"Never attain!" cried Ernestine, sitting proudly erect "I can see nothing to justify those words. If I were only well and strong, if my body were only a more, obedient tool of my mind, I would show what a woman can do! I would show that we are not merely domestic animals, endowed with some degree of reason, as a certain class of men designate us, but free, independent, equal beings! If you only knew how my whole soul revolts at our social oppression, our intellectual slavery! Oh, believe, believe, sir, that I am not actuated by vain ambition, but I am wrung with anguish for those wretched souls who, like myself, have chafed so painfully in the fetters of commonplace conventionalities, or, like those born blind, have dreamed in their darkness of the light that floods the world with joy and freedom, but from which they are excluded! I long to break the yoke under which my whole sex languishes, to avenge their wrongs. For this I will give my money and my blood!--for this I resign all claims to the happiness of woman!--yes, for this I would sacrifice life itself!" Johannes sat listening to her with his arms folded. He now began quietly: "I understand and admire you,--but you exaggerate. The social position of woman is determined by her capacity and her desires. Women like yourself are rare exceptions; your sex, as a general rule, is at so low a stage of development that they neither can claim nor desire any higher position." "And whose fault is this?" Ernestine interrupted him eagerly. "Yours,--you masters of the world. If we are intellectually your inferiors, why not educate us more thoroughly? Why not elevate us to a higher degree of intelligence? It is for your strong hands to form us as you will. And nowhere in Christian lands is the position of woman more depressing than in this country. Look at Russia, the land that so long retained serfdom and the knout,--even there the number of learned women is perceptibly increasing, and the Russian high schools do not reject female pupils. Look at France, at England,--women are everywhere employed and the sphere of their capabilities enlarged, and the sex is held in higher estimation. Unfortunately, I cannot deny that the mass of German women are either mere household drudges, with never a thought beyond the material interests of the kitchen and nursery, or glittering dolls, with no idea of anything but the adornment of their persons. They understand little or nothing of politics, of the interests of their native land, of science, or of poetry; they go to art for amusement, not for instruction and refreshment. Such mothers can never implant the seeds of patriotism in the breasts of their sons, or educate the minds of their daughters; such wives can never share the thoughts and aims of their husbands. Who is to blame? Those men alone who would exclude woman from their world, and, denying her all claim to intellectual ability, banish her to the kitchen, or force her to