So vital a quality is this of Englishwomen that to have only met them out of their own surroundings is only to have seen half their selves: their intelligences may have been all poorly, or richly, enough on exhibition, but their manners cannot be fairly judged till they have been exposed in their own appropriate setting. It is surprising what lustre will then be taken on by facets which seemed harsh and uncouth in an uncongenial light. The most censorious foreigner caught by the radiation of an Englishwoman within her own four walls could not come away unmelted. Like the nightly twinkle of ships’ lights on the dark chilly waters of a harbour innumerable English hearths stud the external coldness of our country with spots of warmth and brightness. The genial fire is tended by the Englishwoman, the paragon of vestal domesticity. Even in her least attractive manifestations, as haughty clerk, surly landlady, insolent hussy of the factory, raucous slattern of a slum, empty dawdler, or priggish teacher, she sloughs a husk upon her own doorstep. You must judge her at home, as a guest not as an inquisitor, before you wholly condemn her manners. You will find, as a rule, that you will forgive much more than you condemn. The point, however, is not so much what we may have to forgive her now as her probable demands on our forbearance in the future. Taking our figure in khaki astride the motor bicycle as typifying the Englishwoman to come, into whatsoever less violent exercise she may as an individual divert her energies, we may well ask what is the outlook for her manners. We may take it for granted, I am sure, that the essential virtues of the English stock are there unchanged, but a new strength and a new independence have sprung up to modify their activities. The new grafting may for some time produce a less mellow fruit. It is the settled people, I have already said, who bring forth the fine fruit of English manners, and where is settlement to-day? Society is regrouping itself busily like iron filings on a sounding board, values are profoundly changing, ideals are in the agonies of birth and death. The seething crowd in Oxford Street is England in miniature: people are everywhere hurrying to and fro, physically and mentally, laden with new ideas, new purposes and new experiences. It will be hardly strange if they leave their manners at home, or drop them in the bustle, as a man with two bags to carry might leave or drop his walking stick. We may wait in hope for their resumption in times of more leisured progress.