It is not to be denied that the further end of the Kurfürstendamm, where there are no more houses, is pretty sandy, and the dust is given to flying about at a great rate; but as I had on my potato-coloured dress, trimmed with light brown satin, I did not suffer perceptibly, but the Frau Postlieutenant, in her black gown all covered with fine braiding, soon looked as if she had been done up in packing paper. Every vigorous breath of air brought some of the landscape between our teeth, where it gave a horribly rasping sound, but we bore up bravely, knowing that in Paulsborn the coffee-pot was awaiting us with its soothing contents.
Our conversation was of a very refined strain, chiefly about the lack of really cultured society, which naturally led us to talk about the Bergfeldts. Frau Postlieutenant admitted that Frau Bergfeldt might have many excellent qualities, but she for her part should certainly never be willing to ride through the Grunewald with her in an open carriage.
“Do you see, Betty,” I said, “what delicate distinctions the Frau Postlieutenant makes? This afternoon will be one of our proudest memories.”
Mila also said that the weather was exquisite, and there were so few common people on the road. They never went anywhere on Sundays, she said, because the company was so promiscuous.
Betty, who had been reading a good deal lately about human rights and the equality of the classes, was going to reply, but fortunately the carriage stopped just then before the lodge at Paulsborn. I am sure there is no class or rank that I despise, and I respect everybody that gets an honest living; but for all the books in the world, and all the talk about equality, I don’t feel in the least inclined to give a thé dansant to the milkman and the chimney-sweep.
Julius Stinde.
WOMAN.
IN his relation to women man is always more or less of a fool, whether he be their husband, lover, counsellor, or friend. He explains the same thing to them over and over again; he declares, he demonstrates with a will; he would have it thus and so, because only in this wise, and at such a time, will it fulfil his purpose; he points the argument and he grounds it with such explicitness that a very sign-post would strike root at listening to him; he accents the casus quæstionis with all possible pantomime, and with all logical emphasis. For a moment the lady fears the threatening storm; but as for the mental effect, the effect which the argument should make as such, which truth should make as truth,—for that her ladyship has no respect; indeed she does not even respect law and justice with all her heart, but only under compulsion, and driven thereto by despair.
Man may talk as much as he pleases; the spoken word exerts no potent influence over a genuine woman. So long as her emotions are strongly affected, the whole line of argumentation to which the word gives expression seems to her but a piece of academical man-invented pedantry—the learned twaddle of the schools. She inclineth not her ear to reasons; she considers them an intolerable imposition, an encroachment upon the realm of her sentiment and the supremacy of her feminine intuition. Her logic is passion; she feels but her mood, her interest; she sees things and relations but as they regard her personally. Whether there is an injustice to others implied, and what is the true import of things per se, all that is rarely comprehended and retained by a woman where her interest or her antipathy comes into play. In the entire course of the clearest and concisest exposition the fair listener is occupied only with her excitement and opposition, and never with the subject in question and its importance. The spoken word, as soon as she is required to acknowledge its office as bearer and representative of spirit, to value its absolute potency, is to her but empty sound. At the last she yields to pathos—to emphasis, to oratory, as she might do in a play. The dialectics affect her possibly by their eloquence, diction, and plastic qualities, rarely by the force of conviction. When all his arguments are exhausted, and the speaker looks forward to the effect for the sake of which he has marshalled all his rhetorical art and logic, and taken his eloquence into both hands as it were, Madam comes back to the same fatal point, to the same nonsense from whence she started; and all the forces of rhetoric, all the concentrated reasoning goes for nothing.
Now the man’s temper rises, and he waxes indignant; a piece of copper is finally persuaded by the hammer to become a tea-kettle; words can be engraved on stone and steel, why not upon the tabula rasa, the blank daguerreotype-plate of a woman’s mind?