“That is very good,” said Charlotte.  “The right method of teaching is the reverse, I see, of what we must do in life.  In society we must keep the attention long upon nothing, and in instruction the first commandment is to permit no dissipation of it.”

“Variety, without dissipation, were the best motto for both teaching and life, if this desirable equipoise were easy to be preserved,” said the Assistant; and he was going on further with the subject, when Charlotte called out to him to look again at the children, whose merry troop were at the moment moving across the court.  He expressed his satisfaction at seeing them wearing a uniform.  “Men,” he said, “should wear a uniform from their childhood upwards.  They have to accustom themselves to work together; to lose themselves among their equals; to obey in masses, and to work on a large scale.  Every kind of uniform, moreover, generates a military habit of thought, and a smart, straight-forward carriage.  All boys are born soldiers, whatever you do with them.  You have only to watch them at their mock fights and games, their storming parties and scaling parties.”

“On the other hand, you will not blame me,” replied Ottilie, “if I do not insist with my girls on such unity of costume.  When I introduce them to you, I hope to gratify you by a parti-colored mixture.”

“I approve of that, entirely,” replied the other.  “Women should go about in every sort of variety of dress; each following her own style and her own likings, that each may learn to feel what sits well upon her and becomes her.  And for a more weighty reason as well—­because it is appointed for them to stand alone all their lives, and work alone.”

“That seems to me to be a paradox,” answered Charlotte.  “Are we then to be never anything for ourselves?”

“O, yes!” replied the Assistant.  “In respect of other women assuredly.  But observe a young lady as a lover, as a bride, as a housewife, as a mother.  She always stands isolated.  She is always alone, and will be alone.  Even the most empty-headed woman is in the same case.  Each one of them excludes all others.  It is her nature to do so; because of each one of them is required everything which the entire sex have to do.  With a man it is altogether different.  He would make a second man if there were none.  But a woman might live to an eternity, without even so much as thinking of producing a duplicate of herself.”

“One has only to say the truth in a strange way,” said Charlotte, “and at last the strangest thing will seem to be true.  We will accept what is good for us out of your observations, and yet as women we will hold together with women, and do common work with them too; not to give the other sex too great an advantage over us.  Indeed, you must not take it ill of us, if in future we come to feel a little malicious satisfaction when our lords and masters do not get on in the very best way together.”