Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/377

 in the stores, I should have supposed that there was a great rage for ornament; but from the reply I once received from a jeweller, on asking him who would purchase a five-thousand-guinea diamond bracelet, "I guess some Southerner will buy it for his wife," I believe that most of these articles find their way to the South and West, where a less-cultivated taste may be supposed to prevail. I saw very little jewellery worn, and that was generally of a valuable but plain description. The young ladies appear to have adopted the maxim, "Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most." They study variety in ornament rather than profusion. "What are their manners like?" is a difficult question to answer. That there is a great difference between the manners of English and American ladies may be inferred from some remarks made to me by the most superior woman whom I met in America, and one who had been in English society in London. In naming a lady with whom she was acquainted, and one who could scarcely be expected to be deficient in affection towards herself, she said, "Her manners were perfectly ladylike, but she seemed to talk merely because conversation was a conventional requirement of society, and I cannot believe that she had any heart." She added, "I did not blame her for this; it was merely the result of an English education, which studiously banishes every appearance of interest or emotion. Emotion is condemned as romantic and vulgar sensibility, interest as enthusiasm."

The system which she reprehended is not followed at New York, and the result is, not that the ladies "wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at," but