An account of German narrative writing of the present time is a kind of ethnography of the German stocks and regions. The names above-mentioned, selected without prejudice and also without arbitrariness, ought to be represented here each with a specimen. In part, these authors have been represented in the preceding volumes. The necessary limits of this volume permit consideration of only a dozen. The varieties of language and style which distinguish them one from another cannot fail to be somewhat obscured in a translation; nevertheless, the six pairs which we have arrayed according to racial affiliation and age are well adapted to give an impression of the manifoldness of German narrative prose at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the first place we mention two women, Helene Böhlau and Clara Viebig. Both have passed through the naturalistic school--for the former, indeed, naturalism marked only a period of transition; for the latter it meant conversion to a creed to which she has remained faithful. The cradle of Helene Böhlau stood on classic ground. Exactly one hundred years after Schiller, in November, 1859, she was born in Weimar, the daughter of a publisher whose name has become known chiefly in connection with the great Weimar edition of Goethe's complete works. Her grandmother, "Grammie" as the children called the old lady, took to her heart the shy and timid girl and revealed to her from the recollections of her own youth the glory that once was and that still gleamed as a memory within the dim and narrow confines of the Thuringian capital city. Out of the anecdotes that the grandmother told, the book grew which first made the name of the authoress famous, _Tales of the Councillor's Girls_ (_Ratsmädelgeschichten_, 1888). "In the midst of the great German Empire," the book begins, "lies a little city famed far and wide, Weimar in Thuringia. When my grandmother was a child there ruled over this country a very wise and good prince who because of his goodness and wisdom had prevailed upon great poets then living to come and dwell in his city. And because he was so exceedingly wise and was so beloved and honored by all, poets and scholars came from all sides, lived in the prince's city, and wrote there such splendid works that the whole world marveled. Even today what these men thought and wrote is the most beautiful thing that we know, and it will remain so for a long, long time to come. About these men everything conceivable has been often told and accurately described, and people will talk of them centuries hence. But by their side there dwelt in the city in those days many men of whom nowadays no more mention is made. They too experienced joys and sorrows; they too had their day, felt deeply, were glad and sad, and had hearts like the others."