female courage stronger, on behalf of the new right and privilege; and the only question at last was, as to which country would be the first to launch its fair-sex invasion into the open and tempting field of the others.
There was evident preparation in this new direction amongst more than one of our neighbours, not to mention the social heavings within ourselves. If our English young maidens lacked the courage to be themselves the first to break the ice, our country was, at all events, honoured as the place to which the interesting first experiment was directed. There was, in fact, in this matter, so characteristic of the times, an interval of high curiosity and expectation. Failing our own fair sex making the first attempt, we were looking rather in the direction of old blood relationship across the Atlantic, where many millions of the ruddy young life and beauty of Canada were already in perceptible ferment on the subject, and where still more millions of the still more self-assertive and independent-thinking maidens of the great States on the southern border seemed not less bent upon the coming fray. The Atlantic had now long been easily and rapidly crossed by great ferries, which resembled, in dimensions and steadiness, rather a considerable floating town or territory, than the old and superseded ships and steamers, which the wild waves played with at their will two or three centuries before. There was, therefore, little difficulty or delay nowadays on the score of transatlantic distance.
But, after all, the first expedition of fair adventuresses came from La belle France, and an ever-memorable occasion it made for either country. The
