orate cities and
belligerent nations, yearly found themselves with the month of
May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for
cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest:
there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, I
chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who
taught you the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic
incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill chance, and when
time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighborly
Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud,
long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it
again before nightfall?

"But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's culture,
where as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and
simultaneously poured down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here,
assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable
hurry-burly. Nut-brown maids and nut-brown men, all clear-washed,
loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, for
treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the
North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, from the South;
these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and
long ox-goads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate
barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their
crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed
richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments
of the _Wiener Schub_ (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously
superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers
grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still
worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in
ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-Andrew, like the genius
of the place and of Life itself.

"Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly
Firmament; waited on by the four golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes
of contribution, for even grim Winter brought its skating-matches and
shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols,--did the Child
sit and learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in aftertime
he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the World: what
matters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt let