AMERICAN LOVE
It is in the United States of America that Plato’s ideal—so completely ignored by his countrymen—that young men and women should have ample opportunity to meet and get acquainted with one another before marriage, is most perfectly realised; as well as Addison’s supplementary advice that marriage should be preceded by a long courtship.
As boys and girls in America are commonly educated in the same schools, they are initiated at an early age into the sweets and sorrows of Calf-love Courtship, which has such a refining influence on the boys, and renders the girls more easy and natural in society when they get older; destroying among other puerilities that spring-chicken Coyness which makes many of their European sisters appear so silly. In the Western country-schools each girl has her “beau”—a boy of fourteen to seventeen—who brings her flowers, apples, or other presents, accompanies her home, and performs various other gallant services; nor has any harm ever been known to result from this juvenile Courtship—except an occasional elopement, in case of a prematurely frivolous couple, whom it was just as well to get rid of in that way as any other.
When they get a little older, the young folks go to picnics without a chaperon, or they enjoy a drive or sleigh-ride, or go a-skating together; and after a party, dance, church fair, or other social gathering, where the elders commonly keep out of the way considerately, each young man accompanies a young lady home. Were you to insinuate to him the advisability of having a chaperon for the young lady, he would inform you pointedly that the young lady needed no protection inasmuch as he was a gentleman and not a tramp. It is this high sense of gentlemanly honour that protects women in America—a hundred times better than all the barred windows of the Orient and the dragons of Europe. Thanks to this feeling of modern chivalry, a young lady may travel all alone from New York to Chicago, or even to San Francisco, and, if her manners are modest and refined, she will not once be insulted by word or look, not even in passing through the roughest mining regions.
It is the consciousness of this chivalrous code of honour among the men that gives an American girl the frank and natural gaze which is one of her greatest charms, and that allows her to talk to a man just introduced as if they were old acquaintances. It is a knowledge of this gentlemanly code that makes parents feel perfectly at ease in leaving their daughter alone in the parlour all the evening with a visitor. In a word, American customs prove that if you treat a man as a gentleman he will behave like a gentleman.
Unquestionably there are girls who abuse the liberty allowed them, and encourage the men to encourage them in their freedom. Mr. Henry James has done a most valuable service in holding up the mirror to one of these girls, to serve as a warning to all Daisy Millers and semi-Daisy Millers. There are not a few of the latter kind, and I have myself met three full-fledged specimens of the real “Daisy” in Europe—girls who would not have hesitated to go out rowing on a lake at eleven o’clock in the evening with a man known to them only a few hours, or to go next day with him to visit an old tower, or to say that mamma “always makes a fuss if I introduce a gentleman. But I do introduce them—almost always. If I didn’t introduce my gentlemen friends to mother, I shouldn’t think I was natural.” It is this class of American tourists that have, unfortunately, given foreigners a caricatured notion of the American girl’s deportment.
Etiquette differs somewhat in various American cities and among the different classes. For instance, a young lady of the “upper circles,” who in Chicago is permitted to drive to the theatre in a carriage with a young man, is not allowed the same privilege in New York.
The New York Sun, an excellent authority in social matters, gives the whole philosophy of American Courtship and Love in answering a young man’s question as to whether, in asking a young lady of the highest circles to accompany him to a place of amusement, it is necessary to invite a chaperon at the same time. He is told that he must,—in those circles:—
"But these people are only a few among the many. What is called society more exclusively in New York comprises, all told, no more than a hundred or two hundred families. Outside of them, of course, there are larger circles, to which they give the law to a greater or less extent, but the whole number of men and women in this great town of a million and a half of inhabitants who pay obedience to that law is not over a few thousand.
"Nine girls out of ten in New York, with the full consent of their parents and as a matter of course, accompany young men to amusements without taking a chaperon along. They feel, and they are, entirely able to look out for themselves, and they would regard the whole fun as spoiled if a third person was on hand to watch over them. A large part of the audience at every theatre is always made up of young men and young women who have come out in pairs, and who have no thought of violating any rule of propriety. Very many of these girls would never be invited to the theatre by their male acquaintances if they were under the dominion of such a usage, for the men want them to themselves, else they would not ask their company, and besides do not feel able to pay for an extra ticket for an obnoxious third person; or, if they have a little more money to spare, they prefer to expend it at an ice-cream saloon after the play.