d the scene of the Ruetli Oath from Schiller's play, and
sing the Swiss national song, "Callest thou, my Fatherland?" And the
pastor Tschuemperlin admonishes them that they best cultivate the spirit
of Schiller and Tell by worthy training of their children. As they are
about to break up at last, the Landammann Styger of Schwyz suggests a
beautiful thing to them:--"As we came from Brunnen, and looked up at the
Mytenstein as we passed it,--the great pyramid rising up there out of
the water as if meant by Nature for a monument,--it seemed to us that a
memorial tablet should be placed there, simple like the column itself,
with words like these: 'To Him who wrote "Tell," on his One Hundredth
Birthday, the Original Cantons.'" And the proposition was received
with unanimous shout of assent. "This was the worthy ending of the
Schiller-Festival on the Ruetli," says the contemporary chronicle.

On the 10th day of November, 1859, also, there was put into the hands
of the Central Committee of the Society of the Swiss Union the deed of
purchase of the Ruetli. It is in the handwriting of Franz Lusser of Uri,
Clerk of the Court, and dated the 10th of November, the birthday of
Schiller. Thus Switzerland owns its sacred places, and the title-deeds
long laid up in its heart are written out at last.

On the 21st of October of last year, on a brilliant afternoon, the
men of Schwyz and Uri went forth again from Brunnen, with the chief
magistracy of the land. From Treib came the Unterwaldners, all in richly
decorated boats, and the inhabitants of Lucerne in two steamboats with
much music, meeting in front of the Mytenstein, which lifts its colossal
front eighty feet above the water there. The top of it was covered with
a large boat-sail, with the arms of the original Cantons and Swiss
mottoes on it; in a wreath of evergreen, the arms of the other Cantons;
in the middle of it, in token of the twenty-two Cantons, a white cross
upon red ground; above all, the flag of the Confederacy spread to the
Foehn. At the foot was a little stand made of twigs for the speaker,
about which the little fleet was grouped, under the charge of the
Landammann Aufdermauer of Brunnen, a gallant gentleman, host of the
Golden Eagle, with his kind little sister, of whom we spoke at the
beginning.

When all was still, Uri opens the musical trilogy,--the words by P.
Gall. Morell, monk of Einsiedeln, the music by Baumgartner of Zuerich;
Unterwalden takes up the burden;