The women with whom Keller consents to have any dealings must allow themselves to be placed in the open air. Freshness by candle-light has no attraction for him, and as for beauty in a drawing-room--he is suspicious of it. Out they must go, without gloves and veils, stiff collars or steeled stays, without any of the paraphernalia to which modern literature is generally so much addicted. If you can allow yourself to be looked at full in the eyes, with sleeves tucked up and crumpled--then and only then Gottfried Keller may perhaps stop to consider whether it is possible to write about you. Gottfried Keller’s portraits are nearly all open-air studies, and Gottfried Keller’s women are nearly all lovers of the open air. There are wonderful disclosures in his great portrait gallery; we find there the women whom he loved as well as the women whom he hated. Wherever he describes a virtuous, happy, loving, teasing, laughing woman; wherever he pictures Eve in whom Adam finds his happiness, or Eve who finds her happiness in Adam, the decisive moment is sure to take place in the open air, for the scenes out of doors are the principal points in his writings, the principal points in the soul-harmonies of his characters, the moments when love steps forth from her concealment and the lovers understand one another. _Romeo and Juliet in the Village_ spend their wedding day out-of-doors; the neighbour’s children in _The Company of the Seven Just Men_ devise their plan of association out-of-doors; the married couple in _The Lost Smile_ meet again out-of-doors, after having been separated by various domestic circumstances; in the _Misused Love Letter_, the innocent little woman comes to the still more innocent little schoolmaster out-of-doors; the heroine in _Ursula_ regains her senses during the fearful night spent out-of-doors; in _Dietegen_, the situation between the hero and his lady-love reaches its climax out-of-doors; _Fran Amrain_, when she has an affair of importance to discuss with her son, always goes to look for him out-of-doors; and nearly every time that _Green Henry_ feels his heart beat for a woman, it is out-of-doors. With Keller all good people are lovers of the open air.