Note 56 — JOURNAL. (continued 3)

The manners of the young girls of America appear singularly free to foreigners; and until they become better acquainted with the causes which produce so unrestrained a deportment, they are liable to take disadvantageous and mistaken impressions with regard to them. The term which I should say applied best to the tone and carriage of American girls from ten to eighteen, is hoydenish; laughing, giggling, romping, flirting, screaming at the top of their voices, running in and out of shops, and spending a very considerable portion of their time in lounging about in the streets. In Philadelphia and Boston, almost all the young ladies attend classes or day schools; and in the latter place I never went out, morning, noon, or evening, that I did not meet, in some of the streets round the Tremont House, a whole bevy of young school girls, who were my very particular friends, but who, under pretext of going to, or returning from, school, appeared to me to be always laughing, and talking, and running about in the public thoroughfares; a system of education which we should think by no means desirable. The entire liberty which the majority of young ladies are allowed to assume, at an age when in England they would be under strict nursery discipline, appears very extraordinary; they not only walk alone in the streets, but go out into society, where they take a determined and leading part, without either mother, aunt, or chaperon of any sort; custom, which renders such an appendage necessary with us, entirely dispenses with it here; and though the reason of this is obvious enough in the narrow circles of these small towns, where every body knows every body, the manners of the young ladies do not derive any additional charm from the perfect self-possession which they thus acquire. Shyness appears to me to be a quality utterly unknown to either man, woman, or child in America. The girls, from the reasons above stated, and the boys, from being absolutely thrown into the world, and made men of business before they are sixteen, are alike deficient in any thing like diffidence; and I really have been all but disconcerted at the perfect assurance with which I have been addressed, upon any and every subject, by little men and women just half way through their teens. That very common character amongst us, a shy man, is not to be met with in these latitudes. An American conversing on board one of their steam-boats is immediately surrounded, particularly if his conversation, though strictly directed to one individual, is of a political nature; in an instant a ring of spectators is formed round him, and whereas an Englishman would become silent at the very first appearance of a listener, an American, far from seeming abashed at this "audience," continues his discourse, which thus assumes the nature of an harangue, with perfect equanimity, and feels no annoyance whatever at having unfolded his private opinions of men and matters to a circle of forty or fifty people whom they could in no possible way concern. Speechifying is a very favourite species of exhibition with the men here, by the by; and, besides being self possessed, they are all remarkably fluent. Really eloquent men are just as rare in this country as in any other, but the "gift of the gab" appears to me more widely disseminated amongst Americans than any other people in the world. Many things go to make good speakers of them: great acuteness, and sound common sense, sufficient general knowledge, and great knowledge of the world, an intense interest in every political measure, no matter how trivial in itself, no sense of bashfulness, and a great readiness of expression. But to return to the manners of the young American girls:—It is Rousseau, I think, who says, "Dans un pays où les mœurs sont pures, les filles seront faciles, et les femmes sévères." This applies particularly well to the carriage of the American women. When remarking to a gentleman once the difference between the manners of my own young countrywomen and his, I expressed my disapprobation of the education which led to such a result, he replied, "You forget the comparatively pure state of morals in our country, which admits of this degree of freedom in our young women, without its rendering them liable to insult or misconstruction." This is true, and it is also most true, for I have seen repeated instances of it, that those very girls, whose manners have been most displeasing to my European ways of feeling, whom I should have pointed out as romps and flirts pre-eminent, not only make excellent wives, but from the very moment of their marriage seem to forsake society, and devote themselves exclusively to household duties and retirement. But that I have seen and known of repeated instances of this, I could scarcely have believed it, but it is the case; and a young American lady, speaking upon this subject, said to me, "We enjoy ourselves before marriage; but in your country, girls marry to obtain a greater degree of freedom, and indulge in the pleasures and dissipations of society." She was not, I think, greatly mistaken.