One feels about them a dreary atmosphere of homelessness. As the writer of the Potiphar papers, while watching a gay young mother's performance in the "German," was constrained to think of a complaining babe in her nursery, so, in hearing those ladies boast of their enjoyments, one cannot help remembering with commiseration the wifeless husband and daughterless father at home, who works like a steam-fan to keep these butterflies in motion.
More sad still are my reflections, when I hear that numbers of American girls, with large or even moderate fortunes, go abroad and allow it to be known that they seek a husband with a title. These are to be had, of various grades, if the pecuniary consideration be only sufficient. And so many of our laborious men of business work hard in order to earn for themselves the luxury of a titled son-in-law, who has not the ability to earn his own support, and would scorn to do it if he had.
American women with money are at a premium in fashionable Europe. Even without this supreme merit, they are favorites. A London journal calls attention to the fact that some of the leading ladies in the fashionable London of to-day are Americans. The versatility of mind and ease of manner which a free and social life develops, appear in strong contrast with the results of the more formal education, which are often seen in the opposite extremes of timidity and assurance.
As our young men are often entrapped, while abroad, into marriages which prove to be very unwise and unsuitable, I wish very much that we might bring and keep our young people in a better understanding with each other, so that even the most ambitious among them should be content to marry with their peers, and abide in the home of their fathers.
I have been surprised, at some periods of my late visit to Europe, to perceive the growing interest of thinking people in all that is most characteristic of American progress. Again and again, in private and in public, I have found myself invited to discourse concerning the happy country in which popular education has been so long established, that its results are no longer putative, but ascertained and verified. The country in which the fairest woman, provided she be a modest one, can walk abroad by day or night, unmolested and unsuspected, the country in which women have acquired the courage to think for themselves, and to stand by each other.
These invitations, though not given in derision, yet seemed akin to the Hebrew refrain, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" And when I related the facts familiar to all of us, to those who listened with half-incredulous wonder, it was, indeed, like singing the Lord's song of freedom in a strange land.
The reasons why Europe should come to America are obvious and pressing. The reasons why America should visit Europe are equally binding and cogent. The material and the moral life of to-day are kept at their height by this flux and reflux of human personality, which carries with it every variety of opinion and experience. Could we only send our best abroad, and for the best reasons! Could Europe only send her best, also, for their best help and study! But the human average profits first of all by its material enlargement, and will be received just as it is. So, our fools go abroad, to show that folly is a thing of all times and climes; and, along with the tidal wave of ignorance and bigotry, the dark, designing Jesuit seeks our shore, and spins his fatal web among our rose-trees. Sun of divine truth, storms of divine justice, sweep away the evil and ripen the good!
When I see an American of either sex caught in the vortex of European attraction, depolarized from natural relations, and charmed into alliance with feudal barbarism and ignorance, my heart rings the bell of alarm which is hung at the gates of Paradise.
From all these Western splendors can this shallow soul turn away? From these golden fields whose overflow gives Europe food, while her human overflow gives them labor? From this large construction of human right, which lifts the cruel yoke from the neck of labor, and gives him who earns the livelihood of many his own life to enjoy and perfect? From this holy record of pious endeavor, from these splendid achievements of souls inspired by freedom, thou canst go, joyous and triumphant, to pay homage to the lies which are no longer believed by those who profess them; lies whose fallacy America exposes every day and hour to the detection of the world.
Thou wilt accept a title, empty as an egg-shell, for a thing truly noble! Thou wilt call a courtier's grimace polite, a courtesan's fashion elegant! Thou wilt curry favor in a vulgar court, courtesying low to a prince of harlequins and harlots! Thou, child of the Puritans, wilt kneel and kiss the hand which, still and sole, disputes with Christ the mastery of the world! Then art thou simply an anachronism! Some are born into the world centuries before their time, some centuries after it.