The difference in the ages of the President and his beautiful bride was widely discussed.  Into the garland of bridal roses let no one ever twist a sprig of night-shade.  If 49 would marry 22, if summer is fascinated with spring, whose business is it but their own?  Both May and August are old enough to take care of themselves, and their marriage is the most noteworthy moment of their too short season of life.  Some day her voice is silenced, and the end of the world has come for him—­the morning dead, the night dead, the air dead, the world dead.  For his sake, for her sake, do not spoil their radiance with an impious regret.  They will endure the thorns of life when they are stronger in each other’s love.

That June wedding at the White House was the nucleus of happiness, from which grew a great wave of matrimony.  The speed of God’s will was increasing in America.  Most of the things managed by divine instinct are characterised by speed—­rapid currents, swift lightnings, swift coming and going of lives.  In the old-fashioned days a man got a notion that there was sanctity in tardiness.  It was a great mistake.  In America we had arrived at that state of mind when we wanted everything fast—­first and fast.  Fast horses, fast boats, fast runners are all good things for the human race.

The great yacht races of September 7, 1886, in which the “May Flower” distanced the “Galatea” by two miles and a half, was a spanking race.  Our sporting blood was roused to fighting pitch, and we became more active in every way of outdoor sports.  Lawn tennis tournaments were epidemic all over the country.  There were good and bad effects from all of them.  Those romping sports developed a much finer physical condition in our American women.  Lawn tennis and croquet were hardening and beautifying the race.  From the English and German women we adopted athletics for our own women.  Our girls began to travel more frequently in Europe.  It looked as though many of the young ladies who prided themselves upon their bewitching languors and fashionable dreaminess, would be neglected by young men in favour of the more athletic types.  It had been decided, in the social channels of our life, that doll babies were not of much use in the struggle, that women must have the capacity and the strength to sweep out a room without fainting; that to make an eatable loaf of bread was more important than the satin cheek or the colour of hair that one strong fever could uproot.  I was accused of being ambitious that Americans should have a race of Amazons.  I was not.  I did want them to have bodies to fit their great souls.  What I did wish to avoid, in this natural transition, was a misdirected use of its advantages.  There is dissipation in outdoor life, as well as indoors, and this was to be deplored.  I wanted everything American to come out ahead.