance ; the fact of it remains, and 
 the opinion of most French women on this 
 point is one of the most serious obstacles to 
 our colonisation The sedentary and con- 
 servative instinct of our race is distrustful 
 not of the strangers who come, and to whom 
 we accord a cordial reception which their 
 past does not always justify, but of persons 
 who emigrate in the hope of bettering their 
 lot. Apart from the functionary in whom 
 the official cacJiet takes the place of all else, 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 271 
 
 the voluntary colonist will have trouble in 
 the upper or even in the middle classes in 
 finding a companion disposed to unite her 
 lot to his, and to break away from the tra- 
 ditional paths. It was not always so, and, 
 curiously enough, it has only been so in any 
 marked degree since steamers have shortened 
 the distances, since remote communication 
 has become regular and easy, since instruc- 
 tion has grown more thorough and more 
 widely spread, since liberal ideas have pre- 
 vailed, since class barriers have been broken 
 and since democracy began to reign. We 
 encourage bold explorers, the pioneers of 
 civilisation in new lands, but we do not fol- 
 low them. We welcome the creation of a 
 colonial empire, which we do not ourselves 
 enter ; we vote millions for building cities 
 which are not populated, for roads that are 
 not used ; and the very men who sanction 
 this use of the public money consider them- 
 selves imprudent in risking even a little 
 capital in the private enterprises connected 
 with plantations and manufactures which 
 they are then astonished not to see rising 
 from colonial soil. 
 
 If the Englishman emigrates, if the Ameri- 
 can emigrates, it is because in doing so he 
 shocks none of those accepted ideas which 
 are everywhere more efficacious than the 
 
272 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 laws. It is because lie in no way lessens his 
 social position, any more than he lessens his 
 chances regarding her whom he may desire 
 to marry. The American woman has in this 
 case the same ideas as the man, both having 
 been brought up in the same way : their 
 ideas are those of their common surround- 
 ings, and those which have made the United 
 States what they are to-day ; those of their 
 ancestors, as they will be those of their chil- 
 dren. Wherever one meets the American 
 woman and we meet her everywhere, among 
 the ranks of the English peerage and in the 
 highest European aristocracy as well as 
 among the most modest surroundings one is 
 struck by this marvellous adaptability, in 
 which scientists see the characteristic and in- 
 fallible indication of the superiority of a race 
 or of a class. Whoever has travelled cannot 
 help noticing it. It shows itself particularly 
 in the happy disposition with which the 
 American woman accepts the many little 
 vexations which every change of surround- 
 ings brings about, and which put the most 
 perfect character to a severe test. She sub- 
 mits without an effort and has no harsh word 
 to utter ; she is prepared for such a life by her 
 education, and does not expect to find every- 
 thing perfect. Moreover, the necessity of 
 manual labour does not appear to her degrad- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 273 
 
 ing ; at the most it is only one or two gen- 
 erations that separate her from the time 
 when her grandmother herself kneaded the 
 bread for her family in the days of the early 
 settlements. These traditions are familiar 
 to her, and the lessons which they teach do 
 not discourage or humiliate her. She is the 
 daughter of a race of emigrants, now become 
 a mighty nation by toil, by energy, and by 
 will. She has at her very door a whole 
 treasury of traditions, into which she is 
 proud to delve. In her, now and then, we 
 can seem to hear the voice of those noble 
 women of a past age, who were once emigrees 
 and reduced to poverty, relating with pride in 
 their memoirs how, in order to supply their 
 wants, they worked in London or in Ger- 
 many, willingly utilising their talents and 
 their good taste in tying ribbons or making 
 gowns with their aristocratic fingers. 
 
 The American woman has no more false 
 pride or foolish self-love than they. With- 
 out travelling around the world one can see 
 her in the Paris she so loves, at Mce, at Pau, 
 at Cannes, in Switzerland, everywhere at 
 ease, the first to laugh at her own mistakes in 
 language, or at her own ignorance of conti- 
 nental customs. Wherever it may be, she 
 seems perfectly at home ; and she is really so, 
 for the land which pleases her is, while she 
 
274 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 dwells there, her adopted country. The 
 thought that she may appear ridiculous never 
 occurs to her ; it does not even occur to her 
 that a woman can be so, or that any man 
 should think her so. So great is her con- 
 fidence a confidence justified by experience, 
 and one which the privileges of her sex allow 
 her that she has no timid reserve or painful 
 bashfulness. As a young girl the homage 
 she receives does not embarrass her, nor 
 does attention disconcert her. She is used 
 to it, and frankly shows the pleasure which 
 it gives her. She is the result of a mode of 
 education and of a manner of living which 
 differ very greatly from ours. She has been 
 taught to rely upon herself and to judge for 
 herself. In men's society she has always 
 been a free but responsible guardian of her 
 own honour, and has planned her own future. 
 She has seen and observed ; she does not 
 ignore the difficulties of life nor the dangers 
 of independence. If we object to this prema- \ 
 ture knowledge, because under a brilliant 
 and lively manner it often makes her coldly 
 calculating and prematurely cautious, we 
 may remember that sooner or later it is 
 necessary for her to draw her own conclu- 
 sions from the world in which she lives, and 
 that it is perhaps better that her eyes be 
 opened and that her judgment be made be- 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 275 
 
 fore the choice which decides her fate, than 
 after. It is difficult in studying such a ques- 
 tion to separate one's self sufficiently from 
 the customs and ideas of one's surroundings, 
 and to be absolutely impartial. Instinc- 
 tively we incline toward accepted ideas, to- 
 ward familiar customs and current axioms, 
 and these are with us still too different from 
 those across the Atlantic for the latter not 
 to awaken in us strong objections. Other 
 things being equal, experience alone is to be 
 considered, and it is only by the results 
 actually reached that correct judgments can 
 be formed. This experience in the present 
 instance is conclusive, and the results are 
 satisfactory. 
 
 We have not in this study of the women 
 of the United States either concealed the 
 serious inconveniences which, along with 
 the excessive liberty allowed young girls, 
 permit legislation too lax in the matter of 
 marriage and too easy in the matter of ; 
 divorce ; nor have we left in the shadow, so 
 indulgent to error, the unpleasant things 
 everywhere noticed by travellers. We have 
 looked to American sources, considering 
 them as the most impartial, and as con- 
 firmed also by observations which we have 
 ourselves made during a long sojourn in 
 America. But detailed criticism, serious 
 
276 THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 and severe as it may be, affects but little 
 the conclusions which it reaches. If to-day 
 the American Union is one of the leading 
 i countries of the world, this is owing to a 
 / great extent to the American woman, who 
 ! was, and who is still, an important factor 
 l^in its astonishing prosperity. The United 
 States are indebted to her for having kept 
 in their religious faith a principle of vital- 
 ity which the Pilgrim Fathers brought over 
 to America. She has been a successful 
 toiler in the task first set before her. She 
 has maintained that which she created, and 
 has extended and enlarged it by church and 
 school. In times of trouble, during the War 
 of Independence and later during the War 
 of Secession, woman's patriotism sustained 
 man's courage. Under all circumstances 
 she has been his companion and his equal. 
 As such he has respected her ; and this 
 respect which she inspired by her sacrifices 
 and her bravery at the beginning, and after- 
 ward by her intelligence and her education, 
 by her charms and by her confidence in his 
 protection, has influenced American morals, 
 and has deeply imbued them with the feel- 
 ing that respect for woman is for man 
 one of the first conditions of moral life. 
 This moral life is her own work ; she has 
 created and preserved it. In the devotion of 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 277 
 
 which she is the object, in the homage which 
 man pays to her, there is something higher 
 and far better than what the charms of her 
 sex inspire, for there is in them the instinc- 
 tive recognition of a great and healthful 
 influence that has been nobly used. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 

 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 teFT^rt f ri m 
 
 'CIRC MAY 2 1985 
 
 flCT 2 R'fi3 -*! PM 
 
 
 Uvl O vw tl rm 
 
 
 4 jjMfttr*fi8ttfl 
 ~ i*ilpwl :_y^ 
 
 
 CT311953 
 
 
 RE|C'D LD 
 
 
 NOU 4*63 -S P 
 
 1 
 
 ttMV 1 \J\J tj Y 
 
 rl 
 
 FFB6 F J97o.Qp 
 
 
 1AM ^ 5? '7n o DA 
 
 
 JAN cO / U -3 PA 
 
 
 
 LUAN DEPT. 
 
 
 APR U W5 
 
 
 Mw I 1 ! 
 
 
 T r 01 A r;o*j 1 1 '^o * General Library 
 
 LllJ ALA &MJM-11, &^ TT.Vos;r rvf r'a1Jfrn;i 
 
 Berkeley 
 

 
 GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 BDDD7bD]iDl 
 
 tAi 
 
 //