Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/453

 Memoirs of an Idealist.” When we met in London she may have been about thirty-five, but she looked older than she really was. In point of appearance, she had not been favored by nature, but her friends soon became accustomed to overlook that disadvantage in the appreciation of her higher qualities. She had read much and had many opinions, which she maintained with great energy. With the most zealous interest she followed the events of the time on the political as well as on the literary, scientific and artistic field. She was animated by an almost vehement and truly eloquent enthusiasm for all that appeared to her good and noble and beautiful. She felt the impulse, wherever possible, to lend a hand, and pursued her endeavors with a zeal and an earnestness which made her occasionally a severe judge of what seemed to her a light-minded or frivolous treatment of important things. Her whole being was so honest, simple and unpretending, the goodness of her heart so inexhaustible, her sympathies so real and self-sacrificing, her principles so genuine and faithful, that everybody who learned to know her well readily forgave her that trait of imaginative eccentricity which appeared sometimes in her views and enthusiasms, but which really was to be attributed to the excitability of her temperament and the innate kindness and nobility of her heart. The tone of conversation in the Brüning salon did not always please her. When she carried on serious discourse with a member of our circle about important subjects the lighthearted merriment of others was apt to jar upon her. The Baroness herself could not follow her much in the grave treatment which Malwida bestowed upon all questions of consequence, but their personal sympathies still held them together.

The books written by Malwida von Meysenbug, long after the time of which I speak, reveal a human soul of the finest instincts and impulses, and, in spite of many disappointments,