After these early adventures the education of the _Backfisch_ proceeds quickly. She has to learn at her aunt's tea-parties not to fill cups to overflowing in sheer exuberance of hospitality; and she is also instructed not to press food on people. "In good society," says the aunt, "people decline to eat because they have had enough, and not because they require pressing." She is obliged also to discourage Gretchen from waiting too attentively on the young men who visit at the house; and Gretchen, who does not care about young men, but only yearns to be serviceable, devotes herself in future to the old ladies, their foot-stools, their knitting, and their smelling bottles. This touch is one of many that makes the book, in spite of its obvious shortcomings, valuable as a picture of German character and manner. It is impossible to imagine Gretchen in a French or English story of the same class. The French girl would be more adroit and witty; the English girl would expect young men to wait on her; and neither of them would gush as Gretchen did about her old ladies. "My readiness to serve them knew no bounds. To arrange their seats to their liking, to give them stools for their feet and cushions for their backs, to rush for their shawls and cloaks, to count the rows in their knitting, to help them pick up their stitches, to thread their needles, to wind silk or wool, to peel fruit, to run for smelling bottles and cold water,--all these things I did with delight the instant my watchful eye discovered the smallest wish, and I was always cordially thanked." Tastes differ. Some old ladies would be made quite uncomfortable by such fussy attentions. The _Backfisch_ goes on to say that she was equally assiduous in waiting on the old gentlemen. She picked up anything they dropped, polished their spectacles for them, and listened to their dull stories when no one else would. I consider the portrait of Gretchen in this story a literary triumph. I can see the girl; I can hear her voice and laugh. I know exactly how she behaved and what the old ladies and gentlemen said to her, how she dressed and how she did her hair; not because the author tells me just these things, but because her type is as true to life to-day as it was thirty years ago. As a contrast to her, a fine young lady from the city presently joins the household, and the aunt does not have to provide her with a tooth-brush. The new arrival wears blue satin slippers, drinks her chocolate in bed, and cannot dress without the help of a maid. In this way the author shows you that girls brought up in cities are superfine rather than savage, and that you are not to suppose the ordinary German _Backfisch_ is like her little heroine from the provinces.