BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 41 



tion made as to rank, all classes must meet upon a common 

 footing. Many are the daughters of very wealthy men, mer- 

 chants, landed proprietors, and others; one of the teachers was 

 the daughter of a landed proprietor. Even some of the teachers 

 now in the school were former pupils, well-to-do, and would 

 have no need to work but do so from preference. Even now 

 in Germany it is quite common for girls of good families to 

 secure positions as governesses or to help in the domestic work. 



"The girls' schools of Hamburg give an ordinary good school 

 education, but there is no 'higher education' of the women 

 here, no colleges, and the universities are closed to them. Frau 

 Ree considered that it was purely for a monetary reason, as it 

 is scarcely possible for a man of education to get a living since 

 there are so many educated men and few openings. They fear 

 if the intellectual avenues are open to women that they will 

 have even fewer opportunities than at present. Frau Ree said 

 Germany was a century or so behind in this respect. She de- 

 scribed the North German, the Prussian, as the representative 

 of centuries of culture, very able and conscious of his thorough- 

 ness in education, a little overbearing, but really of good stock. 



"She described the people of South Germany as lazy and 

 of less active temperament. She thought that Wiebel would 

 have helped me very little, and that there was nothing of spe- 

 cial interest to me chemically at Hamburg. She described 

 Ladenburg and his wife (she is a daughter of the botanist 

 Pringsheim) as being extremely delightful and advanced peo- 

 ple. 



"In speaking of the woman's suffrage movement in Amer- 

 ica, she said it had done harm, and that those women who were 

 advanced could afford to wait, but that women were not as a 

 rule prepared for it, nor fitted generally for the positions they 

 claimed by suffrage. 



"The new building where the school is now was entered in 

 1874. One feature I noticed about the school is the fact that 

 very capable students are frequently paid to do the very finest 

 art work. They were engaged in embroidering samples of the 

 kind of work that can be done in the school. These samples 

 are sent to museums, etc. They are at present preparing a set 



