her eclat as belonging to a new and conquering race in the world.  But the American Girl has not simply a slender figure and a fine eye and a ready tongue, she is not simply an engaging and companionable person, she has excellent common-sense, tact, and adaptability.  She has at length seen in her varied European experience that it is more profitable to have social good form according to local standards than a reputation for dash and brilliancy.  Consequently the American Girl of a decade ago has effaced herself.  She is no longer the dazzling courageous figure.  In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, she takes, as one may say, the color of the land.  She has retired behind her mother.  She who formerly marched in the van of the family procession, leading them—­including the panting mother—­a whimsical dance, is now the timid and retiring girl, needing the protection of a chaperon on every occasion.  The satirist will find no more abroad the American Girl of the old type whom he continues to describe.  The knowing and fascinating creature has changed her tactics altogether.  And the change has reacted on American society.  The mother has come once more to the front, and even if she is obliged to own to forty-five years to the census-taker, she has again the position and the privileges of the blooming woman of thirty.  Her daughters walk meekly and with downcast (if still expectant) eyes, and wait for a sign.

That this change is the deliberate work of the American Girl, no one who knows her grace and talent will deny.  In foreign travel and residence she has been quick to learn her lesson.  Dazzled at first by her own capacity and the opportunities of the foreign field, she took the situation by storm.  But she found too often that she had a barren conquest, and that the social traditions survived her success and became a lifelong annoyance; that is to say, it was possible to subdue foreign men, but the foreign women were impregnable in their social order.  The American Girl abroad is now, therefore, with rare exceptions, as carefully chaperoned and secluded as her foreign sisters.

It is not necessary to lay too much stress upon this phase of American life abroad, but the careful observer must notice its reflex action at home.  The American freedom and unconventionality in the intercourse of the young of both sexes, which has been so much commented on as characteristic of American life, may not disappear, but that small section which calls itself “society” may attain a sort of aristocratic distinction by the adoption of this foreign conventionality.  It is sufficient now to note this tendency, and to claim the credit of it for the wise and intelligent American Girl.  It would be a pity if it were to become nationally universal, for then it would not be the aristocratic distinction of a few, and the American woman who longs for some sort of caste would be driven to some other device.