t madame and mesdemoiselles have every
possible tribute paid to their charms: their beauty, their wit, their
dash and sparkle, their independence, receive as large a share of
admiration as the most insatiable among them could desire.

It must be owned that the American spirit, tempered by European
education or influences, makes a very delightful compound. And it is
astonishing to mark how soon the toning process does its work--how soon
the most objectionable American girl of the sort known as "fast," or
even "loud," softens into a very charming creature who makes the
admiration bestowed upon her by European men quite comprehensible.

That this admiration is returned is perhaps not less comprehensible.
American women, as a mass, are better educated than American men, and
are particularly their superiors so far as outward grace and polish and
the general amenities of life are concerned. These qualities, in which
their countrymen are deficient, and the blander manners which accompany
them, they are apt to find well developed in European men, whatever
other virtues or faults may be theirs; and when to this fact is added
the spice of novelty, the strong liking that American girls manifest for
foreigners, and which has been the cause of putting so many American
youths in anything but a benedictory frame of mind, is easily accounted
for, and the marriages which so frequently take place between our girls
and European men may be explained, even on other grounds than the common
exchange of money on one side and title on the other.

Be the motive of these marriages either mutual interest or mutual
inclination, in neither case does the generally-accepted theory that
they are never happy bear the test of application. So far as my
knowledge goes, the common experience is quite the reverse. The number
of matches between American girls and Europeans that turn out badly is
small compared to the number of those that are perfectly satisfactory.
It is astonishing to see how many of our girls, who have been brought up
in the belief of the American woman's prerogative of absolute supremacy
in the domestic circle, when they are thus married change and seem quite
content to relinquish not a few of their ideas of perfectly untrammelled
independence, and to take that more subordinate position in matrimony
which European life and customs allot to women. It is still more
astonishing to see how contentedly and cheerfully they do so when
marrying