Most male Americans that one meets nowadays have a curiously Indianised cast of figure and countenance. Their blood as we know is hybrid blood, but somehow you never find an American that looks like an Italian or a Spaniard or an Englishman. Always and inevitably there is that about him which reminds you of the Indian. Climate is stronger than blood, or at any rate, the American climate has proved stronger so far. Roughly speaking, it may be said to induce in the human male black straight hair, horse features, a swarthy complexion, inclining to a coppery redness, a thick neck, large hands and flat feet. Its effects upon women I shall refrain from rehearsing, but you will not fail to discern them if you look carefully at the next American woman you happen to come across, that is if she happens to be anything other than one of those splendid and alluring peaches for the production of which in such charming numbers all men should be eternally grateful. I have further to reflect that the American woman’s beauty and charm are, as a rule, very seriously discounted by the circumstance that she talks through her nose, with that atrocious intonation that is commonly called the American accent. I should defy Venus herself to impress with her beauty anybody above the quality of a dollar hunter or a pork-packer if she could be imagined to speak in the average American way. Coming now to the question of goodness, which is a delicate question, it seems to me more than probable that the American woman is just as good, and no better, than the rest of womankind. She has been accused of all sorts of frightfulness—mainly on account of her unfortunate accent and her free and easy methods of talk. It is certain that she is capable of the higher forms of devotion and self-sacrifice, even if her views on divorce are entirely airy and liberal. But I do not believe that her heart is wicked, and as women go in the virtue way, she is unsurpassed. In some other respects I must confess she is to be forgiven, although she is, so far as mind, disposition, and outlook are concerned, a great deal too much like her half-civilised Poppa, and affects a great deal too much of the cheap smartness and abounding audacity that are the stock-in-trade of her still less civilised brother.