The theater is not only the best possible place to hear correctly enunciated speech, but a play of contemporary life is equally valuable as a study in manners.  There is also a suavity of grace in the way Europeans bow and stand and sit, and in the way they speak, that is unconsciously imitated.  These “manners” need not—­in fact, should not—­be gushing or mincing, but you gradually perceive that jerking ramrod motions and stalking into a drawing-room like a grenadier are less impressive than awkward.

=THE SPOILED AMERICAN GIRL=

The subject of American manners, as they appear to Europeans, cannot be dismissed without comment on a reprehensible type of American girl who flourishes on shipboard, on tours, and in public places generally—­but most particularly in the large and expensive hotels of Continental resorts.

If she and her family have a “home,” they are never in it, and if they have any object in life other than letting her follow her own unhampered inclinations, it is not apparent to the ordinary observer.  Such a girl is always over-dressed, she wears every fashion in its extremest exaggeration, she sparkles with jewelry, and reeks of scent, she switches herself this way and that, and is always posing in public view and playing to the public gallery.  She generally has a small brother who refuses to go to bed at night, or to stop making the piazza chairs into a train of cars, or to use the public halls as a skating rink.  When he is not making a noise, he is eating.  And his “elegant” sister looks upon him with disdain.

Sister, meanwhile, jingling with chains and bangles, decked in scarfs and tulle and earrings, leans on or against whatever happens to be convenient, flirting with any casual stranger who comes along.  She invariably goes to her meals alone—­evidently thinking her parents should be kept apart from her.  She is never away from the Kurhaus or Casino, abroad or the hotel lobby in America.  She is nearly always alone, and the book she is perpetually reading is always opened at the same page, and she is sure to look up as you pass.  She is very ready to be “picked up” and to confide her life’s history, past, present and future, to any stranger, especially a young one of the opposite sex.  She is rude only to her mother and father.  She is also (we know, but Europe doesn’t) a perfectly “good” girl.  Her lack of etiquette is shocking, but her morals are above reproach.  She does not even mean to be rude to her parents, and she has no idea that the things she does are exactly those which condemn her in the opinion of strangers.  If she were constantly with, and obviously devoted to her mother, she would make an infinitely better impression, both as to good form and as to heart, than by segregating herself so that she can be joined by any haphazard youth who strolls into view, and thereby cheapening not only herself but the name of the American girl in general.

Curiously enough, if she marries in Europe, she is apt to “settle down” and become an altogether admirable example of American-European womanhood, because she is sound fruit at heart—­merely wrapped in tawdry gilt paper trimming by her adoring but ignorantly unwise parents who, in their effort to show her off, disguise the very qualities which should have been accentuated.