whatever. These young girls are rather curious types; they have a
certain interest, they have a certain grace, but they are disappointing
too; they don't go far; they don't keep all they promise; they don't
satisfy the imagination. They are cold, slim, sexless; the physique is
not generous, not abundant; it is only the drapery, the skirts and
furbelows (that is, I mean in the young lady who has her mother) that are
abundant. They are very different: one of them all elegance, all
expensiveness, with an air of high fashion, from New York; the other a
plain, pure, clear-eyed, straight-waisted, straight-stepping maiden from
the heart of New England. And yet they are very much alike too--more
alike than they would care to think themselves for they eye each other
with cold, mistrustful, deprecating looks. They are both specimens of
the emancipated young American girl--practical, positive, passionless,
subtle, and knowing, as you please, either too much or too little. And
yet, as I say, they have a certain stamp, a certain grace; I like to talk
with them, to study them.

The fair New Yorker is, sometimes, very amusing; she asks me if every one
in Boston talks like me--if every one is as "intellectual" as your poor
correspondent. She is for ever throwing Boston up at me; I can't get rid
of Boston. The other one rubs it into me too; but in a different way;
she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and
regards it as a kind of focus of light for the whole human race. Poor
little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name! But this New England
maiden is, in her way, a strange type: she is travelling all over Europe
alone--"to see it," she says, "for herself." For herself! What can that
stiff slim self of hers do with such sights, such visions! She looks at
everything, goes everywhere, passes her way, with her clear quiet eyes
wide open; skirting the edge of obscene abysses without suspecting them;
pushing through brambles without tearing her robe; exciting, without