Equality in America.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 867, 12 October 1888, Page 4

Equality in America.

America boasts itself to be the land of social equality, and yet the following little incident comes to us from the town of St Paul anent the tour of President and Mra Cleveland in the North-West. It appears that a United States senator, a person of course of high position in his own district,

happened to marry a pretty milliner. ' The ladies of the town utterly refused to know her, and she was entirely excluded from society in St Paul. When, however, she journeyed Weßt with her husband Bhe was entertained by President and Mrs Garfield, and reoeived by the wives of the State offi. cials and statesmen generally. Her husband’s position and her own acquaintance with Mrs Cleveland marked her out in the ordinary course of things as one of the six principal ladies who were to wait on Mrs Cleveland. The other five ladies, however, peremptorily declared that if the dressmaker waa going to be one of the number, they begged to decline. The difficulty was got over by enlarging the number to 206, and thus rendering the honour of seleotion one of little value, Even then, however, the other ladies only consented to be present on conditionthatthey werenot ‘expectedtospeak to the dressmaker.’ The carious result followed that the only person who could talk intimately to Mrs Cleveland was the despised and tabooed dressmaker, and that the only lady whom the latter could claim as a friend was the Presidentess of the United States,— Life.