that this was really an
intellectual woman. But one glance at the broad, thoughtful brow and
the clear, expressive eyes of the speaker convinced her of the truth.

Lost in these reflections, Ernestine continued her novel taskwork, but
the Staatsrthin suddenly discovered, to her horror, that she was
throwing the stems in with the beans, and the beans into the bowl of
stems and strings.

"My dear," she cried, "see what you are doing! now I shall have to pick
over the whole dishful!"

Ernestine threw down the knife and leaned back in her chair. "I never
was made for such work! Forgive me, but I cannot think it worth while
to learn it. I shall never be so situated as to need such knowledge."

"As you please," said the Staatsrthin coldly.

"Are you displeased with me? Is it possible that you are displeased
with me because I cannot cut beans?" She seized the old lady's busy
hand. "Frau Staatsrthin, make some allowance for me. You must not ask
one to do what she is not fit for. Would you ask the fish to fly, or
the bird to swim? Of course not. Do not, then, expect a person who is
at home only in a different world to take an interest in the every-day
concerns of this."


           "This strife about the beans you make,
            When really crowns are now at stake,


we might say," remarked the Staatsrthin. "And certainly in our case
these matters are not so widely different. What is most important
cannot be entirely divided here from what is unimportant. Such little
household occupations, slight, even insignificant, as they may appear,
belong to the responsibilities of a woman's position. They are stitches
in the web of her life. If a single one is dropped, the whole is
gradually frayed!"

Ernestine shrugged her shoulders. "You are perfectly right from your
point of view, Frau Staatsrthin, but your point of view is not mine.
To me a woman's mission is something higher. A noble mind cannot
condescend to occupy itself with such cares, which are--forgive me the
expression--always more or less sordid."

The Staatsrthin frowned slightly, but she did not interrupt Ernestine,
who continued: "It is hard enough that so much of the brute cleaves to
us that we must eat and drink to keep our physical mechanism in order;
thus, in the process of development, we never attain any higher degree
of perfection. We ought to take pride in developing ourselves as fully
as possible, in contending against every animal appetite instead of
making a formal study how best to pamper it. We ought to blush for our
frail, indigent physical nature, instead of making an idol of it and
regarding her who sacrifices to it most freely as the loftiest
illustration of feminine virtue."

"That all sounds very fine," said the Staatsrthin, "but it is,
nevertheless, a deplorable mistake. With the capacity for pleasure the
Creator has bestowed upon us the right to enjoy. We ought only to see
to it that our pleasures are true and noble. It is false shame that
would repudiate what we cannot live without, and it sounds strangely
contradictory from the lips of a natural philosopher like yourself.
Before whom would you blush? Before your fellow-beings? Certainly not,
for they all share your mortal infirmities. And, since you do not
believe in a God, where does there exist for you any supernatural
ideal, any bodiless spirit, subject to do change nor desire of change,
before whom you can be ashamed of being a mortal?"

"In myself,--in my own imagination."

"Yes, yes, this is the usual jargon. Because you deny your God, and
still feel the need of Him, you exalt yourself into a divinity, and are
humiliated at the idea of your imprisonment within a mortal frame!"

"Oh, no, I am not so vain and arrogant. There is, if I may thus express
it, a refinement of mind that is shocked by the coarse demands of
material nature. And I should be afraid of degrading myself in my own
eyes if, in satisfying these demands, I used the time and ability that
might be employed for higher purposes."

"You speak as if by the responsibilities of a woman I meant devotion
solely to creature comforts. I understand by these something more than
eating and drinking. Order and cleanliness, for example, are among the
necessities of our life, especially for fine natures, for they belong
to the domain of the beautiful, and must be the special concern of the
female head of a household, whatever may be the number of her servants.
To be sure, there are women who are so busy with brooms and dusters
that we might almost think them neat from their love of dirt. But I am
not speaking of such extreme cases. The superintendence of servants, if
you have them, the distribution of labour, the purchase of clothing,
with its hundred various branches, and, finally, the direction and care
of children, are all necessities of existence, duties to which no
woman, even the wealthiest, can refuse to attend. Least of all should
they be left to the husband. I consider it one of our most sacred
duties to relieve him from all material cares, that he may be free to
work for the benefit of mankind. Thus we assist him, modestly though it
be, in the great work, by enabling him to keep himself free and fit for
his labours."

"I frankly acknowledge that I am incapable of such modesty. I cannot be
satisfied with an excellence that I must share with every housekeeper.
I am conscious of the ability to assist directly in the cause of human
progress. Why should I waste it in labour wholly possible to
mediocrity?"

"You depreciate this labour because you do not know it. Rightly
conceived and executed, it may prove of the greatest significance. For
the more cultivated and intellectual a woman is, the more capable is
she of appreciating the importance of the task assigned to man, and the
necessity of lightening it as much as she can by due care of his
physical and mental welfare. And with this thought ever in her mind,
the meanest employment, the most menial occupation, becomes a labour of
love. And even the most careful housewife can find time, if she is so
disposed, to educate herself still further, and so to form and exercise
her talents as to make them the delight of her husband's hours of
leisure. That is what I understand, my dear, to be a wife in the truest
sense." She suddenly took Ernestine's hand and drew her towards her.
"And thus,--why should I not speak frankly?--thus I would have the
woman to whom I am to be a mother."

Ernestine looked at her in amazement. "Will you--are you to be a mother
to me, then?"

The Staatsrthin hesitated for a moment, and then said, "I should like
to be. You are an orphan, and I pity you. If you would only be what a
woman should be,--if you would only conform to our social and Christian
views, I could give you all a mother's love."

Ernestine withdrew her hand. "I thank you for your kind intentions,
but, if these are the only conditions upon which you can bestow your
affection upon me, I fear I shall never deserve it."

The Staatsrthin shook her head in rising displeasure. "You do not
understand me."

"I understand you far better than I am understood by you."

"You probably think my homely wisdom very easy of comprehension--while
yours is too deep for my powers of mind." The Staatsrthin laid down
her knife, and pushed away the dish of beans. "But the time may come
when you will think of what I have been saying, and will be sorry that
you have repulsed me."

"Frau Staatsrthin, I have not repulsed you. I am only too honest to
accept a regard bestowed upon me on conditions that I cannot fulfil. To
gain your approval I should be obliged to equivocate,--and I have
always been true. It is robbery to accept an affection springing from a
false idea of one's character. What would it profit me to throw myself
on your breast and silently return your tenderness, when I know that
you would love me not for what I am, but for what I might pretend to
be? Sooner or later you would discover your error, and despise me for
deceiving you. No, I am not unworthy of the love of good people just as
I am, but if I cannot win it by frankness and conscientiousness, I will
never try to steal it."

"You speak proudly. Such self-assertion does not become a young girl
towards an old woman, least of all towards the mother of her best
friend and benefactor."

"Frau Staatsrthin," cried Ernestine, "I shall always be grateful to
your son for his kindness to me, but surely I ought not to testify my
gratitude by hypocrisy and slavish servility."

"My dear," said the Staatsrthin, controlling herself, "you agitate
yourself causelessly. I am a simple, practical woman, who does not
speak your language, and cannot follow you in your flights. I have no
desire to drag you down to us. I simply wish to show you the world in
its actual shape, that you may know what awaits you when you come to
make your home in it; and I would gladly receive you in my motherly
arms, lest you should receive too severe a shock from your first
contact with reality."

"Oh, Frau Staatsrthin, if the world is what you describe it to me, I
would rather remain above it, in a colder but purer sphere."

"I should have thought the sphere in which you were not safe from the
assaults of angry peasants hardly a desirable one. I, at least, should
prefer the modest discharge of domestic duties in the circle of home.
But tastes differ."

Ernestine shrank from these words. "Truth is born in heaven, but stoned
upon the earth. Those who wish to bring it into the world must have the
courage of martyrs. These are such old commonplaces that one can hardly
give utterance to them without their seeming trite. Those who recognize
truth must speak it, and the happiness of possessing it outweighs with
me the misery that I may incur in speaking it."

"Forgive me, but these are phrases that utterly fail to cast any halo
around such a disgraceful occurrence as that of yesterday."

"Frau Staatsrthin!" cried Ernestine, flushing up.

"Be calm, my dear child, I am speaking like a mother to you. What can
you gain by casting discredit by your conduct, beforehand, upon the
truths that you wish to assert? Who will place any confidence in the
understanding and learning of a woman who does not understand how to
guard herself from ridicule? Pray listen to me calmly, for I speak as
he would who would give his life for you every hour of the day. I would
empty my heart to you, that no shadow may exist between us. The world
is thus pitiless towards everything in the conduct of a woman that
provokes remark, because our ideas of propriety have assigned her a
modest retirement in the home circle, and it sees, in the bold attempt
to emancipate herself from such universally received ideas, a want of
womanly modesty and sense of honour, which, it thinks, cannot be too
severely punished. Publicity is a thorny path. At every step aside from
her vocation, although never so carefully taken, a woman meets with
briers and nettles that wound her unprotected feet but are carelessly
trodden down by a man. And even although she succeeds in weaving for
herself a crown in this unlovely domain, it is, as one of our poets
justly says, 'a crown of thorns.'"

Ernestine was looking fixedly upon the ground. The Staatsrthin could
not guess her thoughts. Suddenly she raised her head proudly. "And if
it be a crown of thorns, I will press it upon my brow. It is dearer to
me than the fleeting roses of commonplace happiness, or the pinched
head-gear of a German housewife!"

The Staatsrthin looked up to heaven, as though praying for patience.
Then she replied with an evident effort at self-control, "I grant you
that the lot of woman might be, and should be, better than it is. But
we cannot improve it by struggling against it, but by enduring it with
the dignity which will win us esteem, while our struggles can only
expose us to the ridicule that always attends unsuccessful effort."

"Frau Staatsrthin, I hope to turn ridicule into fear."

"And if you should succeed, what will it avail you? Which is the
happier, to have people shun you in fear, or to be surrounded by a
loving circle for whom you have suffered?"

"I do not live for myself,--I live for the cause of millions of women
for whom it is my mission to struggle and contend. Even if I could be
ever so happy, I should despise myself were I able in my own good
fortune to forget the misery of others. But I confess frankly that I
could not be happy with such a lot as you prescribe for woman. Whoever
has once floated upon the ocean of thought that embraces the world,
would die of homesickness if confined within