She might have clung to her girlhood longer instead of marrying at seventeen.

I am so fond of the American way that it has always seemed to me a pitiful accident that my sister should have come so near and missed by so little the fulfilment of my country's promise to women.

A long girlhood, a free choice in marriage, and a brimful womanhood are the precious rights of an American woman.
My father was too recently from the Old World to be entirely free from the influence of its social traditions.

He had put Frieda to work out of necessity.

The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer of marriage, but my father would not stand in the way of what he considered her welfare.