Step into a car, into a steamboat; and the very gentleman who complains of the indifference, and coldness with which american ladies receive the kindness of gentlemen, is the first to spoil them. Once, being in a car, and not thinking that the back department of it, and always more comfortable, was exclusively for the ladies, seeing almost all the places vacant, I went there, and seated myself; when the agent of that train, with a loud voice, and manners to make the ladies understand he had no difficulty of being rude with his own sex to please the ladies, said to me with a voice of command, that the place was only for the ladies. ‘It is not my intention,’ I answered him, ‘to intrude myself among your ladies: but, you should be more polite to an inoffensive stranger, when you find him innocently breaking your rules, by telling him in a whisper, that he is mistaken.’ I wonder to find the american ladies good as they are with like gentlemen, spoiling them continually. The american lady must have an uncommon mind, not to think herself a being far superior to all gentlemen in bones, flesh, and blood. And how can she think otherwise, while the ladies have a reciprocal regard between themselves, the gentleman thinks it derogatory to himself to be polite with another gentleman? However, as my wish is to be just with the american gentlemen also, and the acquaintances who honor me in America, I must say that: although there are some of my sex, who think that a gentleman is not obliged to be polite to the politeness of those whom he thinks his inferiors, the generality of american gentlemen are now as civil as any civilized nation in the world; and during the time excepted, when they are before ladies, in which time they think it unmanly to have any regard between themselves, the aristocrat of money, who does not answer politeness for politeness, may be suffered by them; but he is not imitated by republicans: and the republicans in America form the greater number.