fields.
Cecilia thought it preferable to washing dishes, and one of us, who
believes herself not born to sew, maintained that to rake hay was more
agreeable than sitting at sewing-machines or making shirts at twenty
cents apiece after the manner of New-York workwomen. But once
indignation and excitement took possession of us all as we caught sight
of a bare-footed, slight young girl toiling up a ladder and carrying
mortar along a scaffold to men laying bricks on the second story of a
new building. The girl had a complexion like a rose-leaf, her uncovered
hair gleamed like gold in the sunshine, her head was exquisitely set on
her shoulders. The curate sighed deeply, Samayana uttered a strong word
in Hindoostanee, and there was a feminine cry of "Shameful!" when the
girl, putting down her load, folded her white arms, whose sinew and
muscle an athlete might have envied, and, with teeth and smile as
faultless as our Elise's, threw us down a "_Gruss Gott_!" If there ever
beamed content and happiness from human face we saw it in that of this
peasant beauty, who had no conception of our commiseration. We gave her
back a "God greet thee!" "All the same," said Cecilia indignantly,
"women should _not_ carry mortar." We had noticed that Cecilia's
indignation on account of the workingwoman of Germany was extreme if the
woman was pretty.

We came at last to the mouth of the mine, from which issued a narrow
railway for the transportation of the salt-ore, and above, zigzag on the
mountain-side, ran the conduit carrying the salt, still in liquid form,
to the boiling-house. A waterfall four hundred feet high furnished power
for the great pump. About the entrance to the mine clustered a number of
buildings. Many carriages were already there, for it was the height of
the tourists' season, and this was the show-mine of the Salzkammergut.
Some military officers were standing about, a dozen or more natives
lounged on the piazzas, and nearly every carriage contained one or more
occupants, evidently waiting for travelling-companions then in the mine.
There was the fat woman who couldn't think of such an exploration, the
nervous woman who hated dark places and never went underground, a few
invalids and some chattering girls and young men who had previously been
through the mine and had come over from Salzburg for the drive, and some
very fine youths and young women who wouldn't be seen in a miner's
costume. There were a score or more of these t