A European cannot spend an evening in an American drawing-room without perceiving that the attitude of men to women is not that with which he is familiar at home.  The average European man has usually a slight sense of condescension when he talks to a woman on serious subjects.  Even if she is his superior in intellect, in character, in social rank, he thinks that as a man he is her superior, and consciously or unconsciously talks down to her.  She is too much accustomed to this to resent it, unless it becomes tastelessly palpable.  Such a notion does not cross an American’s mind.  He talks to a woman just as he would to a man; of course with more deference of manner, and with a proper regard to the topics likely to interest her, but giving her his intellectual best, addressing her as a person whose opinion is understood by both to be worth as much as his own.  Similarly an American lady does not expect to have conversation made to her:  it is just as much her duty or pleasure to lead it as the man’s is; and more often than not she takes the burden from him, darting along with a gay vivacity which puts to shame his slower wits.

It need hardly be said that in all cases where the two sexes come into competition for comfort, the provision is made first for women.  In railroads the end car of the train, being that farthest removed from the smoke of the locomotive, is often reserved for them (though men accompanying a lady are allowed to enter it); and at hotels their sitting-room is the best and sometimes the only available public room, ladyless guests being driven to the bar or the hall.  In omnibuses and horse-cars (tram-cars), it was formerly the custom for a gentleman to rise and offer his seat to a lady if there were no vacant place.  This is now less universally done.  In New York and Boston (and I think also in San Francisco), I have seen the men keep their seats when ladies entered; and I recollect one occasion when the offer of a seat to a lady was declined by her, on the ground that as she had chosen to enter a full car she ought to take the consequences.  It was (I was told in Boston) a feeling of this kind that had led to the discontinuance of the old courtesy:  when ladies constantly pressed into the already crowded vehicles, the men, who could not secure the enforcement of the regulations against over-crowding, tried to protect themselves by refusing to rise.  It is sometimes said that the privileges yielded to American women have disposed them to claim as a right what was only a courtesy, and have told unfavorably upon their manners.  I know of several instances, besides this one of the horse-cars, which might seem to support the criticism, but cannot on the whole think it well founded.  The better-bred women do not presume on their sex, and the area of good breeding is always widening.  It need hardly be said that the community at large gains by the softening and restraining influence which the reverence for womanhood diffuses.  Nothing