owing the mistress of ceremonies, they went upstairs "to
the three little angels there," whom they found in the not exactly
celestial act of "eating their breakfast under the care of the Countess
Sarrau."

After kissing "the little, highborn hands," the happy visitors were
conducted through the private rooms of the palace, "an honor," Frau
Gottsched writes, ecstatically, "not vouchsafed to one stranger out of a
thousand." Not the least pleasant part of the whole visit naturally was
the return to the waiting room, now full, where all "congratulated them
upon the unusual honor shown them."

Luise begs her friend, a bit insincerely perhaps, to "burn this letter
and tell no one of its contents lest people may accuse us, hereafter, of
being proud."

In the eighteenth century the peasants of Germany were fairly well off.
Some of the most cruel political disabilities of the peasant class had
been removed. Agriculture, in consequence, had made great strides. In
the towns the condition of the workingwomen was about the same as in the
seventeenth century. To escape man's lust was still the main problem of
any virtuous working girl who was unfortunate enough to possess a pretty
face.

The chief diversion of rich and poor, alike, was the theatre. Acting was
the first profession, except teaching, opened to German women. Dramatic
art in Germany, when about to expire from sheer vulgarity, was saved by
a woman. She died a martyr to the cause of purity in art.

Frederica Caroline Weissenborn was born in Reichenbach. Her father, a
physician, was a man of Calvinistic sternness. Caroline had a lover,
Johann Neuber, an actor. Her father, learning of his daughter's
infatuation, determined to "whip it out of her." In those days all
fathers whipped their grown-up daughters, and their wives too, if they
felt like it. But Caroline did not propose to be whipped. She jumped
from a two-story window and, with no bones broken, landed in a hedge.
Young Neuber, the actor, seems to have been strolling near the hedge
that day, for he appeared promptly upon the scene and took Caroline to a
neighboring town, where they were speedily married. Fate led the couple
to Leipzig. Both Neuber and his wife played there. They became friends
with the Gottscheds. Gottsched was deeply interested in the restoration
of the German drama. Caroline Neuber was the one woman in the world to
carry out, to improve and broaden, the pedant's plans. Upon Luise
Gottsched, of