eputation for dash and
brilliancy. Consequently the American Girl of a decade ago has effaced
herself. She is no longer the dazzling courageous figure. In England, in
France, in Germany, in Italy, she takes, as one may say, the color of the
land. She has retired behind her mother. She who formerly marched in the
van of the family procession, leading them--including the panting
mother--a whimsical dance, is now the timid and retiring girl, needing
the protection of a chaperon on every occasion. The satirist will find no
more abroad the American Girl of the old type whom he continues to
describe. The knowing and fascinating creature has changed her tactics
altogether. And the change has reacted on American society. The mother
has come once more to the front, and even if she is obliged to own to
forty-five years to the census-taker, she has again the position and the
privileges of the blooming woman of thirty. Her daughters walk meekly and
with downcast (if still expectant) eyes, and wait for a sign.

That this change is the deliberate work of the American Girl, no one who
knows her grace and talent will deny. In foreign travel and residence she
has been quick to learn her lesson. Dazzled at first by her own capacity
and the opportunities of the foreign field, she took the situation by
storm. But she found too often that she had a barren conquest, and that
the social traditions survived her success and became a lifelong
annoyance; that is to say, it was possible to subdue foreign men, but the
foreign women were impregnable in their social order. The American Girl
abroad is now, therefore, with rare exceptions, as carefully chaperoned
and secluded as her foreign sisters.

It is not necessary to lay too much stress upon this phase of American
life abroad, but the careful observer must notice its reflex action at
home. The American freedom and unconventionality in the intercourse of
the young of both sexes, which has been so much commented on as
characteristic of American life, may not disappear, but that small
section which calls itself "society" may attain a sort of aristocratic
distinction by the adoption of this foreign conventionality. It is
sufficient now to note this tendency, and to claim the credit of it for
the wise and intelligent American Girl. It would be a pity if it were to
become nationally universal, for then it would not be the aristocratic
distinction of a few, and the American woman who longs for some sort