And yet in the household the Englishwoman is quite supreme--much more so, I think, than she is in "America." She really manages all household affairs, troubling her husband with no details, but being careful to manage in such a way as to please him. For, as I have said before, the wish of the master of an English household is the law of that household. Notwithstanding all this, I have been led to the firm belief that hen-pecking is far more common in England than it is with us, and that curtain lectures are much oftener delivered there than here. "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" would hardly have suggested themselves to an American humorist, although the thing itself--if not in its perfection, in its germ--is sufficiently known here to make the humor and the satire of that series perfectly appreciated. And, strange to say, the average English husband seems to be a less independent creature than the "American." English wives more generally insist upon their prerogative of sitting solemnly up for their husbands at night; and latch-keys are regarded as a personal grievance. What American wife would think of making a fuss about a man's having a latch-key? Not a few of them, indeed, have one themselves. And yet I have seen an Englishwoman of the lower middle class flush and choke and whimper when the subject of the inalienable right of a man to a latch-key to his own house was broached, and begin to talk about the worm turning when it is trampled upon. The devotion of Englishwomen to their families, and particularly to their children, cannot be surpassed. I believe that they are the best, the most self-sacrificing daughters, wives, and mothers in the world, except the good daughters and wives and mothers in "America"; and even them I believe they generally surpass in submissiveness and thoughtful consideration. But this is the result of the general subordination which in all things pervades English society.