Jonathan and His Continent Part 9

"A bachelor lately advertised for a wife. A typographical error changed his age from 37 to 87; but it made no difference, for he received over 250 applications, from ladies ranging in age from 16 to 60, and all promising love and devotion to the rest of his existence."

Here is another, which I extract from a comic paper. The author seems to believe that the American mother does not look on such marriages with displeasure:

"_Mother._--'So you have engaged yourself to Mr. Jones. You must be a goose. He has neither fortune nor position. I know he may one day be well off; his grandfather may leave him part of his fortune, perhaps.'

"_Daughter._--'But, mamma, it is his grandfather I am engaged to.'

"_Mother._--'Kiss me, my child; you are an angel!'"

Whatever may be said on the subject, these marriages--I was going to say these prost.i.tutions--are but the exception; but the exception is too frequent to be possible to pa.s.s it by in silence.

The American girl is past-mistress in the art of turning to account her little capital of beauty, youth, and virtue. To bring about the realisation of a dream, she knows how to employ all love's artillery, and if the object of her desire is recalcitrant, she can fire red-hot b.a.l.l.s.

The late Alfred a.s.sollant told how an American girl succeeded in making a young English lord marry her. In certain States of the Union it is sufficient to pa.s.s the night with a woman to be declared her husband by the law in the morning. This damsel, it appears, invited the young lord to sup in her own room. This is done, or was done, in certain parts of America, and morals were perhaps none the worse for it. The bait took, and at supper the scion of a lordly house got tipsy and went to sleep in the maiden's room, all ignorant of the law.

At daybreak there is a knocking at the door. _Tableau!_ The fair one, all tearful and dishevelled, unbolts it, and ushers in the minister, who comes followed by the girl's parents and two witnesses, who are in the plot. The young lord in vain protests his innocence; he is married then and there, and the damsel only consents to his departure after having been bribed by a sum of a hundred thousand dollars.

Here is another story of the same stamp, which I heard told in America.

It is not more authentic than Alfred a.s.sollant's, but that which is very certain is that such an anecdote could not originate outside America.

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that is true and the truth that might be true; in other words, there is truth to fact as well as truth to fiction.

This is the story, just as it was told:

An American girl adored a rich, handsome young fellow, who unhappily did not respond to her flame. One fine day a luminous idea occurs to her.

She pretends to be ill, and sends to the young man to say she would like to see him. He hurries to the home of the fair invalid, who receives him lying on a sofa. She avows her love, and begs him to give her one kiss and bid her a long adieu. The swain bends over the sofa. The young lady encircles his neck with her arms, draws his head down, and imprints a long, lingering kiss on his lips. During this time, a photographer, hidden behind the hangings of the room, had his camera turned on the young couple. Next day the cunning la.s.s sent her unconscious dupe a negative of the touching little scene of the day before, asking how many copies she should get printed. In face of the betraying collodion, and to save his honour, the youth saw that there was but one thing to be done, and that was to walk to the altar, which he did without a murmur.

So much for caricature, or, if you prefer it, for the truth that is not true.

To return to strict verity, it is perfectly certain that an American girl does not fear to let a man understand that she loves him, and that, if need be, she lets no false modesty prevent her from telling him so.

Bettina, in "L'Abbe Constantin," divines that Jean Reynaud loves her, but that he is scrupulous about avowing it, and, in order to avoid her, asks to be sent to join another garrison. She comes to him frankly. She knows that Jean will not make the advances, and she does it instead. The scene is as true to American life as it is pretty. It is the faithful portrait of an American girl, a perfect photograph: one of those artistic photographs that M. Ludovic Halevy is so clever at.

The real American girl admires male qualities in man. The perfumed dandy, dressed in the latest fas.h.i.+on--the _dude_, as he is called in the States--is not her admiration; she prefers a little roughness to too much polish. At a large reception, given at the New York Union League Club in the early part of the year, I asked a young lady who were ten or a dozen young men who did not miss a single dance.

"Oh," she replied, with an air of sovereign contempt, "a few young _dudes_, who have been invited by the club just to keep up the dancing: marionettes, you know."

CHAPTER XII.

_The Emanc.i.p.ation of Woman.--Extinction of Man.--War against Beards.--Ladies Purifying the Streets of New York.--The Ladies "Go it" Alone, and have a "Good Time."_

In a country where woman is a spoilt child, petted, and made so much of, who can do and dare almost anything, it is strange to find women who are not content with their lot, but demand the complete emanc.i.p.ation of their s.e.x.

American women asking for complete emanc.i.p.ation! It makes one smile.

I was talking one evening with Mrs. Devereux Blake, the chief of the movement. (She is a lady middle-aged, well-preserved, of a fluent, agreeable conversation, who has declared war to the knife against the tyrant Man.)

"You must excuse me," I said to her, "if I ask questions; I am anxious to learn. I have submitted so many times to the interviewing process in your country, that I feel as if I had a right to interview the Americans a little in my turn. The American woman appears to me ungrateful not to be satisfied with her lot. She seems to rule the roast in the United States."

"No," replied Mrs. Blake, "she does not; but she ought."

"But she certainly does," I insisted.

"_De facto_, yes; but _de jure_, no."

"What do you want more?"

"The right to make laws."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The right of voting for candidates for Congress, and even the right to a seat in the House of Representatives."

"This appears to me a little too exacting, and almost unfair," I observed timidly. "You probably already make your husbands vote as you please: if, added to this, you are going to throw your own votes into the electoral urn, it means the extinction of man, neither more nor less; and, as Leon Gozlan said, 'it is perhaps as well that there should be two s.e.xes, for some time longer at all events.' My dear lady, you are spoilt children, and spoilt children are never satisfied."

I felt a little out of place in this energetic lady's drawing-room, almost like a wolf in the fold. Nevertheless, I learned very interesting things that evening.

A lady, who enjoyed that most esteemed of woman's rights, the right to be pretty, gave me some very curious details on the subject of New York life. We were speaking of the security of women in the large towns, and of the risk they ran in going out alone after nightfall.

"I have been struck with the respectability of your American streets," I said to her. "One never sees vice flaunting by daylight; and, in the evening, whenever I have been through the great arteries of your city, I have never seen anything that could shock the eyes of an honest woman.

In Paris, the boulevards are infested with harlots from eight o'clock in the evening; and the evil is much worse in London, where from four or five in the afternoon a whole district is given over to them."

"You are right," said the lady; "but if the streets of New York are respectable, it is thanks to us. If we had waited until the men swept our pavements, we should have had to wait a long time. We cleaned them ourselves."

"What do you mean?"

"A few years ago, several young women, among whom I might name members of our best society, resolved upon going out alone in the evenings, and of striking the first man who dared to accost them. They persevered for a long while, and finally succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng the disinfection of the main streets. Vice still exists; but it keeps within doors, and hides instead of parading itself. If you are able to go out at night with your wife, or even your young daughters; if a lady can go to the theatre alone, and, if it please her, return home on foot, it is to us that thanks are due. And do you not think that women, young, good-looking, and well-bred, who could master their disgust so far as to do that which the authorities were too cowardly to undertake, are not worthy to have a deliberative voice in the councils of the nation?"

I could not answer this.

Certainly, woman's influence upon public morality is most salutary, and ought to be given free play. I do not doubt that, if women occupied seats in all Town Councils, the streets would promptly be purified, and women would be able to go into the public thoroughfares at all hours as freely as their husbands and brothers.

I am going to launch a rather dangerous a.s.sertion.

It seems to me that the American woman does not render to man a hundredth part of the adoration he renders to her. If love could spring from grat.i.tude, Jonathan would be the most beloved of men; but does it ever spring from such a source?

In the eyes of the American woman, man has his good points. He ensures her a good position when he marries her; he works hard to satisfy her smallest wishes; and so long as his signature has any value at the foot of a cheque, this will be an extenuating circ.u.mstance in his favour.