rld.

On the other side of the forest dwell people of the same stock; but
their employment has imparted to them habits, manners and customs
differing from those of the glass-blowers. They are occupied with their
forest, felling and splitting up the pine trees, which they float down
the Nagold to the Necker, and thence to the Rhine and to far-away
Holland. The Black Foresters and their rafts are familiar objects even
to the inhabitants of the remote coast regions. The raftsmen touch at
every town along the river, proudly awaiting offers for their baulks
and beams; but the strongest and the longest of the former they sell
for gold to the Mynheers, who build ships of them. These men are
accustomed, therefore, to a rough, wandering existence. Their delight
is to float down stream on their rafts, while the return homeward along
the river-banks is but weary work.

Their holiday costume is also very different from that of the
glass-blowers on the other side of the Black Forest. They wear dark
linen jerkins with wide, green braces across their broad chests, and
black leathern breeches, from the pocket of which peeps, as a badge of
honour, the end of a brass foot-rule. But they take most joy and pride
in their boots, the biggest, perhaps, which have ever been in fashion
in any part of the world, for these are drawn quite two handspans above
the knee, so that the raftsmen can wade knee deep in the water without
getting wet.

Until quite recently the inhabitants of this forest believed it
inhabited by supernatural beings, and it is only latterly that they
have begun to abandon the superstition, and it is remarkable that even
the forest spirits, which according to legend haunt the Black Forest,
are also distinguished by their different costume and habits. Thus we
are assured, the Glass-manikin, a benevolent elf, of about four feet in
height, is never seen in anything but a little peaked broad trimmed
hat, with jerkin, knee-breeches and red stockings.

Dutch Michael again, who dwells on the other side of the forest, is
said to be a gigantic, broad shouldered fellow, dressed in like fashion
to the raftsmen; and many people, who have seen him, are wont to
declare that they would not like to bear the cost of the calves, the
skins of which have gone to the making of the boots. "So big are they
that an ordinary man could stand up to his neck in them," say the
latter, protesting that the description is no exaggerated one.

Now, ther