That she is nevertheless a powerful social factor, M. André himself admits, though he attributes this less to her activity than to her fascinations as a beauty in repose. “The first duty and the first pride of an American husband is” he says, “to ensure the idleness of his wife and provide for the expenses of her toilette.” There are in the United States many women-workers, whether as preceptresses or clerks in the postal, telegraphic, or even ministerial offices. These are nearly all spinsters--the single state being frequent in New England, which vies with the Mother Country for the supremacy of the feminine population--and they give in their resignation when they get married. “I will not let my wife work,” such is the husband’s proud determination. Here, however, one imperative reason why women must resign their employment on marriage is overlooked. In London the numberless women engaged in the post and telegraph offices are required by the authorities to abdicate their posts on becoming wives, simply because they would obviously be unable to work their nine hours a day at a desk or counter if they had absorbing domestic duties to attend to and children to rear. To Englishmen, who are already acquainted with their Transatlantic brethren, a French view of the American in Paris would be more instructive than an English one. What particularly strikes Parisians is the freedom of American girls as contrasted with the restraint of unmarried young women in France, whose training is notoriously very much that of a convent. “American manners,” the French observe, “grant to girls entire liberty. They are the guardians of their own virtue and their own interests, and they preserve these things right well. Instructed in the dangers of life, they are capable of braving them; though it must be owned that their task is easy on account of the respect which, throughout their country, is shown to them by men. A girl can travel the length and breadth of the territory of the Union without having to fear dishonourable pursuits or the slightest unpleasantness. Therefore the American girl utterly differs from ours by her aspect alone.” Her costume is more unstudied, and the mouse-like timidity of the young Frenchwoman is replaced in her by a graceful carelessness. [Illustration: AFTER THE THEATRE.] To Americans, as M. André justly says, Paris must seem “a world upside down. American mothers complain greatly of the little security and respect shown to women in this capital, of the gallantry of the French and the indulgence of public opinion in flagrant cases. They are right;” and he thinks that it is because French girls are too severely disciplined, too much caged up, that there is less reverence between the two sexes in France than in America. “True chastity,” he maintains, “has liberty for her sister.”