tion back
to the failure of all her efforts to make Lina a wide-awake girl.

Frau Bella might have said to her, if she had been disposed, You want
to change this child, who has no special talent or beauty, from her
genuineness and openness; you are continually teasing her to be
lively, arch, and merry, to sing and to jump! You want to turn your
fair-complexioned daughter with clear, light-blue eyes, into a
dark-haired maiden with flashing brown eyes! Frau Bella might have said
all this, but she did not. She pressed her thin lips close together;
her nostrils quivered; she despised, at this moment, the whole of
mankind. She was spared the necessity of saying anything, however, for
the ladies who were invited came in successively. They were
particularly glad to meet the Countess Wolfsgarten, and yet every one
was a little vexed that she could not be the first in dress and
appearance.

Ah, such a coffee-party of the fair sex!

There are some things, institutions, and arrangements, that have
received a bad name, and cannot get rid of it again; this is the case
with this fine institution of coffee-drinking. As soon as any
favorable mention is made of it, every hearer and reader is convinced
that is only downright irony, or a good-humored jest; for it has been
settled, once for all, that this coffee-drinking of the ladies is only
a hoax, and a pretence of kindly intercourse, with the participants.
And yet this institution is a very excellent one, except when cards
are introduced, and they carry it so far as to get up a regular
gambling-party, as do the ladies at the small capitals, who have a
handsome book with black morocco-binding, lettered on the back, "Hours
of Meditation," but containing, inside, only blank leaves on which to
mark down the points, and to enter the score. But that is only in the
smaller capitals; here in our sociable little town, civilization has
not advanced so far. Cards are not yet the book of salvation from all
the evil of ennui; here they rely upon their own resources, the best
way they can. And why should they not talk of persons, and occasionally
say something pretty severe? What do other people, yes, even the men,
in higher spheres, and at the tankard? Do they converse always about
abstractions?

To be sure, there is talk here of town news, and whoever takes no part
in this, holding himself aloof, does nothing for the town, nothing for
his neighbor. And these ladies, who here have something to