ur own rightful
property, the bachelors, and we will never utter another cheep.

However, I would not give up my small experience with other girls'
husbands for a great deal. It has convinced me of something of which I
always have been reasonably sure, and that is that American men make
the best husbands in the world, and that women who cannot get along
with Americans, and who think men of another race, who have more
polish, more finesse, more veneer, would suit them better, could not
manage to live happily with the Angel Gabriel.

Dear me! If these dissatisfied American wives could only realize that
an all-wise Providence had, in the American man, given us the best
article in the market, and that when we rebel at our lot we are simply
proving that we do not deserve our good fortune, they would never even
discuss the subject of having men of any other nationality.

Of course, in every nation there is a class of men who are as noble,
as high-minded, as chivalrous as even the most captious American girl
could wish. But I refer to the general run of men when I say that
there is something about men born outside of America, a native
selfishness or callousness, a lack of perception and appreciation of
the fineness of womanhood, amounting to a sort of mental brutality,
which wellnigh unfits them for close social contact with the
super-sensitive American woman. And just as surely as American women
persist in disregarding this subtle yet unmistakable truth, just so
surely will they lay themselves open to these soul-bruises from
foreign husbands which American men, as a race, are incapable of
inflicting. I say they are incapable of inflicting them, because
American men, in the face of everything said and written to the
contrary, are, in regard to women, the finest-grained race of men in
the world.

Now in this generalizing, I beg that you will not accuse me of
asserting that these strictures are true of every man who is not an
American, or that all American men are perfect. But I do wish to state
clearly and frankly my admiration for American men as a race. When an
American man _is_ a gentleman, he is to my mind the most perfect
gentleman that any race can produce, because _his_ good manners spring
from his heart, and there are a few of us old-fashioned enough to
plead that politeness should go deeper than the skin.

Now if the assertion is made that the American man makes the best
husband in the world, let him not think th