I have been
nowhere that I have not been treated with greater consideration than if
I had belonged to the other sex. There is not a country in Europe of
which this can be said; and if a nation's civilization is gauged--as the
wise declare--by its treatment of women, then America, rough as it may
be, badly dressed as it is, tobacco-chewing as it often is, stands
head, shoulders, and heart above all the rest of the world. The
Frenchwoman was right in declaring America to be _le paradis des dames_,
and those women who exalt European gallantry above American honesty are
as blind to their own interests as an owl at high noon.
There is no royal railroad to lecturing. At best it is hard work, but
lecture committees "do their possible," as the Italians say, to lessen
the weight, and that "possible" is heartily appreciated by such of us as
inwardly long for a natural bridge between stations and hotels. A woman
is never so forlorn as when getting out of a car or entering a strange
hotel.
However, there never was a rule without its exception, and though
courtesy has marked the majority of lecture committees for its own, a
lecturer may occasionally find himself stranded upon a desert of
indifference, and languish for the comforts of a home not twenty miles
distant. Thus it happened that once upon arriving at my destination when
the shades of evening were falling fast, and glancing about for the
customary smiling gentlemen who smooth out the rough places by carrying
bags, superintending the transportation of luggage, and driving you to
your abiding-place in the best carriage of the period, I found no
gentlemen, smiling or otherwise, to deliver me from my own ignorance.
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