xperienced as Aloys was, he knew all about the three classes or
"standings" into which the peasants of the Black Forest are divided.
The cow-farmers are the lowest in the scale: their draught-cattle, in
addition to their labor, must yield them milk and calves. Then come the
ox-farmers, whose beasts, after having served their time, may be
fattened and killed. The horse-farmers are still more fortunate: their
beasts of draught yield neither milk nor meat, and yet eat the best
food and bring the highest prices.

Whether Aloys took the trouble to compare this arrangement with the
four castes of Egypt, or the three estates of feudalism, is doubtful.

On this New-Year's day, George derived a great advantage from his
horses. After morning service, he took the squire's daughter and her
playmate Mary Ann sleighing to Impfingen; and, though the heart of poor
Aloys trembled within him, he could not refuse George's request to help
him hitch the horses and try them in the sleigh. He drove about the
village, quite forgetting the poor figure he cut beside the showy
soldier. When the girls were seated, Aloys led the horses a little way,
running beside them until they were fairly started, and then let them
go. George drove down the street, cracking his whip; the horses jingled
their bells; half the commune looked out of their windows; and poor
Aloys stared after them long after they were out of sight; and then
went sadly home, cursing the snow which brought the water to his eyes.
The village seemed to have died out when Mary Ann was not to be in it
for a whole day.

All this winter Aloys was often much cast down. At his mother's house
the girls frequently assembled to hold their spinning-frolics,--a
custom much resembling our quiltings. They always prefer to hold these
gatherings at the house of a comrade recently married or of a
good-natured widow; elder married men are rather in the way. So the
girls often came to Mother Maria, and the boys dropped in later,
without waiting to be invited. Hitherto Aloys had never troubled
himself about them so long as they left him undisturbed: he had sat in
a corner doing nothing. But now he often said to himself, "Aloys, this
is too bad: you are nineteen years old now, and must begin to put
yourself forward." And then again he would say, "I wish the devil would
carry that George away piecemeal!" George was the object of his
ill-humor, for he had soon obtained a perfect control over the minds of
a