in the things worth having--the things that are more excellent--in
education, culture, knowledge, taste, good feeling. And the reason is
not far to seek. They represent the only leisured class in America. They
are the one set of people from Maine to California who have time to
read, to think, to travel, to look at good pictures, to hear good music,
to mix with society that can improve and elevate them. They have read
Daudet; they have seen the Vatican. The women thus form a natural
aristocracy--the only aristocracy the country possesses.

I am aware that in saying this I take my life in my hands. I shall be
prepared to defend myself from the infuriated Westerner with the usual
argument, which I shall carry about loaded in all its chambers in my
right-hand pocket. I am also aware that less infuriated Easterners,
choosing their own more familiar weapon, will inundate my leisure with
sardonic inquiries whether I don't consider Oliver Wendell Holmes or
Charles Eliot Norton (thus named in full) the equal in culture of the
average American woman. Well, I frankly admit these cases and thousands
like them; indeed I have had the good fortune to number among my
personal acquaintances many American gentlemen whose chivalrous breeding
would have been conspicuous (if you will believe it) even at Marlborough
House. I will also allow that in New York, in Boston, and less
abundantly in other big towns of America, men of leisure, men of
culture, and men of thought are to be found, as wide-minded and as
gentle-natured as this race of ours makes them. But that doesn't alter
the general fact that, taking them in the lump, American men stand a
step or two lower in the scale of humanity than American women. One need
hardly ask why. It is because the men are almost all immersed and
absorbed in business, while the women are fine ladies who stop at home,
and read, and see, and interest themselves widely in numberless
directions.