ENGLISH WOMEN.
A LADY whom I had the honor and the pleasure of taking in to dinner at a country house near London, and whom I had soon found to be one of those simple-minded, good-natured, truth-telling women who are notably common in England, spoke to me about some ladies who on a previous day had attracted her attention, adding, "I knew they were Americans." "How?" I asked. "Oh, we always know American women!" "But how, pray?" She thought a moment, and answered, "By their beauty,--they are almost always pretty, if not more,--by their fine complexions, and by their exquisite dress." I did not tell her that I thought her discrimination just; but that it was so I had by that time become convinced. And yet I should say that the most beautiful women I have ever seen were Englishwomen, were it not for the memory of an Irishwoman, a Frenchwoman, a German, and a Czech. But the latter were exceptional. Beauty is very much commoner among women of the English race than among those of any other with which I am acquainted; and among that race it is commoner in "America" than in England. I saw more beauty of face and figure at the first two receptions which I attended after my return than I had found among the hundreds of thousands of women whom I had seen in England.
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