202 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



of their teens, who are already the parents of families. 

 As a rule, I think that Americans marry too young ; and 

 the results are often deplorable enough. A believer 

 myself in divorce for other serious causes than the sole 

 one admitted in England, I yet think that divorce is 

 deplorably frequent in the States generally. It is a 

 dreadful thing to bind a man for life to a drunken 

 woman, and I think the husbands of such creatures 

 fully entitled to a divorce ; nor would I permit religious 

 fanatics to bind men on this point; but there are few 

 drunken women in America. The majority of the 

 divorces are for incompatibility that is, in common- 

 sense parlance, the parties are tired of each other. This 

 is a cause of separation that should be very cautiously 

 admitted. It is very easy for Yankees to boast of the 

 morality of their women when a woman can put away 

 her husband almost at her sweet will. She is thus called 

 a wife when, in most countries, she would be considered 

 simply a mistress. 



But apart from this, and in spite of her fantastical 

 prudery, I doubt if the American woman is the superior 

 in virtue to the average European woman. It is a 

 delicate subject, and I shall confine myself here to 

 saying that the domestic hearth in the United States 

 is a far less enchanting place of rest than what it is in dear 

 old England. In fact there very often is no domestic 

 hearth at all in an American family. The wretched 

 custom of living in hotels and lodging-houses is very 

 prevalent in many of the towns of the States; and even 

 in the country, when it has been my desire to live under 

 a roof for a time, I have either kept a bachelor home of 

 my own, or lodged with German or English emigrants 

 who had not yet fallen in with the custom of the land. 



I have made these few cursory remarks on the 

 general manners and customs of the people of the United 

 States by way of preface ; for much of this book will 

 from this point treat of the Yankees and their peculiar 



