"I suppose I've got my full share of the American spirit,
and I tell you I'm a bad hand at taking a back seat anywhere, or even a
front one on sufferance. And yet, wherever we go in Europe, that's what
we've got to put up with! You think we're mad on titles over here! We
aren't, but we are keen on what a title brings over your side. Take your
Debrett--there are I don't know how many baronets and lords and marquises
and earls, and all the rest of it. Do you realize that whatever public
place I'm in, or even at a friend's dinner-party, the homely, stupid
wives of those men have got to go in before me, and if they don't--why I
know all the time it's a matter of courtesy? That's what makes me mad!
Don't you dare to smile at me now. I'm in deadly earnest. In this
country, so far as society goes, I'm at the top. You may say it doesn't
amount to much, and you're right. But it makes it all the worse when I'm
in Europe, and see the sort of women I have to give place to. Say, don't
you sit there, Mr. Courage, and look at me as though I were a woman with
some cranky grievance to talk about.
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