pe of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out
hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of
offering to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In America,
the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain always, as a
matter of course, considers himself charged with the protection of the
ladies. '_Place aux dames_' is written in the heart of many a shaggy
fellow who could not utter a French word any more than could a buffalo.
It is just as I have before said,--women are the recognized aristocracy,
the _only_ aristocracy, of America; and, so far from regarding this fact
as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of pride in my country.

"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which reverences her
delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think,
the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But
our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned
lest they lose their position, as many privileged orders have before
done, by an arrogant and selfish use of power.

"I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more developed among
women in America than among men, and that, while there are no men in the
Northern States who are not ashamed of living a merely idle life of
pleasure, there are many women who make a boast of helplessness and
ignorance in woman's family duties which any man would be ashamed to
make with regard to man's duties, as if such helplessness and ignorance
were a grace and a charm.

"There are women who contentedly live on, year after year, a life of
idleness, while the husband and father is straining every nerve, growing
prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or
pleasure,--all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and
festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man
who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted
voyages; but what is it for the women?

"A woman is a moral being,--an immortal soul,--before she is a woman;
and as such she is charged by her Maker with some share of the great
burden of _work_ which lies on the world.

"Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as
indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, and no
exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross,
each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and
worthy life, no