If I have been able to grasp it, the American girl’s idea is that marriage is best when it is a culminated friendship, that is to say, when it includes friendship. This is a new idea, of course, revolutionary in more than may at first appear. Indeed, we might more correctly call the American idea, marriage for friendship. Balzac has said a very severe thing of love that does not include “an indissoluble friendship”; but it cannot be denied that we often are perplexed to see that in this business the greater does not always seem to be including the less. If the American girl shall succeed in definitely incorporating friendship into the essentials of marriage she will have accomplished a great triumph. “As to the value of other things,” says Cicero, “most men differ; concerning friendship all have the same opinion.” If she shall succeed in making friendship an essential of marriage, Miss America will, indisputably, have founded the American practice of a pre-matrimonial acquaintance. We shall go on believing that when we meet her with a “Fate-can-not-harm-me-I-am-engaged” look, she cannot, as often happens in other civilizations, be in ignorance of his name. And we can see at a glance that by insisting that she shall _know_ the man she is to marry, Miss America is assuming an intimate and personal dominion over courtship. She not only is assuming a power and a responsibility, but confessing the delicate truth of her individual jurisdiction. It will make no difference what formula she uses for “You may speak to father.” The euphemisms behind which she now can hide herself are as diaphanous as her finest veil. Yet, is there any to doubt her mastery of the situation she has invented? Is there any to doubt that in her new situation she has a new power? I know what has been said of the women who have gone before. “And this I set down as an absolute truth,” said Thackeray, “that a woman with fair opportunities and without an absolute hump may marry _whom she likes_.” And I do not mean, and perhaps should specifically protest that I do not mean, that Miss America is a whit more assertive in her selection than the women of whom Thackeray has chosen to say this much. But there is a sense in which Miss America, by virtue not only of peculiar privileges, but of peculiar endowments, is giving a new significance to courtship. Her attitude of mind is not to be confused with mere independence. We have many antecedent examples of independence. “At all events,” wrote Mrs. Carlyle to her insistent suitor, “I will marry no one else. That is all the promise I can and will make.” She thought that an agreement to marry a certain person at a certain time was simply absurd. Miss America’s independence is the product of conditions which have produced a sex attitude of mind as well as an individual attitude of mind.