on the envelope that it was to be sent to Anna after his
death.

Uncle Joachim was not a man to express sentiment otherwise than by
patting those he loved affectionately on the back, and the letter over
which Anna hung with such tender gratitude, and such an extravagance of
humility, was a mere bald statement of facts. Since Anna, with a
perversity that he entirely disapproved, refused to marry, and appeared
to be possessed of the obstinacy that had always been a peculiarity of
her German forefathers, and which was well enough in a man, but
undesirable in a woman, whose calling it was to be gentle and yielding
(_sanft und nachgiebig_), and convinced from what he had seen
during his visit to London that she could never by any possibility be
happy with her brother and sister-in-law, and moreover considering that
it was beneath the dignity of his sister's daughter, a young lady of
good family, for ever to roll herself in the feathers with which the
middle-class goose-born Dobbs had furnished Peter's otherwise defective
nest, he had decided to make her independent altogether of them,
numerous though his own sons were, and angry as they no doubt would be,
by bestowing on her absolutely after his death the only property he
could leave to whomsoever he chose, a small estate near Stralsund, where
he hoped to pass his last years. It was in a flourishing condition, easy
to manage, bringing in a yearly average of forty thousand marks, and
with an experienced inspector whom he earnestly recommended her to keep.
He trusted his dear Anna would go and live there, and keep it up to its
present state of excellence, and would finally marry a good German
gentleman, of whom there were many, and return in this way altogether to
the country of her forefathers. The estate was not so far from Stralsund
as to make it impossible for her to drive there when she wished to
indulge any feminine desire she might have to trim herself (_sich
putzen_), and he recommended her to begin a new life, settling there
with some grave and sober female advanced in years as companion and
protectress, until such time as she should, by marriage, pass into the
care of that natural protector, her husband.

Then followed a short exposition of his views on women, especially those
women who go to parties all their lives and talk _Klatsch_; a spirited
comparing of such women with those whose interests keep them busy in
their own homes; and a final exhortation to Anna to