nteen who turned the machinery); and there were some games of chance
and skill established under trees. It was very pretty. In some of the
drinking booths there were parties of German peasants, twenty together
perhaps, singing national drinking-songs, and making a most exhilarating
and musical chorus by rattling their cups and glasses on the table and
drinking them against each other, to a regular tune. You know it as a
stage dodge, but the real thing is splendid. Farther down the hill,
other peasants were rifle-shooting for prizes, at targets set on the
other side of a deep ravine, from two to three hundred yards off. It was
quite fearful to see the astonishing accuracy of their aim, and how,
every time a rifle awakened the ten thousand echoes of the green glen,
some men crouching behind a little wall immediately in front of the
targets, sprung up with large numbers in their hands denoting where the
ball had struck the bull's eye--and then in a moment disappeared again.
Standing in a ring near these shooters was another party of Germans
singing hunting-songs, in parts, most melodiously. And down in the
distance was Lausanne, with all sorts of haunted-looking old towers
rising up before the smooth water of the lake, and an evening sky all
red, and gold, and bright green. When it closed in quite dark, all the
booths were lighted up; and the twinkling of the lamps among the forest
of trees was beautiful. . . ." To this pretty picture, a letter of a little
later date, describing a marriage on the farm, added farther comical
illustration of the rifle-firing propensities of the Swiss, and had
otherwise also whimsical touches of character. "One of the farmer's
people--a sister, I think--was married from here the other day. It is
wonderful to see how naturally the smallest girls are interested in
marriages. Katey and Mamey were as excited as if they were eighteen. The
fondness of the Swiss for gunpowder on interesting occasions, is one of
the drollest things. For three days before, the farmer himself, in the
midst of his various agricultural duties, plunged out of a little door
near my windows, about once in every hour, and fired off a rifle. I
thought he was shooting rats who were spoiling the vines; but he was
merely relieving his mind, it seemed, on the subject of the approaching
nuptials. All night afterwards, he and a small circle of friends kept
perpetually letting off guns under the casement of the bridal chamber. A
Bride