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
the 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 an Atlantic steamer, or in the refined
seclusion of a New York boarding-house, can fail to have been
struck by this characteristic of their civilization. In America
the young are always ready to give to those who are older than
themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. A boy of only
eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to
his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of
warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours,
unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so
particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is
monopolizing too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind
him, across the table, of the new child's adage, "Parents should be
seen, not heard." Nor does any mistaken idea of kindness prevent