The story was to the effect that a young American student recently called on Professor Christlieb with a letter of introduction.  The professor received him cordially, and soon entered into conversation about the United States.  He praised the natural features of the country, and the enterprising spirit of our citizens, but expressed much solicitude about the future of the nation.  On being asked his reasons, he frankly expressed his opinion that “the Spirit of Christ” was not here.  Being still further pressed to illustrate his meaning, he gave, as instances of this deficiency, not the Credit Mobilier or the Tweed scandal, but such alarming facts as the following.  He seriously declared that, on more than one occasion, he had heard an American married woman say to her husband, “Dear, will you bring me my shawl?” and the husband had brought it.  He further had seen a husband return home at evening, and enter the parlor where his wife was sitting,—­perhaps in the very best chair in the room,—­and the wife not only did not go and get his dressing-gown and slippers, but she even remained seated, and left him to find a chair as he could.  These things, as Professor Christlieb pointed out, suggested a serious deficiency of the spirit of Christ in the community.

With our American habits and interpretations, it is hard to see this matter just as the professor sees it.  One would suppose that, if there is any meaning in the command, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ,” a little of such fulfilling might sometimes be good for the husband, as for the wife.  And though it would undoubtedly be more pleasing to see every wife so eager to receive her husband that she would naturally spring from her chair and run to kiss him in the doorway, yet, where such devotion was wanting, it would be but fair to inquire which of the two had done the more fatiguing day’s work, and to whom the easy-chair justly belonged.  The truth is, I suppose, that the good professor’s remark indicated simply a “survival” in his mind, or in his social circle, of a barbarous tradition, under which the wife of a Mexican herdsman cannot eat at the table with her “lord and master,” and the wife of a German professor must vacate the best armchair at his approach.

If so, it is not to be regretted that we in this country have outgrown a relation so unequal.  Nor am I at all afraid that the great Teacher, who, pointing to the multitude for whom he was soon to die, said of them, “Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother,” would have objected to any mutual and equal service between man and woman.  If we assume that two human beings have immortal souls, there can be no want of dignity to either in serving the other.  The greater equality of woman in America seems to be, on this reasoning, a proof of the presence not the absence, of the spirit of Christ; nor does Dr. Christlieb seem quite worthy of the beautiful name he bears, if he feels otherwise.