me
to time, purchased casts of the best antique statues, and had carefully
arranged them along the walls and on pedestals, placing beautiful
engravings between them.

He had thus brought the immortal types of beauty into the depths of the
forest. The room in which he had placed the statues, and which Richard
jokingly entitled "Athens," was a favorite haunt of ours.

Annette was greatly surprised to find such treasures with us, and said
to Richard, "These undying types of a past great civilization are at
home everywhere. It is because they no longer have, and indeed never
did have, anything in common with the life of fashion, that they are
thus immortal. Do you not agree with me?"

She always insisted on having an answer to her questions. Then she
would briskly add: "Now I understand the meaning of the Niobe; she is
the old spinner who lives out on the rock." When we laughed at this
conceit of hers, she told us, "Oh! I beg your pardon, I mean that she
is the embodiment of a mother's grief in time of war."

Pointing to a statue of Iphigenia, she inquired, "Herr Professor, can
you tell me how the Grecian priestesses spent their time? Do you think
it possible to be constantly offering sacrifices and uttering lofty
thoughts?"

Richard admitted that he could not give her the desired information;
and Annette was quite delighted that she had posed the professor. She
did not give up troubling him, however.

All her notions of life in the country had been derived from books, and
she was quite shocked to find that the mere money value or utility of
trees was the only point of view in which they were regarded.

Notwithstanding her overflowing, emotional temperament, she had quite a
taste for details, and even for figures. At the first sight of a
prettily situated village, she would always make inquiries in regard to
the number of its inhabitants, their means, and manner of living. I was
obliged to tell her all about my own household--how many acres of
timber there were ready to cut, and how much was young timber; the
amount of our annual production, how much live-stock my meadows would
support, how much fruit my orchards gave me, and also how the work was
divided amongst the four men-servants and three maids that we employed.

She examined the whole establishment, from the stable to the loft. She
seemed to take especial delight in the happy combination we had
effected between the fruits of culture and the pursuit of husban