Germany stands midway between France and England in its care for its womenfolk. French parents consider marriage the proper career for a woman, and with logical good sense set themselves from the day of a girl's birth to provide a dowry for her. When she is of a marriageable age they provide the husband. They will make great sacrifices to establish a daughter in prosperity, and they leave nothing to chance. We leave everything to chance, and the idea of marriage made by bargain and without love offends us. Such marriages are often enough made in England, but they are never admitted. Some gloss of sentiment or of personal respect is considered decent. But on the whole in this country a girl shifts for herself. If she marries, well and good; if she remains single, well and good too, provided she can earn her living or has means. When she has neither means nor craft and fails to marry, she is one of the most tragic figures in our confused social hierarchy, difficult to help, superfluous. She sets her hand to this and that, but she has no grip on life. To think of her is to invoke the very image of failure and incompetence. She flocks into every opening, blocking and depressing it; as a "help" she becomes a byword, for she has grown up without learning to help herself or anybody else. If she is a Protestant she has no haven. Only people who have set themselves to help poor ladies know the difficulties of the undertaking, and the miseries their protégées endure. Even in the Middle Ages the conscientious German was doing more for this helpless element of his population than England and America are doing to-day. He saw that some of his daughters would remain unmarried, and that if they were gently bred he must provide for their future, and he did this by founding _Stifte_. The old _Stift_ was established by the gentlemen of some one district, who built a house and contributed land and money for its maintenance, so that when they died their unmarried daughters should still have a suitable home. Some of these old _Stifte_ are very wealthy now, and have buildings of great dignity and beauty; they still admit none but the descendants of the men who founded them, and when they have more money than they need to support the _Stift_ itself, they use it to pension the widows and endow the brides belonging to their group or families. In Hesse-Cassel, for instance, there is an ancient _Stift_ formed by the _Ritterschaft_ of the Duchy and it is so well off that it can afford to pension every widow and fatherless child, and buy an outfit for every bride whose name either by marriage or descent entitles her to its protection. The example set by the noble families of the Middle Ages was followed in time by other classes, and _Stifte_ were established all over Germany for the daughters of the bourgeoisie. They grew in number and variety; some had a school attached to their endowment and some an orphanage. In some the rule was elastic, in others binding.