Also, it struck me as beautiful, the noble resignation with which they bore their grief, hiding their sorrow from the indifferent stranger. Some widows make a fuss, go about for weeks looking gloomy and depressed, making not the slightest effort to be merry. These fourteen widows—I knew them personally, all of them, I lived in the same street—what a brave show of cheerfulness they put on! What a lesson to the common or European widow, the humpy type of widow! One could spend whole days in their company—I had done it—commencing quite early in the morning with a sleighing excursion, finishing up quite late in the evening with a little supper party, followed by an impromptu dance; and never detect from their outward manner that they were not thoroughly enjoying themselves. From the mothers I turned my admiring eyes towards the children. This is the secret of American success, said I to myself; this high-spirited courage, this Spartan contempt for suffering. Look at them! the gallant little men and women. Who would think that they had lost a father? Why, I have seen a British child more upset at losing sixpence. Talking to a little girl one day, I enquired of her concerning the health of her father. The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out, remembering that there wasn’t such a thing as a father—not an American father—in the whole street. She did not burst into tears as they do in the story-books. She said: “He is quite well, thank you,” simply, pathetically, just like that. “I am sure of it,” I replied with fervour, “well and happy as he deserves to be, and one day you will find him again; you will go to him.” “Ah, yes,” she answered, a shining light, it seemed to me, upon her fair young face. “Momma says she is getting just a bit tired of this one-horse sort of place. She is quite looking forward to seeing him again.” It touched me very deeply: this weary woman, tired of her long bereavement, actually looking forward to the fearsome passage leading to where her loved one waited for her in a better land. For one bright breezy creature I grew to feel a real regard. All the months that I had known her, seen her almost daily, never once had I heard a single cry of pain escape her lips, never once had I heard her cursing fate. Of the many who called upon her in her charming flat, not one had ever, to my knowledge, offered her consolation or condolence. It seemed to me cruel, callous. The over-burdened heart, finding no outlet for its imprisoned grief, finding no sympathetic ear into which to pour its tale of woe, breaks, we are told; anyhow, it isn’t good for it. I decided—no one else seeming keen—that I would supply that sympathetic ear. The very next time I found myself alone with her I introduced the subject. “You have been living here in Dresden a long time, have you not?” I asked. “About five years,” she answered, “on and off.” “And all alone,” I commented, with a sigh intended to invite to confidence.