s; at all epochs we
find among them commanding natures, resolute and manly patriots.
Patriotic motives governed their loves, their marriages, their
motherhood, and at no time more than since the partition of their
beloved country. They excel in hospitality, which is their particular
metier, and upon which they lavish, almost frivolously, their earthly
goods. Courage, bravery, even heroism, are common traits, and are
presupposed in their men as prerequisites to winning female affections.
Ideals prevailed at all times; and for ideals, often very empty and
unstatesmanlike, they sacrificed themselves, and also the life blood of
their men, nay, their commonwealth, in fatal contrast to the
self-interested, cool-headed, and cold-hearted statesmanship of their
well-disciplined German neighbors. Upon this noble, but unpractical,
national characteristic is to be based also their lack of an economic
sense; work as such for material reward was always, it may be said,
despised by Polish women; money was, and is, considered a sordid means
for a purpose; and the same training, inculcated into the souls of the
sons of Polish women, was one of the chief reasons for the political
downfall of the nation. A too highly developed sense of individual
liberty, the pursuit of ideals, impracticable even for their own people,
and a contempt for everyday work and commonplace activity, have
destroyed Poland. The eminent Danish literary historian Georg Brandes,
in his Poland, reports characteristically this significant remark by a
distinguished Polish lady: "What company they invited me to meet! It was
made up of workmen, advocates whom we pay, manufacturers who sell goods,
doctors into whose hands three rubles are slipped for a visit."

It is true that it was not always thus with Polish women, and certainly
not with those of the poorer classes. In early times the education of
woman consisted in prayer and work. Learning was not a womanly
requisite; the domestic and agricultural work in the fields belonged to
women, while the tavern was too frequently the abode of the man
(_chlop_). Piety is a most genuine reality with Polish women; they were
at all times a rock of the Catholic Church. Chastity was the most common
virtue, and was strictly enforced. Nitschmann, the German historian of
Polish literature, mentions the fact that as late as A. D. 1645, a young
gentlewoman at the Polish court, who had entertained improper relations
with several courtiers,