Because this is an apology and not a mere preface, I may be permitted, I hope, to express to the American girls in various States of the Union, from Boston to San Antonio, who have sat before my camera, my regret that I should have translated them so inadequately. It would, indeed, be hard to do justice to the American girl, and one well might hesitate to describe, or even to discuss her, were not her always gracious generosity so safely to be looked for.
A. B.
CONTENTS
| I. | THE AMERICAN TYPE | Page [1] |
| II. | THE TWIG | [23] |
| III. | A CENTURY’S RUN | [47] |
| IV. | STITCHES AND LINKS | [75] |
| V. | “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOCIETY” | [95] |
| VI. | LACE AND DESTINY | [121] |
| VII. | CHANCE AND CHOICE | [143] |
| VIII. | THE NEW OLD MAID | [165] |
| IX. | “AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED” | [187] |
I
THE AMERICAN TYPE
The tradition that the women of the region in which we live illustrate all of those traits that give an abiding charm to the sex, is one that sometimes may be unreasonable, perhaps even comic; yet it cannot be discreditable. Balzac, who remarks somewhere that nothing unites men so much as a certain conformity of view in the matter of women, may seem unphilosophical when he remarks somewhere else upon the absurdity of English women. His French antipathy has an unreasonably affirmative sting. But we do not care how many Thackerays regard the English girl as the bright particular flower of creation. We like and expect the author of “The Newcomes” to say: “I think it is not national prejudice which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady is the most complete of all Heaven’s subjects in this world.” For the same reason we delight in N. P. Willis’s confidence when he declares that “there is no such beautiful work under the sky as an American girl in her bellehood.” And Mr. Willis adds with the same whimsical consciousness of national partiality: “I think I am not prejudiced.”
Of course this instinctive preference is fundamental. We are prepared to hear from science that the African savage prefers the thick lips and flat nose of the African girl to any other sort; that this is why the African girl has a flat nose and thick lips; that gallantry is a phase of natural selection, and so on. We can understand that there is a merely relative difference of attitude between the savage lover who woos his lady with a club, and the modern suitor who swears to give up all of his clubs for her sake. What perplexes us is our anxiety to explain our modern instinct, and (what is more perplexing) our anxiety to explain her; to ascertain and even to catalogue her essential traits—to discover, if not why we prefer the American girl, at least what manner of girl it is that we thus are instinctively preferring.