ance was with her an
article of faith, so to speak, and she considered it a natural
consequence of their good appearance that they either already had or
would acquire good manners. So the only essential was to present a
good appearance. Serious studies seemed to her not a help, but, on the
contrary, a hindrance to happiness, that is to say, real happiness,
which she looked upon as inseparable from money and property. A
hundred-thousand-dollar man _was_ something, and she respected, even
honored him, whereas chief judges and councillors of the chancery
commanded very little respect from her, and would have commanded even
less, if the State, which she did respect, had not stood behind them.
She was incapable of bowing in good faith to any so-called spiritual
authority, not because she cherished too exalted an opinion of
herself--she was, on the contrary, entirely without vanity and
arrogance--but solely because, constituted as she was, she could not
recognize an authority of knowledge, much less of erudition, in a
practical field of life--and with her the non-practical fields never
entered into consideration.

I still remember the time, some twenty years after the events just
narrated, when my parents were thinking of separating and of
eventually being divorced. A separation actually came about, the
divorce idea was dropped. But the latter was for a time considered in
all seriousness, and a friend of our family, Pastor Schultz, the then
preacher at Bethany, who made a specialty of divorce questions--it was
in the reign of Frederick William IV., when such problems were treated
with revived dogmatic severity--Pastor Schultz, I say, opposed the
plan, as soon as he heard of it, with all his power and eloquence. My
mother had a great deal of admiration for him and knew, besides, the
respect he enjoyed of "those highest in authority," and "those highest
in authority" meant something to her; nevertheless his severe
presentation of the matter made not the slightest impression upon her;
in fact his argument was so fruitless that, as soon as he finished,
she said with a reposeful air of superiority: "My dear Schultz, you
understand this question thoroughly; but whether or not I have a right
to secure a divorce is a question which no human being in the whole
world can answer so well as I myself." With that she closed the
conversation.

She was similarly skeptical of every kind of authority, and had no
confidence whatever in the a