American Women at Home.

Otago Witness, Issue 1762, 29 August 1885, Page 26

American Women at Home.

Women in the States are absolute mistresses of their own world and of themselves. Safe in their perfect control over their senses and temperament, they consider themselves free to indulge their fancy, to challenge men's admiration, to flirt d ontrance. Brought up in seminaries and academies usually conducted by male instructors, they learn from very infancy how to feel and exercise their powers of fascination. Grown up, they live as queens of their household, or club together at some hotel or boardinghouse, but little of the domestic drudgery falling to the lot of most of them. They are great readers at home, great talkers abroad, idle most of the day, with heads stuffed with romance and poetry, studying all the airs and graces,, all the most captivating accomplishments, sharpening and polishing their weapons for the onslaught, though often greatly at a loss for the "natural enemy " against whom they are to be turned ; for men — ladies' men — are terribly scarce in America, where husbands and fathers, brothers and cousins, mostly business men, are off early in the morning after an early breakfast, only to be back in the evening for a late dinner or supper ; and they come worn out with work, debased by greed, unfitted for ladies' company by want of congenial education and polish, of sympathy with female pursuits, or appreciation of female talents and graces. Hence it is that a male visitor, a man free from engagements and with indefinite time at his disposal, willing to devote himself to women, to humour them, to take some interest in their not very serious or heavy occupations, is looked upon as a godsend in all American households. It may be the clergyman at rest for six days in the week, it may be the doctor tarrying for a chat after his professional visit. But the most welcome is a stranger — any stranger — especially one fresh from across seas, a man better or worse than, but at any rate different from, the ordinary run of their daily associates, a man striking their eye by the cut of his coat, by the wearing of his beard, by the very quaintness and oddity of his broken English, a man of alien tongue and outlandish mannene, a Frenchman, or any other of the Latin race.

To me, accustomed hitherto to the jealous half-oriental ways of Italian, French, and Spanish society, the boundless freedom allowed to females in general, and especially to girls in their teens, at their peril and upon their own responsibility, seemed at first as strange and incomprehensible as it was pleasant. I was always wondering what results such intimacy might lead to, and it was only by a deeper initiation into the affairs of the little community that I learned how thoroughly, both by her own instincts and by her neighbour's example', a Yankee girl is taught to take care of herself and to look to the main chance, drawing a broad distinction between flirtation and — business.

There was hardly one of the most winning belles of the town who would not go out with me in the dark — with me, a stranger, a foreigner, and " Eye-talian " — show the way to the house of a friend to whose party she had procured me a card, where she would dance, play, or flirt with me or anyone else, but whence at the end of the rout she would expect me to be in attendance as hej cavalier sorvente ohbliyato for the evening, my duty being to see her safe home, either by the straightest or by a circuitous route, as moonlight or her fanpy might suggest ; and all would end by my leaving her at her door at or after midnight, where she would stop just one second on the threshold to shake hands, or to bestow some other sligkt favour of which it would be unbecoming a gentleman to tell. And Iloni soit quimal y pense. — Antonio Gallbnga in " Second Life."