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ter so; and then there was an excursion into Wales, where most untoward things occurred, and the grand finale was a wedding at Lord West's in London."

to her. Ah, Thesta, child, we do not know all the patient endurance of God's men and women in this nineteenth century."

The bells of St. Mary's rang mid

"Then he married Miss Ferrers!" I night as I lighted my bedroom candle, exclaimed.

"Yes, my dear, even so. You have never seen the lady, I believe?"

"No, never. Is anything the matter with her?"

"Anything the matter with her? Yes, she is insane. Quite harmless, you know; but having been made with the worst temper in England, this climate has developed it into positive insanity."

"And she lives at home?" I asked, sadly, for it came over me what a tragedy Mr. Erle's life must be.

"Yes, Gerald is more than faithful

and kissed the smooth brow of my white-haired hero. "You do not ask what became of Lillie Burton,” he said. "Did you ever hear of her?"

"Yes, Satterlee was there years afterwards, and found her Lillie Dunn, with three children clinging to her skirts."

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THE

THE LITTLE LAND OF APPENZELL.

HE traveller who first reaches the Lake of Constance at Lindau, or crosses that sheet of pale green water to one of the ports on the opposite Swiss shore, cannot fail to notice the bold heights to the southward, which thrust themselves between the opening of the Rhine Valley and the long, undulating ridges of the Canton Thurgau. These heights, broken by many a dimly hinted valley and ravine, appear to be the front of an Alpine table-land. Houses and villages, scattered over the steep ascending plane, present themselves distinctly to the eye; the various green of forest and pasture land is rarely interrupted by the gray of rocky walls; and the afternoon sun touches the topmost edge of each successive elevation with a sharp outline of golden light, through the rich gloom of the shaded slopes. Behind and over this region rise the serrated peaks of the Sentis Alp, standing in advance of the farther ice-fields of Glarus, like an out

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If, leaving the Lake of Constance by the Rhine valley, you ascend to Ragatz and the Baths of Pfeffers, thence turn westward to the Lake of Wallenstatt, cross into the valley of the Toggenburg, and so make your way northward and eastward around the base of the mountains back to the starting-point, you will have passed only through the territory of St. Gall. Appenzell is an Alpine island, wholly surrounded by the former canton. From whatever side you approach, you must climb in order to get into it. It is a nearly cir

cular tract, falling from the south towards the north, but lifted, at almost every point, over the adjoining lands. This altitude and isolation is an historical as well as a physical peculiarity. When the Abbots of St. Gall, after having reduced the entire population of what is now two Cantons to serfdom, became more oppressive as their power increased, it was the mountain shepherds who, in the year 1403, struck the first blow for liberty. Once free, they kept their freedom, and established a rude democracy on the heights, similar in form and spirit to the league which the Forest Cantons had founded nearly a century before. An echo from the meadow of Grütli reached the wild valleys around the Sentis, and Appenzell, by the middle of the fifteenth century, became one of the original states out of which Switzerland has grown.

I find something very touching and admirable in this fragment of hardly noticed history. The people isolated themselves by their own act, held together, organized a simple yet sufficient government, and maintained their sturdy independence, while their brethren on every side, in the richer lands below them, were fast bound in the gyves of a priestly despotism. Individual liberty seems to be a condition inseparable from mountain life; that once attained, all other influences are conservative in their character. The Cantons of Unterwalden, Schwytz, Glarus, and Appenzell retain to-day the simple, primitive forms of democracy which had their origin in the spirit of the people nearly six hundred years ago.

Twice had I looked up to the little mountain republic from the lower lands to the northward, with the desire and the determination to climb one day the green buttresses which support it on every side; so, when I left St. Gall on a misty morning, in a little open carriage, bound for Trogen, it was with the pleasant knowledge that a land almost unknown to tourists lay before me. The only summer visitors are invalids, mostly from Eastern Switzerland and Germany, who go up to drink

the whey of goats' milk; and, although the fabrics woven by the people are known to the world of fashion in all countries, few indeed are the travellers who turn aside from the near highways. The landlord in St. Gall told me that his guests were almost wholly commercial travellers, and my subsequent experience among an unspoiled people convinced me that I was almost a pioneer in the paths I traversed.

I

It was the last Saturday in April, and at least a month too soon for the proper enjoyment of the journey; but on the following day the Landsgemeinde, or Assembly of the People, was to be held at Hundwyl, in the manner and with the ceremonies which have been annually observed for the last three or four hundred years. This circumstance determined the time of my visit. wished to study the character of an Alpine democracy, so pure that it has not yet adopted even the representative principle, to be with and among a portion of the Swiss people at a time when they are most truly themselves, rather than look at them through the medium of conventional guides, on lines of travel which have now lost everything of Switzerland except the scenery.

There was bad weather behind, and, I feared, bad weather before me. "The sun will soon drive away these mists," said the postilion, "and when we get up yonder, you will see what a prospect there will be." In the rich valley of St. Gall, out of which we mounted, the scattered houses and cloud-like belts of blossoming cherry-trees almost hid the green; but it sloped up and down, on either side of the rising road, glittering with flowers and dew, in the flying gleams of sunshine. masses of gray cloud, which stretched across the valley, hooded the opposite hills, and sank into a dense mass over the Lake of Constance. As we passed through this belt, and rejoiced in the growing clearness of the upper sky, I saw that my only prospect would be in cloud-land. After many windings, along which the blossoms and buds of the

Over us hung

fruit-trees indicated the altitude as they thought there were spirits helping exactly as any barometer, we finally, the Appenzellers, (the women were all reached the crest of the topmost height, the frontier of Appenzell and the battle-field of Vöglisegg, where the herdsman first measured his strength with the soldier and the monk, and was victorious.

white, you see, and too far off to show plainly,) and so they gave up the fight, after losing nine hundred knights and troopers. After that, it was ordered that the women should go first to the sacrament, so that no man might forget

"Whereabouts was the battle fought?" the help they gave in that battle. And I asked the postilion.

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Up and down, and all around here," said he, stopping the carriage at the summit.

I stood up and looked to the north. Seen from above, the mist had gathered into dense, rounded clouds, touched with silver on their upper edges. They hung over the lake, rolling into every bay and spreading from shore to shore, so that not a gleam of water was visible; but over their heaving and tossing silence rose, far away, the mountains of the four German states beyond the lake. An Alp in Vorarlberg made a shining island in the sky. The postilion was loud in his regrets, yet I thought the picture best as it was. On the right lay the land of Appenzell, not a table-land, but a region of mountain ridge and summit, of valley and deep, dark gorge, green as emerald up to the line of snow, and so thickly studded with dwellings, grouped or isolated, that there seemed to be one scattered village as far as the eye could reach. To the south, over forests of fir, the Sentis lifted his huge towers of rock, crowned with white, wintry pyramids.

"Here, where we are," said the postilion, "was the first battle; but there was another, two years afterwards, over there, the other side of Trogen, where the road goes down to the Rhine. Stoss is the place, and there's a chapel built on the very spot. Duke Frederick of Austria came to help the Abbot Kuno, and the Appenzellers were only one to ten against them. It was a great fight, they say, and the women helped, with pikes and guns, but in this way: they put on white shirts, and came out of the woods, above where the fighting was going on. Now, when the Austrians and the Abbot's people saw them,

not

the people go every year to the chapel, on the same day when it took place."

I looked, involuntarily, to find some difference in the population after passing the frontier. But I had not counted upon the levelling influence which the same kind of labor exercises, whether upon mountain or in valley. So long as Appenzell was a land of herdsmen, many peculiarities of costume, features, and manners must have remained. For a long time, however, Outer-Rhoden, as this part of the Canton is called, shares with that part of St. Gall which lies below it the manufacture of fine muslins and embroideries. There are looms in almost every house, and this fact explains the density of population and the signs of wealth on every hand, which would otherwise puzzle the stranger. The houses are not only so near together that almost every man can call to his neighbors and be heard, but they are large, stately, and even luxurious, in contrast to the dwellings of other country people in Europe. The average population of Outer-Rhoden amounts to four hundred and seventyfive persons to the square mile, being nearly double that of the most thickly settled portions of Holland.

If one could only transport a few of these houses to the United States! Our country architecture is not only hideous, but frequently unpractical, being at worst shanties, and at best city resi dences set in the fields. An Appenzell farmer lives in a house from forty to sixty feet square, and rarely less than four stories in height. The two upper sto ries, however, are narrowed by the high, steep roof, so that the true front of the house is one of the gables. The roof projects at least four feet on all sides, giving shelter to balconies of carved

wood, which cross the front under each row of windows. The outer walls are covered with upright, overlapping shingles, not more than two or three inches broad, and rounded at the ends, suggesting the scale armor of ancient times. This covering secures the greatest warmth; and when the shingles have acquired from age that rich burnt-sienna tint which no paint could exactly imitate, the effect is exceedingly beautiful. The lowest story is generally of stone, plastered and whitewashed. The stories are low (seven to eight feet), but the windows are placed side by side, and each room is thoroughly lighted. Such a house is very warm, very durable, and, without any apparent expenditure of ornament, is externally so picturesque that no ornament could improve it.

Many of the dwellings, I was told, could not be built with the present means of the population, at the present prices of labor and material. They date from the palmy days of Appenzell industry, before machinery had reduced the cost of the finer fabrics. Then, one successful manufacturer competed with another in the erection of showy houses, and fifty thousand francs (a large sum for the times) were frequently expended on a single dwelling. The view of a broad Alpine landscape, dotted all over with such beautiful homes, from the little shelf of green hanging on the sides of a rocky gorge and the strips of sunny pasture between the ascending forests, to the very summits of the lower heights and the saddles between them, was something quite new in my experience.

Turning around the point of Vöglisegg, we made for Trogen, one of the two capitals of Outer-Rhoden, which lay before us, across the head of the deep and wild St. Martin's Tobel. (Tobel is an Appenzell word, corresponding precisely to the gulch of California.)

My postilion mounted, and the breathed horse trotted merrily along the winding level. One stately house after another, with a clump of fruit-trees on the sheltered side, and

a row of blooming hyacinths and wallflowers on the balcony, passed by on either side. The people we met were sunburnt and ugly, but there was a rough air of self-reliance about them, and they gave me a hearty "God greet you!" one and all. Just before reaching Trogen, the postilion pointed to an old, black, tottering platform of masonry, rising out of a green slope of turf on the right. The grass around it seemed ranker than elsewhere.

This was the place of execution, where capital criminals are still beheaded with the sword, in the sight of the people. The postilion gave me an account, with all the horrible details, of the last execution, only three years ago, — how the murderer would not confess until he was brought out of prison to hear the bells tolling for his victim's funeral, — how thereupon he was sentenced, and

but I will not relate further. I have always considered the death penalty a matter of policy rather than principle; but the sight of that blood-stained platform, the blood-fed weeds around it, and the vision of the headsman, in his red mantle, looking down upon the bared neck stretched upon the block, gave me more horror of the custom than all the books and speeches which have been said and written against it.

At Trogen I stopped at the principal inn, two centuries old, the quaint front painted in fresco, the interior neat and fresh as a new toy, a very gem of a house! The floor upon which I entered from the street was paved with flat stones; a solid wooden staircase, dark with age, led to the guests' room in the second story. One side of this room was given up to the windows, and there was a charming hexagonal oriel in the corner. The low ceiling was of wood, in panels, the stove a massive tower, faced with porcelain tiles, the floor polished nearly into whiteness, and all the doors, cupboards, and tables, made of brown nutwood, gave an air of warmth and elegance to the apartment. All other parts of the house were equally neat and orderly. The hostess greeted me

with, "Be you welcome!" and set about preparing dinner, as it was now nearly noon. In the pauses of her work she came into the room to talk, and was very ready to give information concerning the country and people.

There were already a little table and three plates in the oriel, and while I was occupied with my own dinner I did not particularly notice the three persons who sat down to theirs. The coarseness and harshness of their dialect, however, presently struck my ear. It was pure Appenzell, a German made up of singular and puzzling elisions, and with a very strong guttural k and g, in addition to the ch. Some knowledge of the Alemannic dialect of the Black Forest enabled me to understand the subject of conversation, which, to my surprise, was -the study of the classics! It was like hearing an Irishman talk of Shelley's "Witch of Atlas" in the broadest Tipperary brogue. I turned and looked at the persons. They were well-dressed young men, evidently the best class of Appenzellers, possibly tutors in the schools of Trogen. Their speech in no wise differed from that of the common herdsmen, except that they were now and then obliged to use words which, being unknown to the people, had escaped mutilation. I entered into conversation, to ascertain whether true German was not possible to them, since they must needs read and write the language; but, although they understood me, they could only partly,, and with evident difficulty, lay aside their own patois. I found this to be the case everywhere throughout the Canton. It is a circumstance so unusual, that, in spite of myself, associating a rude dialect with ignorance, I was always astonished when those who spoke it showed culture and knowledge of the world.

The hostess provided me with a guide and pack-bearer, and I set out on foot across the country towards Hundwyl. This guide, Jakob by name, made me imagine that I had come among a singular people. He was so short that he could easily walk under my arm; his

gait was something between a roll and a limp, although he stoutly disclaimed lameness; he laughed whenever I spoke to him, and answered in a voice which seemed the cuneiform character put into sound. First, there was an explosion of gutturals, and then came a loud trumpet-tone, something like the Honk! honk! of wild geese. Yet, when he placed his squat figure behind a tavern table, and looked at me quietly with his mouth shut, he was both handsome and distinguished in appearance. We walked two miles together before I guessed how to unravel his speech. It is almost as difficult to learn a dialect as a new language, and but for the key which the Alemannic gave me, I should have been utterly at sea. Who, for instance, could ever guess that a' Ma' g'si, pronounced "amari" (the x representing a desperate guttural), really stands for einen Mann gewesen?

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The road was lively with country people, many of whom were travelling in our own direction. Those we met invariably addressed us with "God greet you!" or "Guät-ti!" which it was easy to translate into "Good day!" Some of the men were brilliant in scarlet jackets, with double rows of square silver buttons, and caried swords under their arms; they were bound for the Landsgemeinde, whither the law of the Middle Ages still obliges them to go armed. When I asked Jakob if he would accompany me as far as Hundwyl, he answered, "I can't; I dare n't go there without a black dress, and my sword, and a cylinder hat."

The wild Tobels, opening downward to the Lake of Constance, which now shimmered afar through the gaps, were left behind us, and we passed westward along a broken, irregular valley. The vivid turf was sown with all the flowers of spring, primrose, violet, buttercup, anemone, and veronica, — faint, but sweetest-odored, and the heralds of spring in all lands. So I gave little heed to the weird lines of cloud, twisting through and between the severed pyramids of the Sentis, as if weaving the woof of storms. The scenery was

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