them mated.

CHAPTER VIII

THE OLD AND THE NEW

Germany stands midway between France and England in its care for its
womenfolk. French parents consider marriage the proper career for a
woman, and with logical good sense set themselves from the day of a
girl's birth to provide a dowry for her. When she is of a marriageable
age they provide the husband. They will make great sacrifices to
establish a daughter in prosperity, and they leave nothing to chance.
We leave everything to chance, and the idea of marriage made by
bargain and without love offends us. Such marriages are often enough
made in England, but they are never admitted. Some gloss of sentiment
or of personal respect is considered decent. But on the whole in this
country a girl shifts for herself. If she marries, well and good; if
she remains single, well and good too, provided she can earn her
living or has means. When she has neither means nor craft and fails to
marry, she is one of the most tragic figures in our confused social
hierarchy, difficult to help, superfluous. She sets her hand to this
and that, but she has no grip on life. To think of her is to invoke
the very image of failure and incompetence. She flocks into every
opening, blocking and depressing it; as a "help" she becomes a byword,
for she has grown up without learning to help herself or anybody
else. If she is a Protestant she has no haven. Only people who have
set themselves to help poor ladies know the difficulties of the
undertaking, and the miseries their protegees endure.

Even in the Middle Ages the conscientious German was doing more for
this helpless element of his population than England and America are
doing to-day. He saw that some of his daughters would remain
unmarried, and that if they were gently bred he must provide for their
future, and he did this by founding _Stifte_. The old _Stift_ was
established by the gentlemen of some one district, who built a house
and contributed land and money for its maintenance, so that when they
died their unmarried daughters should still have a suitable home. Some
of these old _Stifte_ are very wealthy now, and have buildings of
great dignity and beauty; they still admit none but the descendants of
the men who founded them, and when they have more money than they need
to support the _Stift_ itself, they use it to pension the widows and
endow the brides belonging to their group or families. In
Hesse-Cassel, for instance, there is a