re confirmed I become in my
impression that they are typical; more so than the men. They are like no
other women I know. The brilliancy of their conversation, the animation
of their features, the absence of affectation in their manners, make
them unique. There are no women to compare to them in a drawing-room.
There are none with whom I feel so much at ease. Their beauty,
physically speaking, is great; but you are still more struck by their
intellectual beauty, the frankness of their eyes, and the naturalness of
their bearing.

I returned to the Everett House, musing all the way on the difference
between the American women and the women of France and England. The
theme was attractive, and, remembering that to-morrow would be an
off-day for me, I resolved to spend it in going more fully into this
fascinating subject with pen and ink.

CHAPTER XII.

NOTES ON AMERICAN WOMEN--COMPARISONS--HOW MEN TREAT WOMEN AND VICE
VERSA--SCENES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

_New York, January 18._

A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married
twenty years without being able to understand his wife. "You should not
complain of that," remarked the friend. "I have been married to my wife
two years only, and I understand her perfectly."

The leaders of thought in France have long ago proclaimed that woman was
the only problem it was not given to man to solve. They have all tried,
and they have all failed. They all acknowledge it--but they are trying
still.

Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every Frenchman is never
exhausted. Parodying Terence, he says to himself, "I am a man, and all
that concerns woman interests me." All the French modern novels are
studies, analytical, dissecting studies, of woman's heart.

To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes appear a trifle puerile, if
not also ridiculous. But to understand this feeling, one must remember
how a Frenchman is brought up.

In England, boys and girls meet and play together; in America and
Canada, they sit side by side on the same benches at school, not only as
children of tender age, but at College and in the Universities. They get
accustomed to each other's company; they see nothing strange in being in
contact with one another, and this naturally tends to reduce the
interest or curiosity one sex takes in the other. But in France they are
apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they can meet when they
have attained the age of