The orchestra consisted of sixty or more pieces, and the audience
was critical. The parquet was filled with officers in the gayest
uniforms; there were few ladies amongst them; the latter sat
mostly in the boxes, of which there were several tiers, and as
soon as the curtain fell, between the acts, the officers would
rise, turn around, and level their glasses at the boxes.
Sometimes they came and visited in the boxes.
As I had been brought up in a town half Quaker, half Puritan, the
custom of going to the theatre Sunday evenings was rather a
questionable one in my mind. But I soon fell in with their ways,
and found that on Sunday evenings there was always the most
brilliant audience and the best plays were selected. With this
break-down of the wall of narrow prejudice, I gave up others
equally as narrow, and adopted the German customs with my whole
heart.
I studied the language with unflinching perseverance, for this
was the opportunity I had dreamed about and longed for in the
barren winter evenings at Nantucket when I sat poring over
Coleridge's translations of Schiller's plays and Bayard Taylor's
version of Goethe's Faust.
Should I ever read these intelligently in the original ?
And when my father consented for me to go over and spend a year
and live in General Weste's family, there never was a happier or
more grateful young woman. Appreciative and eager, I did not
waste a moment, and my keen enjoyment of the German classics
repaid me a hundred fold for all my industry.
Neither time nor misfortune, nor illness can take from me the
memory of that year of privileges such as is given few American
girls to enjoy, when they are at an age to fully appreciate them.
And so completely separated was I from the American and English
colony that I rarely heard my own language spoken, and thus I
lived, ate, listened, talked, and even dreamed in German.
There seemed to be time enough to do everything we wished; and,
as the Franco-Prussian war was just over (it was the year of
1871), and many troops were in garrison at Hanover, the officers
could always join us at the various gardens for after-dinner
coffee, which, by the way, was not taken in the demi-tasse, but
in good generous coffee-cups, with plenty of rich cream. Every
one drank at least two cups, the officers smoked, the women
knitted or embroidered, and those were among the pleasantest
hours I spent in Germany.
The intrusion of unwelcome visitors was never to be feared, as,
by common consent, the various classes in Hanover kept by
themselves, thus enjoying life much better than in a country
where everybody is striving after the pleasures and luxuries
enjoyed by those whom circumstances have placed above them.
