"'Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;"

and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard
of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regretted that
this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston
should not have been found capable of association with the duties of
domestic life. Without going deeper into topics which are better
understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most
eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are
nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the
inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home
truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious
Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female
excellence, should not be forgotten.

There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more
likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or
system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I
cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in
this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to
insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes
that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual
characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself: they do not
strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are
simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die
sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at
once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning;
but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of
resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the
part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American
social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the
earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in
the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the
day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup,
and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door
is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to
do in the hotel-a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill's definition
of Christian doctrine, the shall-no