extreme Southwest or in Mexico, and the sooner we put this fact into poetry and literature, and begin to make a tradition of it, the better will it be for our peace of mind and for our children.  And if the continent does not satisfy us, there lie the West Indies within a few hours’ sail, with all the luxuriance and geniality of the tropics.  We are only half emancipated yet.  We are still apt to see the world through the imagination of England, whose literature we adopted, or of Germany.  To these bleak lands Italy was a paradise, and was so sung by poets who had no conception of a winter without frost.  We have a winter climate of another sort from any in Europe; we have easy and comfortable access to it.  The only thing we need to do now is to correct our imagination, which has been led astray.  Our poets can at least do this for us by the help of a quasi-international copyright.

THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE

In times past there have been expressed desire and fear that there should be an American aristocracy, and the materials for its formation have been a good deal canvassed.  In a political point of view it is of course impossible, but it has been hoped by many, and feared by more, that a social state might be created conforming somewhat to the social order in European countries.  The problem has been exceedingly difficult.  An aristocracy of derived rank and inherited privilege being out of the question, and an aristocracy of talent never having succeeded anywhere, because enlightenment of mind tends to liberalism and democracy, there was only left the experiment of an aristocracy of wealth.  This does very well for a time, but it tends always to disintegration, and it is impossible to keep it exclusive.  It was found, to use the slang of the dry-goods shops, that it would not wash, for there were liable to crowd into it at any moment those who had in fact washed for a living.  An aristocracy has a slim tenure that cannot protect itself from this sort of intrusion.  We have to contrive, therefore, another basis for a class (to use an un-American expression), in a sort of culture or training, which can be perpetual, and which cannot be ordered for money, like a ball costume or a livery.

Perhaps the “American Girl” may be the agency to bring this about.  This charming product of the Western world has come into great prominence of late years in literature and in foreign life, and has attained a notoriety flattering or otherwise to the national pride.  No institution has been better known or more marked on the Continent and in England, not excepting the tramway and the Pullman cars.  Her enterprise, her daring, her freedom from conventionality, have been the theme of the novelists and the horror of the dowagers having marriageable daughters.  Considered as “stock,” the American Girl has been quoted high, and the alliances that she has formed with families impecunious but noble have given