In Miss America, then, we have this quality at its best, or its worst, as you may view the matter; and the quality in her is coupled with others that belong to her, and perhaps to her only. The degree of independence which she has achieved has had a natural effect upon her relations to courtship. This independence has not merely accentuated the elusiveness which belongs to her as a woman. The quality of being hard to get is not new in woman, or in any degree original in any race. Ranging from the conditions in which barbaric woman is knocked down by the strongest bidder, to those in which she is knocked down to the highest, there is a uniform, because instinctive, outward habit of indifference or aloofness in the sex. But Miss America’s independence affects the whole question of her choice and the method of her choice. And, committed as she is, by virtue of being a woman, to a vast and fateful chance, she has, more certainly than any other woman in the world, a choice. For good or ill, and in whatever degree social station and social habit may modify the practice, she has an actual participation in the forming of the matrimonial partnership. The world has seen marriage by capture, by service, by purchase, by social convenience, by free and natural choice. The experiment of marriage by free choice has received in our own country its fullest trial. Marriage by social convenience and by purchase still survive, even with us, and there are many among us who think that marriage for love may not be final as a national trait, and that we will discover that the compact of marriage, being in the interest of society and actually under the government of society should be made directly in conformity with the convenience of society. Meanwhile, the trait is under scrutiny, the practice is under trial. [Illustration] Marriage for love, is marriage in which woman is the arbiter, so that Miss America is carrying out, side by side with her brother’s experiment in democracy, an extraordinary and unprecedented experiment in social practice. She believes, and reasonably, that Plato prophesied this system in his conservatively worded remark that “people must be acquainted with those into whose families and with whom they marry and are given in marriage.” She believes that if marriage is to be “chiefly by accident and the grace of nature,” it shall be left to her to illustrate the grace of nature. And most men who are candid with themselves know that while man may have the nominal initiative, she is in charge of the situation. There is a German saying that a man cannot be too careful in choosing his parents. It is equally true that a man cannot be too careful in letting the right woman pick him out. [Illustration]