The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-11-29
Americans as Painted in American
 :. Novels.
lContemporarr Review.l


 lContemporary Revicw.l
 The first and mos, striking trait in these books is the extraordinary respect for class distinction, position, gentility," and money, among the characters de- scribed, with scarcely an exception. The highest feather in a girls cap is to have refused British nobleman," or, at least one of the Boston "aristocrats. ]" Next comes the value set upon dress. The importance of the gown question can hardly be imagined by the European mind. A French heroine is of course !" bien mise," and her "chaussurc is probably insisted on the petites mules" i" or the "bas bien tires" An English girl must be picturesque in her attire, and her clothes must be becoming but to say that her clothes came from Paris would not enhance her charms in the eyes of the readers, who would consider her very absurd for her pains. 4 wild civility
 "Doth more bewitch me than where ar,
 Is too precise in every part"
 There is not much trace of Heuick, however. in the United States ideals. A list of Miss Lydia Blood s gowns, as given by so clever a man as Mir. Howells, might be drawn up for the advantage of miliin- CTS; Miss Daisy Miller's Aounces and the many buttons of her gloves are among the chiei points of her portrait by Mr. James.
 The respect for position runs as an under-current in every story. The fine gentlemen in the Lady of the Aroos- took" falls in love with " school marm, ? who is accidentally the only woman on board the packet vessel in which he is sailing, and by his own remarks and those of his friends, the reader is made to feel tsat an alliance with the girl is as im- possible as one between SchwarzenberR and bourgeois of aristocratic Vienna. When "love is still the lord of all," and he marries her, the enormity of the sacri- ice is borne in upon ones inmost soul |; indeed, it is only made possible at all by the pair resolving to go and settle in California, beyond the pale of his dis approving friends.
 There is a class of cheap American novelettes, written by second-ciass writers entirely for second-ciass readers, which have no parallel in England, where books are written for any who read, and there Is absolutely no class literature unless we descend as .low as "penny dreadfuls and yellow railway novels. h these little books the caste question is paramount. The fine people of the Some thing avenue will have nothing to do with the viruous heroine living in the Shabby street, and the moral of the tale is to show how she wins the heart of the prime hero of the Upper Ten," and either marries or refuses him, or is taken up in some seventh heaven of position, some paradise of gentility by the son of an even higher sphere than the avenue " society.
 As for the clothes, the most narrowing incident in "A Chance Acquaintance |" arises from the heroine, Miss Kitty, hay. ing put on an old travelling gown. Tbe courage of the Boston fine gentleman, who has just engaged himself to her (and who, as the author loses no opportunity of assuring us, is "exactly like an Eng lishman ") is not proof against the trial of ackowledging to some Boston "belles !" that the inmate of shabby toilette is the lady of his choice. He accordingly ignores her psesence altogether, where upon she not unnaturally refuses to have anything more to do with him. Is there any society in the world out of the United States where such a piece of snobbism could be represented as possible in a soi-distant gentleman? Noblesse oblige in that state of life if right feeling he ab- sent, and even the vulgarest cf men would hardly dare elsewhere 90 to sli1ht a woman whom he was about to make his wife, and whom he must then, at least, introduce to the vell-gowned fair ones. There is a pretty scene in one of Miss Bremer's Swedish novels, in which the gin puts on her oldest and shabbiest dress in order to test her lover, and he does not even fnd.it out, his whole soul filled with the deeper thoughts of having won his lady. You feel ID higher ate mosphere there than in the miiliner's estimate of life, which seems to have got by mistake into such clever books as Al H- G-