by the suggestion of a constitutional want of liability to temptation, and that Mark Twain, in his somewhat irreverent rejoinder, is much nearer the mark when he attributes the prevalent sanctity of the marriage tie to the fact that the husbands and wives have generally married each other for love.  This is undoubtedly the true note of America in this particular, though it may not be unreservedly characteristic of the smart set of New York.  If the sacred flame of Cupid could be exposed to the alembic of statistics, I should be surprised to hear that the love matches of the United States did not reach a higher percentage than those of any other nation.  One certainly meets more husbands and wives of mature age who seem thoroughly to enjoy each other’s society.

There is a certain “snap” to American society that is not due merely to a sense of novelty, and does not wholly wear off through familiarity.  The sense of enjoyment is more obvious and more evenly distributed; there is a general willingness to be amused, a general absence of the blase.  Even Matthew Arnold could not help noticing the “buoyancy, enjoyment, and freedom from restraint which are everywhere in America,” and which he accounted for by the absence of the aristocratic incubus.  The nervous fluid so characteristic of America in general flows briskly in the veins of its social organism; the feeling is abroad that what is worth doing is worth doing well.  There is a more general ability than we possess to talk brightly on the topics of the moment; there is less lingering over one subject; there is a constant savour of the humorous view of life.  The more even distribution of comfort in the United States (becoming, alas! daily less characteristic) adds largely to the pleasantness of society by minimising the semi-conscious feeling of remorse in playing while the “other half” starves.  The inherent inability of the American to understand that there is any “higher” social order than his own minimises the feeling of envy of those “above” him.  “How dreadful,” says the Englishman to the American girl, “to be governed by men to whom you would not speak!” “Yes,” is the rejoinder, “and how delightful to be governed by men who won’t speak to you!” From this latter form of delight American society is free.  Henry James strikes a true note when he makes Miranda Hope (in “A Bundle of Letters”) describe the fashionable girl she met at a Paris pension as “like the people they call ‘haughty’ in books,” and then go on to say, “I have never seen anyone like that before—­anyone that wanted to make a difference.”  And her feeling of impersonal interest in the phenomenon is equally characteristic.  “She seemed to me so like a proud young lady in a novel.  I kept saying to myself all day, ‘haughty, haughty,’ and I wished she would keep on so.”  Too much stress cannot easily be laid on this feeling of equality in the air as a potent enhancer of the pleasure of society.  To feel yourself patronised—­even,