their petulant way
of tossing the head. Their eyes have no magic nor mystery in them, but
they challenge us for combat; and when we engage we are always worsted.
Their lips seem made for laughter and yet they never grimace. As for
their voices, they soon get them into tune. Some of them have been known
to acquire a fashionable drawl in two seasons; and after they have been
presented to Royalty they all roll their R's as vigorously as a young
equerry or an old lady-in-waiting. Still, they never really lose their
accent; it keeps peeping out here and there, and when they chatter
together they are like a bevy of peacocks. Nothing is more amusing than
to watch two American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or in
the Row. They are like children with their shrill staccato cries of
wonder, their odd little exclamations. Their conversation sounds like a
series of exploding crackers; they are exquisitely incoherent and use a
sort of primitive, emotional language. After five minutes they are left
beautifully breathless and look at each other half in amusement and half
in affection. If a stolid young Englishman is fortunate enough to be
introduced to them he is amazed at their extraordinary vivacity, their
electric quickness of repartee, their inexhaustible store of curious
catchwords. He never really understands them, for their thoughts flutter
about with the sweet irresponsibility of butterflies; but he is pleased
and amused and feels as if he were in an aviary. On the whole, American
girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the chief secret of their
charm is that they never talk seriously except about amusements. They
have, however, one grave fault--their mothers. Dreary as were those old
Pilgrim Fathers who left our shores more than two centuries ago to found
a New England beyond seas, the Pilgrim Mothers who have returned to us in
the nineteenth century are drearier still.

Here and there, of course, there are exceptions, but as a class they are
either dull, dowdy or dyspeptic. It is only fair to the rising
generation of America to state that they are not to blame for this.
Indeed, they spare no pains at all to bring up their parents properly and
to give them a suitable, if somewhat late, education. From its earliest
years every American child spends most of its time in correcting the
faults of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity
of watching an American family on the deck of