s she had need of another's help.
It could easily be seen that she must have met with something difficult
to-day; but her face brightened when the school-master began:

"The gentlemen will allow me to explain to Madame Pfann the
starting-point and progress of our conversation. The physician had told
us that Walderjoergli, since the day of the celebration, had been
approaching his release. This suggested the assertion that the
advantage of culture to the common people is questionable in every
respect; that roughness keeps the people even physically stronger than
culture. The judge replied that a child must become a youth, and then a
man, and it is an idle question whether it would not have been happier
if it had remained a child. The physician was just about to speak of
the effect of culture in relation to diseases."

"Not exactly that," said the physician; "but I was going to say that
the greater difficulty of regulating the peasant's diet is attributable
to his degree of culture; and, again, the acute character of a disease
that is already developed may often be broken up by timely remedies."

"I claim this also for intellectual and social discipline," cried the
school-teacher. "The moderating power of culture will turn aside the
violence of the passions, and ward off their tragical end. Obstinacy
and unbending willfulness are not real strength."

"A quarrel about the people's beard," said a clergyman to a colleague,
smiling, and handing him an open snuff-box. The school-master had heard
a whisper, but had not understood what was said; so he continued, with
a sharp sidelong glance at the disturbers:

"As sure as the means of healing from the apothecary help struggling
nature in sickness, or put aside a hindrance to nature's work, just as
certainly will the means of culture, which for centuries have been
gathered together by science, mitigate and heal moral infirmity, and
the outbreak of passion that leads to crime--yes, even crimes that are
already committed."

Turning to the clergyman, he continued: "Religion is also a
health-giving means of culture, but it is not the only one."

"Thanks," replied the clergyman, waving his hand, between the thumb and
fore-finger of which he held a pinch of snuff. "But, most honored
doctor, your culture-cure is a brewage of classic and scientific
education, a teaspoonful every hour, to be well shaken before
taken--probatum est."

Amidst general laughter his colleague added: