card-tables are set out, so that the older members can
have a quiet game of skat or whist. We wonder what Herr Riehl would
say if he could see them.

Another German Ladies' Club in Berlin is the _Deutscher Frauenklub_,
and it is nicknamed the Millionaire's Club because the subscription is
twenty-five shillings. It is a rather smarter club than the other, and
has a charming set of rooms. There are about 450 members. The Third
Club is a branch of the London Lyceum, and it has aroused great
interest and attention in Berlin, not only because it is on a more
magnificent scale than the other clubs, but because of the brave
effort it makes to unite the women of all nations and help them. Most
of the women distinguished in art and literature have joined it.

I began this chapter by saying something of the _Stift_, the refuge
for unmarried women that Germany established in the Middle Ages and
still preserves. I end it with the Lyceum Club, that latest
manifestation of a modern woman's desire to help her own sex. The
character of these institutions and their history are both
significant. In other days men helped women; in these days women try
to help themselves. The _Stift_ gives a woman bread and shelter in
idleness; the aim of the Lyceum Club is not to give, but to bring
women together and to encourage good work. The _Stifte_ are still
crowded and the Lyceum flourishes, for in our time the old woman
jostles the new. But the new woman has arrived, and is making herself
felt; with amazing force and swiftness, you must admit when you
reflect on the position of women in Germany thirty or forty years
ago.

CHAPTER IX

GIRLHOOD

In the _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, those genuine and interesting
Memoirs that have been so widely read in Germany of late, Malvida von
Meysenbug, the daughter of a highly placed official at a small German
Court, describes her confirmation day and the long period of
preparation and the spiritual struggle that preceded it.

"During a whole year my sister and I went twice a week to the pastor's
house to be instructed in the dogma of the Protestant Church," she
says.... "The ceremony was to be on Sunday. The Friday before we had
our last lesson. Our teacher was deeply moved; with tears in his eyes
he spoke to us of the holiness and importance of the act we were about
to perform.... According to the German custom amongst girls of the
better classes, we put on black silk dresses for the first time