e "Girl-Anxious-to-be-Married." What
right-minded man in any circle of British society has not shuddered at
the open pursuit of young Croesus? Have not our novelists and
satirists reaped the most ample harvest from the pitiable spectacle
and all its results? A large part of the advantage that American
society has over English rests in the comparative absence of this
phenomenon. Man there does not and cannot bear himself as the cynosure
of the female eye; the art of throwing the handkerchief has not been
included in his early curriculum. The American dancing man does not
dare to arrive just in time for supper or to lounge in the doorway
while dozens of girls line the walls in faded expectation of a waltz.
The English girl herself can hardly be blamed for this state of
things. She has been brought up to think that marriage is the be-all
and end-all of her existence. "For my part," writes the author of
"Cecil, the Coxcomb," "I never blame them when I see them capering and
showing off their little monkey-tricks, for conquest. The fault is
none of theirs. It is part of an erroneous system." Lady Jeune
expresses the orthodox English position when she asserts flatly that
"to deny that marriage is the object of woman's existence is absurd."
The anachronistic survival of the laws of primogeniture and entail
practically makes the marriage of the daughter the only alternative
for a descent to a lower sphere of society. In the United States the
proportion of girls who strike one as obvious candidates for marriage
is remarkably small. This _may_ be owing to the art with which the
American woman conceals her lures, but all the evidence points to its
being in the main an entirely natural and unconscious attitude. The
American girl has all along been so accustomed to associate on equal
terms with the other sex that she naturally and inevitably regards him
more in the light of a comrade than of a possible husband. She has so
many resources, and is so independent, that marriage does not bound
her horizon.

Her position, however, is not one of antagonism to marriage. If it
were, I should be the last to commend it. It rather rests on an
assurance of equality, on the assumption that marriage is an
honourable estate--a rounding and completing of existence--for man as
much as for woman. Nor does it mean, I think, any lack of passion and
the deepest instincts of womanhood. All these are present and can be
wakened by the right man at the right