The Atlantic seaboard swarms in summertime with broad-shouldered, well-bred, highly educated and charming boys, who have had every advantage except that of being waited on by liveried footmen.  They camp in the woods; tutor the feeble-minded sons of the rich; tramp and bicycle over Swiss mountain passes; sail their catboats through the island-studded reaches and thoroughfares of the Maine coast, and grow brown and hard under the burning sun.  They are the hope of America.  They can carry a canoe or a hundred-pound pack over a forest trail; and in the winter they set the pace in the scientific, law and medical schools.  Their heads are clear, their eyes are bright, and there is a hollow instead of a bow window beneath the buttons of their waistcoats.

The feet of these young men carry them to strange places; they cope with many and strange monsters.  They are our Knights of the Round Table.  They find the Grail of Achievement in lives of hard work, simple pleasures and high ideals—­in college and factory towns; in law courts and hospitals; in the mountains of Colorado and the plains of the Dakotas.  They are the best we have; but the poor rich girl rarely, if ever, meets them.  The barrier of wealth completely hems her in.  She must take one of those inside or nothing.

When, in a desperate revolt against the artificiality of her existence, she breaks through the wall she is easy game for anybody—­as likely to marry a jockey or a professional forger as one of the young men of her desire.  One should not blame a rich girl too much for marrying a titled and perhaps attractive foreigner.  The would-be critic has only to step into a Fifth Avenue ballroom and see what she is offered in his place to sympathize with and perhaps applaud her selection.  Better a year of Europe than a cycle of—­shall we say, Narragansett?  After all, why not take the real thing, such as it is, instead of an imitation?

I believe that one of the most cruel results of modern social life is the cutting off of young girls from acquaintanceship with youths of the sturdy, intelligent and hardworking type—­and the unfitting of such girls for anything except the marriage mart of the millionaire.

I would give half of all I possess to see my daughters happily married; but I now realize that their education renders such a marriage highly difficult of satisfactory achievement.  Their mother and I have honestly tried to bring them up in such a way that they can do their duty in that state of life to which it hath pleased God to call them.  But unfortunately, unless some man happens to call them also, they will have to keep on going round and round as they are going now.