No time could have been so rich in exquisite feminine personalities, at all ages and in all stages of life, as ours. We must not draw our conclusions regarding the abundance of such women, in the older culture epochs, from the illustrious names of women which incessantly recur in the pictures of the earlier times—like stage soldiers—until they give the illusion of a great host. But exquisite women are even to-day exceptional. The Martha type rather than the Mary type predominates. This is due on one hand to decreasing piety, on the other hand to the kind of working and society life. Fifty years ago single women were often spiritually petrified, now more often they cannot succeed in settling into any form. Their existence, turned outwardly, widens their sphere of interest but makes their soul-life shallow. Restlessness is most unfavourable to the “development of the personality,” which was however the goal of the emancipation of woman. This development is delayed most of all perhaps by the lack of personal contact with other personalities, of immediate, intimate human connections. This can, from no point of view, be supplied by the society or club life in which single women are to-day absorbed. CHAPTER IV THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON THE DAUGHTERS As late as sixty or seventy years ago, the daughters of good families had still few points of contact with life outside the four walls of the home. From the hands of nurse-maids they went into those of the governess, and after confirmation, studies were at an end. If it was a cultured home then reading aloud or music was often practised, whereby it is true no “specific education” qualifying them for examinations was attained, but frequently a fine universal human culture. There was always employment in the house for the zeal for work. The great presses were filled with linen which was not infrequently spun and woven by the daughters; in the autumn they assembled for sausage-making and candle dipping; later, for Christmas baking and roasting; in summer endless rows of glasses of preserves were set in the store-room. Before Christmas, night after night, Christmas presents were made; after Christmas, night after night, they danced. At these balls those in outer respects uncomely, received a foretaste of that waiting which must fill their life for many long years: would the invitation to the dance—or the wooing respectively—come or not? Every man whose shadow merely fell upon the scene, was immediately considered from the point of view of a suitor. As the years went by the girl, who before twenty-five years of age was considered an “old maid,” saw how the glance of the father and the brothers became gloomy, yes, she could even hear how “unfortunate” she was. If such a daughter lived in a home poor in books—and most of them were—then she could not even procure a book she wished. For the