Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/216

 AMERICAN WOMEN THE PRETTIEST

In another place I have recorded Mark's high opinion of the beauty of the Vienna women and of the lack of beauty he encountered at the Berlin court.

As we were walking home from a reception given by Mr. and Mrs. John Jackson (John Jackson, of New Jersey, first secretary of the Berlin Legation) Mark said: "It's like looking up at the Horse Shoe in the Metropolitan Opera House to see those pretty American girls, Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Bingham (wife of Captain, later General Bingham) and Marion Phelps (daughter of Minister William Walter Phelps). Marion is blonde and inclined to be statuesque, like the native women here, but oh, the difference! As in the case of Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Bingham, one sees at a glance that Nature squandered more refinement on her than on a thousand Berlin women, royal and otherwise.

"They say God made man in his effigy. I don't know about that, but I'm quite sure that he put a lot of divinity into the American girl." 212