490 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
worked by men alone. Now was her chance to prove what she was 
good for, she who wished to live her life by “putting in practice,” as 
she expressed it. 
She began her apprenticeship in Haderslev, but in 1864 the war 
drove her thence. So she came to Helsingor, and there took up 
her employment as the first woman telegrapher in Denmark. She 
had to undergo many torments before her male colleagues learned to 
respect her work. But she interested herself in her occupation, and 
was happy over the beautiful country and the good friends she made 
in Helsingor. She remained here for four years; during that time she 
met with a great sorrow in the death of her sister Ilia, who was nearest 
her heart of all her brothers and sisters. Her sister Anna was now 
married and had a little child, but she wrote affectionately to her: 
“Let us love each other without jealousy, as at home when we were 
small.” 
From Helsingor she came to the little friendly town of Nysted 
in Lolland, where she was glad to be, as solitude affected her in 
the dark winter days. Finally, in 1870, she was removed to Aarhus. 
This was a promotion. But by this time she was already tired and 
worn out; a form of nervousness seized her, and she became down¬ 
hearted and often very restless and irritable. 
In 1871 the Danish Woman’s Union was formed, and she was 
requested to enter it as an active member. But she refused “in the 
consciousness of my utter impotence to serve it (the cause) in any 
other way than in the position I now hold. Here, to a greater degree 
than any other place I have been, there is a grip on my time, my 
moral courage, and my endurance, which compels me to let other 
outside affairs alone.—While this work has hold of me, I cannot, 
alongside of it, take up another interest—it is too full of demands to 
permit of one’s consecrating herself to it merely with the left hand 
and sometimes affording it a leisure glance. But is it not a true pride 
not to be of you when I cannot help in the proper way? My work 
lies at this time within the purpose of emancipation, and though the 
authoress is dead, her works will live—at least if the silent sympathy 
she receives is testimony that she works in the service of the spirit.— 
And since I am already a member in this sense, why should I not be 
also one in name.” 
It had been a great disappointment for Mathilde Fibiger to give 
up authorship. She wrote regularly for the Swedish Magazine for 
the Home; but this called forth no echo in her own home—no rare 
understanding, no steady and keen criticism; and this hurt her very 
much. However, she had seen one result of her literary activity with 
her book Clara Raphael ; she had freed from bonds the students of 
the new day, by making a little breach in that wall which had shut 
out the light and air from the “woman’s cage” of her day. 
