What, oh, what can be more true than this?  A lady well stricken in years, and of adequate protraction of nose and rectilinear undeviation of figure, can travel alone from Maine to Florida with as perfect immunity from offensive masculine intrusion as though she were guarded by a regiment; while a somewhat younger girl, with curls and an innocent look, can not appear unaccompanied by an escort in an American omnibus, car, ferry-boat, or hotel, without appealing at once to the finest fatherly feelings of every manly middle-aged observer whose wife is not watching him, and exciting as general a desire to make her trip socially delightful as though each gentlemanly eye seeking hers were indeed that of a tender sire.

Thus, although Miss POTTS’S lonely stay in her hotel had been so brief, the mysterious American instinct of chivalry had discovered it very early on the first morning after her arrival, and she arose from her delicious sleep to find at least half a dozen written offers of hospitality from generous strangers, sticking under her door.  Understanding that she was sojourning without natural protectors in a strange city, the thoughtful writers, who appeared to be chiefly Western men of implied immense fortunes, begged her (by the delicate name of “Fair Unknown”) to take comfort in the thought that they were stopping at the same hotel and would protect her from all harm with their lives.  In proof of this unselfish disposition on their parts, several of them were respectively ready to take her to a circus-matinee, or to drive in Central Park, on that very day:  and her prompt acceptance of these signal evidences of a disinterested friendship for womanhood without a natural protector could not be more simply indicated to those who now freely offered such friendship, than by her dropping her fork twice at the public breakfast table, or sending the waiter back three times with the boiled eggs to have them cooked rightly.

Flora had completed her chemical toilet, put all the bottles, jars, and small round boxes back into her satchel again, and sat down to a second reading of these gratifying intimations that a prepossessing female orphan is not necessarily without assiduous paternal guardianship at her command wherever there are Western fathers, when Mr. Dibble appeared, as he had promised, accompanied by Gospeler Simpson.

“Miss CAROWTHERS was so excited by your sudden flight, Miss Potts,” said the latter, “that she came at once to me and oldy with your farewell note, and would not stop saying ‘Did you ever!’ until, to restrain my aggravated mother from fits, I promised to follow you to your guardian’s and ascertain what your good-bye note would have meant if it had actually been punctuated.”

“Our reverend friend reached me about an hour ago,” added Mr. Dibble, “saying, that a farewell note without a comma, colon, semi-colon, or period in it, and with every other word beginning with a capital, and underscored, was calculated to drive friends to distraction.  I took the liberty of reminding him, my dear, that young girls from boarding-school should hardly be expected to have advanced as far as English composition in their French and musical studies; and I also related to him what you had told me of Mr. Bumstead.”