Sprightly US romance centreing around the Centennial Exhibition, and a pair of kid boots which carry the narrator to her meeting with Algernon Sidney Cooper, Englishman. She is already engaged but the comparisons between the two men, their treatment of her, their attitudes to America and to the Exhibition - particularly to the Women's Pavilion - eventually result in a broken engagement and a new one. Interesting, re: the depiction of the Exhibition as a background to romance, and an approving depiction of women's work (though still true to woman's role in the period). (PB)