The _Standard_ itself apparently contradicts itself in another article on “Flirtation,” concerning which it says: “It is usually so innocent that it has become part of the education most of our young women pass through in their training for society. The British matron smiles contentedly when she sees that her daughter, just entered on her teens, exhibits a partiality for long walks and soft-toned confabulations with her cousin Fred or her brother’s favourite schoolmate. Three or four such juvenile attachments will do the girl no harm, if they are gently watched over by the parental eye. They serve to evolve the sexually social instincts in a gradual way. Through them the bashful maiden learns the nature of man in the same fashion as she takes lessons on the piano. In a word, she is ‘getting her hand in’ for the real game of matrimony that is to be played in a few years. Her youthful swains, of course, derive their own instructions from these innocent amours.... Chivalrous feeling is developed which it takes a deal of worldly wisdom to smother in after years.... When we observe this sentimentality in a boy, we derive great amusement from it, but it should raise the lad in our estimation. He has something in him to which ideals appeal, and his early-developed susceptibility will—to use a beautiful but forgotten word—engentle his nature.” Perhaps the difference between English and American courtship and flirtation is not so great as often painted, and is becoming less every year, owing to the Americanisation of Europe. AMERICAN LOVE It is in the United States of America that Plato’s ideal—so completely ignored by his countrymen—that young men and women should have ample opportunity to meet and get acquainted with one another before marriage, is most perfectly realised; as well as Addison’s supplementary advice that marriage should be preceded by a long courtship. As boys and girls in America are commonly educated in the same schools, they are initiated at an early age into the sweets and sorrows of Calf-love Courtship, which has such a refining influence on the boys, and renders the girls more easy and natural in society when they get older; destroying among other puerilities that spring-chicken Coyness which makes many of their European sisters appear so silly. In the Western country-schools each girl has her “beau”—a boy of fourteen to seventeen—who brings her flowers, apples, or other presents, accompanies her home, and performs various other gallant services; nor has any harm ever been known to result from this juvenile Courtship—except an occasional elopement, in case of a prematurely frivolous couple, whom it was just as well to get rid of in that way as any other.