Social intercourse between youths and maidens is everywhere more easy and unrestrained than in England or Germany, not to speak of France.  Yet there are considerable differences between the Eastern cities, whose usages have begun to approximate to those of Europe, and other parts of the country.  In the rural districts, and generally all over the West, young men and girls are permitted to walk together, drive together, go out to parties and even to public entertainments together, without the presence of any third person who can be supposed to be looking after or taking charge of the girl.  So a girl may, if she pleases, keep up a correspondence with a young man, nor will her parents think of interfering.  She will have her own friends, who when they call at her house ask for her, and are received by her, it may be alone; because they are not deemed to be necessarily the friends of her parents also, nor even of her sisters.

In the cities of the Atlantic States it is now thought scarcely correct for a young man to take a young lady out for a solitary drive; and in few sets would he be permitted to escort her alone to the theatre.  But girls still go without chaperons to dances, the hostess being deemed to act as chaperon for all her guests; and as regards both correspondence and the right to have one’s own circle of acquaintances, the usage even of New York or Boston allows more liberty than does that of London or Edinburgh.  It was at one time, and it may possibly still be, not uncommon for a group of young people who know one another well to make up an autumn “party in the woods.”  They choose some mountain and forest region, such as the Adirondack Wilderness west of Lake Champlain, engage three or four guides, embark with guns and fishing-rods, tents, blankets, and a stock of groceries, and pass in boats up the rivers and across the lakes of this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of trackless forest, to their chosen camping-ground at the foot of some tall rock that rises from the still crystal of the lake.  Here they build their bark hut, and spread their beds of the elastic and fragrant hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the day, tracking the deer, the girls read and work and bake the corn-cakes; at night there is a merry gathering round the fire, or a row in the soft moonlight.  On these expeditions brothers will take their sisters and cousins, who bring perhaps some lady friends with them; the brothers’ friends will come too; and all will live together in a fraternal way for weeks or months, though no elderly relative or married lady be of the party.