owed to act in this capacity. The secretary said they found no
difficulty in getting both married and single women to take up these
good works.

"What do the parents say when their daughters take it up?" I asked,
for I could not picture the German girl as I had always known her
going out into the highways and byways of the city, leaving her
cooking, her music, her embroidery, and her sentiment, and battling
with the hideous realities of life amongst the sick, the poor, and the
more or less wicked of the earth.

"The parents don't like it," my girl with the honest eyes admitted.
"When girls have worked for us some time they often refuse to marry;
at least, they refuse the arranged marriages proposed to them. But we
cannot stop on that account. If a girl does not wish to marry in this
way it is better that she should not. No good can come of it."

Then she went on to tell me how well it was that a child born to
utmost shame and poverty should have a woman of the better classes
interested from the beginning in its welfare, and responsible for its
decent upbringing. It implied contact with various officials, of
course, but she said that the ladies who took this work in hand met
with courtesy and support everywhere.

You have only to place this type of young woman beside the
_Backfisch_, who represents an older type quite fairly, to understand
how far the modern German girl has travelled from the traditional
lines. If you can imagine the _Backfisch_ married and mentally little
altered in her middle age, you can also imagine that she would find a
daughter with the new ideas upsetting. At present both types are
living side by side, for there are still numbers of women of the old
school in Germany, women who passively accept the life made for them
by their surroundings, whether it suits their needs or not; and who
would never strike out a path for themselves, even if by doing so they
could forget their own troubles in the troubles of others.

The State and Municipal establishments for the poor and sick have been
so much described lately, that everyone in England must be acquainted
with all that Berlin does for its struggling citizens. There are, of
course, large hospitals and sanatoriums for consumption; and the
admirable system of national insurance secures help in sickness to
every working man and woman, as well as a pension in old age. "The
club doctor and dispensary as we have them here do not exist," say the
Birmingh