sh are not by nature a sprightly and
speechful race, with the gift of gay gab, but under the American
woman's cheerful influence we are enjoying a sort of reformation.

We send our daughters even to a fashionable school in fashionable
Kensington, which is kept by a long-headed American woman, who will very
nearly guarantee to bid a door post discourse freely and be obeyed. And
the women to whom first honors are due for having inspired London with
a wholesome respect for what I may justly call the very superior
American parts of speech, are Mrs. George Cornwallis-West--perhaps
better known on both sides of the ocean as Lady Randolph
Churchill--and Consuelo, the Dowager Duchess of Manchester.

It would be a superfluous and ungrateful task to try to recall the
number of years that have flown since these two women, unusually
attractive as they are, even for Americans, came over to literally
take London by storm.

Suffice it to say that, as Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra, "age cannot
wither nor custom stale her infinite variety;" and in spite of the
amazing influx of their young and lovely and accomplished countrywomen
into London since their day of arrival, these two ladies still stand,
as they have stood for years, at the very top of the entire American
set abroad.

Both of them, by marriage or through years of long association, have
become thoroughly identified with English society, but, unlike Lady
Vernon-Harcourt, widow of the great leader of the Liberal party, and
daughter of the famous historian Motley, they have never lost their
strong American individuality.

Lady Vernon-Harcourt, to sight and hearing, seems almost a typical and
thoroughgoing English woman, but Mrs. George Cornwallis-West and the
Duchess Consuelo are, to all intents and purposes, as distinctly
American as the day on which they were presented as brides and
beauties at one of Queen Victoria's drawing-rooms.

Then, as well as now, they were both fair to look upon, but they were
also something more--they were the cleverest of talkers, and the
beautiful Consuelo, in her soft, Southern voice, possessed a faculty
for quaint and witty turns of phrase that made her an instant
favorite.

At the time of her debut, London had yet to meet the American woman
who could not only chatter along cheerfully and intelligently, but who
could artfully and unembarrassedly tell an amusing story before the
big and critical audience that the average dinner table supp