better than our American men's and you are politer to us in little
things. But you despise us in your hearts!" It is an argument which, in
anything less than a lifetime, there is no way of disproving. American
men also, of course, habitually comfort themselves with the same
assurance, viz.,--that with less outward show of courtesy, they cherish
in their hearts a higher ideal of womanhood than an Englishman can
attain to. Precisely at what point this possession of a higher ideal
begins to manifest itself in externals does not appear. After twenty
years of intimacy in American homes I have failed to find any trace of
it.

Let me not be misunderstood! I know scores of beautiful homes in the
United States, in many widely sundered cities, where the men are as
courteous, as chivalrous, as devoted to their wives--and where the women
are as sweet and tender to, and as wholly wrapped up in, their
husbands--as in any homes on earth. As I write, the faces of men and
women rise before me, from many thousand miles away, whom I admire and
love as much as one can admire and love one's fellow-beings. There are
these homes I hope and believe--there are noble men and beautiful women
finding and making for themselves and each other the highest happiness
of which our nature is capable--in every country. But we are not now
speaking of the few or of the best individuals, but of averages; and
after twenty years of opportunity for observing I have entirely failed
to find justification for believing that there is any peculiar inward
grace in the American which belies the difference in his outward manner.

This is, of course, only an individual opinion,[126:1] which is
necessarily subject to correction by any one who may have had superior
opportunities for forming a trustworthy judgment. I contend, however,
not as a matter of opinion, but as what seems to me to be a certainty,
that whatever may be the inward feeling in regard to the other sex on
the part of the men of either nation after they have arrived at mature
years, the young Englishman, as he comes to manhood, possesses a much
higher ideal of womanhood than is possessed by the young American of
corresponding age. And I hold to this positively in spite of the fact
that many Americans possessing a large knowledge of transatlantic
conditions may very possibly not admit it.

I rejoice to believe that to the majority of English youths of decent
bringing up at the age at which they commonly