Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/155

and insufferable impertinence, was "genuine stock" of royallest origin. Of course it is quite possible that, as in horticulture, a once nobly cultivated human plant may, if left without wholesome or fostering influences, degenerate into a weed—but that so rank a weed as the American Female Bounder should be the dire result of the Conqueror's blood is open to honest doubt. She generally has a "mission" to reform something or somebody,—she is very often a "Christian science" woman, or a theosophist. Sometimes she "takes up" Art as though it were a dustpan, and sweeps into it under her "patronage" certain dusty and doubtful literary and musical aspirants who want a "hearing" for their efforts. Fortunately for the world, a "hearing" under the gracious auspices of the American Female Bounder means a silence everywhere else. She is fond of "frocks and frills"—and wears an enormous quantity of jewels, "stones" as she calls them. She "pushes" herself in every possible social direction, and wherever she sees she is not wanted, there, more particularly than elsewhere, she contrives to force an entry. She embraces the game of "Bridge" with passionate eagerness because she sees that by keeping open house, with card-tables always ready, she can attract the loafing "great ones of the earth," and possibly persuade a "Mrs. Countess" to befriend her. If she is fairly wealthy, she can generally manage to do this. All Mrs. Countesses have not "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere." Some of them find the American Female Bounder useful—and precisely in the manner she offers herself, even so they take her.