and
some will eventually earn a living as "supports of the housewife," an
honourable career shortly referred to by Germans as _eine Stuetze_.
They were a happy, healthy looking lot of girls. They wear neat
serviceable gowns while they are at work, aprons, linen sleeves to
protect their stuff ones, and pretty blue handkerchiefs tied like
turbans over their hair. Some of them were busy at the wash-tub, and
this seemed heavy work for girls of that age. The various kinds of
work are done in turn, and the student when her washing week comes
round is employed in this way three hours every morning. On alternate
days she mangles clothes, and in the afternoons she sews. Our guide
would not admit that three hours at the wash-tub could be too great a
strain on a half-developed girl, and it is a question for medical
wisdom to decide. The cooking and ironing looked hot work, but these
young German girls were cheerfully and thoroughly learning how to do
them, and whether they marry or stay single their knowledge of these
arts will be of inestimable use in later years. I heard of an
able-bodied Englishwoman the other day who took to her bed in tears
because her maids left her suddenly. She could not have roasted a leg
of mutton or made the plainest pudding. This is the school of the
future, said our enthusiastic guide when we went to see the "children"
at work at the _Lette-Haus_; and I, remembering my helpless
Englishwoman, agreed with her. The children's afternoons are mostly
given to needlework, and they are instructed in the prospectus not to
bring new clothes with them, because it is desired that they should
learn how to mend old ones neatly and correctly. They are taught to
darn and patch so finely that the repair cannot easily be discovered;
they make sets of body linen for themselves, three finely sewn men's
linen shirts, a gown for work-days, and some elaborate blouses. In
another part of the _Lette-Haus_, where students were being trained as
expert embroiderers and dressmakers, we were shown pieces of flowered
brocade into which patches had been so skilfully inserted that you
could only find them by holding them up to the light. In the
bookbinding department there were amateur and professional students.
The professionals apprentice themselves for three years, and from the
first receive a small weekly wage. The length of their apprenticeship
is determined by the length of time prescribed for men, and not by
what is necessary