Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/141

 meekly retires to the chimney corner with shawl over her shoulders and some useful knitting,—but it carries neither meaning nor application to the brisk, brilliant American spinster who at fifty keeps her trim svelte figure, dresses well, goes here, there and everywhere, and sheds her beaming smile with good-natured tolerance, and perchance something of gratitude as well, on the men she has escaped from. Life does not run only in one channel for the American Woman. She does not "make tracks" solely from the cradle to the altar, from the altar to the grave. She realizes that there is more fun to be got out of being born than just this little old measure meted out to her by the barbaric males of earliest barbaric periods, when women were yoked to the plough with cattle. And it is the innate consciousness of her own power and intelligent ability that gives her the dominating charm,—the magnetic spell under which the stolid Britisher falls more or less stricken, stupefied and inert. He is never a great talker; she is. Her flow of conversation bewilders him. She knows so much too—she chatters of Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats—and he thinks he has heard of these people somewhere before. He listens dumbly. Sometimes he scratches his head,—occasionally he feels his moustache, if he has one. When she laughs, he smiles slowly and dubiously. He hopes she is not laughing at him. He feels—he feels—dontcherknow—that she is "ripping." He couldn't tell you what he means by "ripping" to save his life. But painfully accustomed as he is to the dull and listless conversation of the British materfamilias, and to the half-hoydenish conduct of the British