an inscription of that kind, we assume that the enclosure referred to
is for ladies _only_. In America, unless the "only" is emphasized, the
"Ladies' Drawing Room" or the "Ladies' Waiting Room" extends its
hospitality to all those of the male sex who are ready to behave as
gentlemen and temporarily forego the delights of tobacco. Thus half of
the male passengers of the United States journey, as it were, under
the ægis of woman, and think it no shame to be enclosed in a box
labelled with her name.

Put roughly, what chiefly strikes the stranger in the American woman
is her candour, her frankness, her hail-fellow-well-met-edness, her
apparent absence of consciousness of self or of sex, her spontaneity,
her vivacity, her fearlessness. If the observer himself is not of a
specially refined or delicate type, he is apt at first to
misunderstand the cameraderie of an American girl, to see in it
suggestions of a possible coarseness of fibre. If a vain man, he may
take it as a tribute to his personal charms, or at least to the
superior claims of a representative of old-world civilisation. But
even to the obtuse stranger of this character it will ultimately
become obvious--as to the more refined observer _ab initio_--that he
can no more (if as much) dare to take a liberty with the American girl
than with his own countrywoman. The plum may appear to be more easily
handled, but its bloom will be found to be as intact and as ethereal
as in the jealously guarded hothouse fruit of Europe. He will find
that her frank and charming companionability is as far removed from
masculinity as from coarseness; that the points in which she differs
from the European lady do not bring her nearer either to a man on the
one hand, or to a common woman on the other. He will find that he has
to readjust his standards, to see that divergence from the best type
of woman hitherto known to him does not necessarily mean