ehension of the
masculine way of thinking. Strictly speaking, Helene Boehlau knows of
only two sorts of feeling for men: hatred of the brutal beast and
admiration for an ideal, which is born of longing to embrace a lofty,
victorious personality. In real life she has found the fulfilment of
her longing in her husband, the strange prophet who as half a Turk
gathered about himself in Munich a queer circle of auditors for his
mystical Oriental philosophy. To his memory she erected a dutiful
monument in her last work _Isebies_ (1911), an apology for her own
life, her longing, her seeking, and her salvation. But even in this
work the finest and the clearest portion is the narrative of her
childhood in Weimar. To the unique charm of her native town, which like
Bethlehem in Judaea was small and also great, Helene Boehlau returned in
other stories of Old Weimar written before her latest work appeared. To
this series belongs _The Ball of Crystal_ (1903) with which our
selections begin. Style and narrative art have matured; we have to do
no longer with mere anecdote, as in the _Tales of the Councillor's
Girls_, but with a more concentrated plot; the character of the
heroine, which is symbolized by the title, is subjected to a more
profound psychological diagnosis; but we are still taken with the same
purity of heart as in the earlier narratives, and the quintessence of
this book, as indeed of the entire literary personality of the
authoress, may be found in the final words of the _Tales of the
Councillor's Girls_: "The kind, the imperturbable, who with gentle
readiness take good or evil as it comes--they are the real heroes, not
those who face life bristling like a porcupine. The only thing which
can give our hearts peace and happiness on earth is good will toward
men."

Clara Viebig is a less gentle nature. She is a poetess not so much of
the heart and soul as of the impulsive temperament and the strong will.
She has not passed through any vacillating development, nor has
naturalism been for her as for Helene Boehlau a mere preparatory school
or transition stage; on the contrary, in all her work she has
consistently remained a disciple of Zola and has not shrunk from any of
the brutalities of his method. There is not much to tell about the
personal life of this authoress. Born at Treves on the Moselle in 1860
as the daughter of an official in the civil service, she was taken when
quite young to Duesseldorf on the Rhine, but pass