To-day, no little town on the coast is
without its English chapel, British club, tennis ground, and golf
links. On a fair day at Monte Carlo, Nice, or Cannes, the
prevailing conversation is in English, and the handsome, well-
dressed sons of Albion lounge along beside their astonishing
womankind as thoroughly at home as on Bond Street.
Those wonderful English women are the source of unending marvel and
amusement to the French. They can never understand them, and small
wonder, for with the exception of the small "set" that surrounds
the Prince of Wales, who are dressed in the Parisian fashion, all
English women seem to be overwhelmed with regret at not being born
men, and to have spent their time and ingenuity since, in trying to
make up for nature's mistake. Every masculine garment is twisted
by them to fit the female figure; their conversation, like that of
their brothers, is about horses and dogs; their hats and gloves are
the same as the men's; and when with their fine, large feet in
stout shoes they start off, with that particular swinging gait that
makes the skirt seem superfluous, for a stroll of twenty miles or
so, Englishwomen do seem to the uninitiated to have succeeded in
their ambition of obliterating the difference between the sexes.
It is of an evening, however, when concealment is no longer
possible, that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon
standing declared in all her plainness.
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