of women to resent this kind of thing. American women have, moreover, an adaptability which few other women have, and they like to practise their talents upon the various orders and races of men. But it makes the American men jealous, and it is not surprising that it should. I find that I don't like it. I will own that when I see one of them surrounded by half a dozen Englishmen, I feel like Troilus when he saw Cressida flirting in the camp of the Greeks.

Notwithstanding the adaptability of our women, however, they have a character of their own, of which they are tenacious ― often, no doubt, against their will-amid circumstances most remote from those of their own country. There are various marks of this character. For instance, there is a woman here who lives abroad and at such places as this, and who pursues

the life of the third-rate wateringplace society to which she devotes herself with the same bustling activity with which, were she amid her native scenes, she would be making pumpkin pies. There is also a tall, dark, slight girl, Miss B

She is a young woman of undoubted fashion and perfectly dressed. Yet, as I see her walking through a quadrille, I observe in her mind a perception so vivacious as to be almost unladylike. I am aware of a Yankee incisiveness, a keen, dry light like that of her native hills. I am conscious of her New England origin whenever I am in her society. Beyond her Worth dresses, perfect French, and mundane wit and manners, I see a smart white farm-house on a round, clear hill.

But I am just now thinking especially of one characteristic of American women. There is

a school-ma'am basis in the character of certain of our women, particularly those of Puritan origin. A peculiarity of them is that they seem to disapprove of you a little, and, if they are charming, I find there is something pleasant in being the object of their disapproval. I see this character in women who, of course, could not have been school-ma'ams, who indeed have hardly lived in America. I know one-and she is very pretty-who even as a girl has passed most of her days abroad. She is married to a German and lives in Silesia. The whole of the few years of her married life she has spent at courts. Yet I never meet her, amid scenes so different from those of the land of our common birth, without being conscious that she has this quality. It always seems to me that she is going to "keep me in.”

.

Iminds of many of our women, is very noticeable that the

especially those from New England, are too much obtruded. Their intellects are indecently exposed. Is this, I wonder, the result of higher education? The quality I refer to may not be very pleasing, and yet it may be useful. With the growth of the mind should come the growth of reason; and that should be good, for we know how much mischief can be done by a foolish woman.

I am unable to express my sense of the originality of one production of America—a type of woman which, although not universal, is still very prevalent there. In particular there is a

young girl, usually tall, that I see very often, who has the look of an effeminate boy. It looks as if she is going to be everywhere. That sweetness, kindness, and richness of mind which was good enough for the artists and poets that have gone before us, it seems we are about to improve off the face of the earth. People tell me that this is a crotchet of mine. But the fact is so obvious that I am unable to understand how anybody can fail to recognize it. It is recognized, I am sure. Only the other day a young fellow who makes no pretensions to be a critic said (we had just been in the company of one of these young ladies): "They always seem to me to be like another fellow."

There is something very sublime in the infinite repetition of human good qualities. There is a young girl here to whom