urroundings--crowed lustily from the cradle in
which, after the fashion of the country, it was tightly strapped. It was
a low, grimy room, with one square bit of a window, and far from clean.
Dr. Gilly, the prim English biographer of Neff, quaintly says:
"Cleanliness is not a virtue which distinguishes any of the people in
these mountains; and, with such a nice sense of moral perception as they
display, and with such strict attention to the duties of religion, it is
astonishing that they have not yet learnt those ablutions in their
persons or habitations which are as necessary to comfort as to health."
I suspect, however, that the nicest "sense of moral perception" in the
world would excuse the omission of a good many "ablutions" in a place
where all the water that is used has to be carried more than a quarter
of a mile up a steep and rough mountain-path from the nearest stream.
And there was one refinement in the rude chalet not always present in
regions far less removed from the centres of civilization: besides the
cloth--so coarse as to be a curiosity--which the woman laid for us over
an end of the unscoured table, she put at each of our places, as a
matter of course, a fresh napkin of the same rude stuff.

I could not sufficiently admire the brave cheerfulness of these simple
folk. Many of the villagers were busy gathering their little stock of
potatoes, and all had something bright to say about their good fortune
in getting them so well grown and safely stored before the frosts. It
was the last week in September, and they thought the winter already
close at hand. There was, too, in spite of a shrinking from strangers
painfully suggestive of tendencies inherited from generations of
persecuted ancestors, a degree of intelligence and self-respect often
wanting among peasants far more favorably circumstanced. And it seemed
to me worthy of remark that in all our walk--notwithstanding the
valley's unexampled poverty--we did not encounter a single beggar.
Before we left Dourmillouse the "elder" appeared, a stalwart young
mountaineer with his gun slung across his shoulder. He had finished his
morning's work in some distant field, and was off for a chamois-hunt
among the rocks and glaciers. As a relic of our visit he gave us a block
of rye bread twenty-two months old, which he chopped off the loaf with a
hatchet.

We had frequent evidence in the course of our excursion that Pastor
Charpiot is a real shepherd to his needy f