priest in payment for masses said for
dead relations. The Ursuline Sisters were paid for Moidel's education
in butter.

And the native cheese!--meagre cheese, as it is justly called--a
poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds are often merely
squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon an upper shelf to
dry, where they look like the back portions of gigantic skulls until
damp and mould somewhat destroy the resemblance. The kind called fat
cheese is not much better. It is, however, made with greater care, and
dried in bands of pine bark in the Alpine kitchen. This distasteful
butter and cheese, the sole result of gallons of rich milk and cream
and many a long summer week upon the lofty Alp, becomes still
more distasteful when the milk and cream are kept in the one hot,
over-crowded sleeping-room, or in a dairy where the goatherd sleeps
amongst the milk-dishes. The mountain dwellings are dark and badly
constructed, and if furnished with a proper dairy, the prejudiced
housewife often refuses to use it, believing that cream will not set
unless the milk is warm; thus, much becomes sour, and is either thrown
away or turned into a still more inferior cheese. Or she purposely
lets the cream become rancid before she churns, that the children
may not take too great a fancy to the Schmalz, and thus it may last
longer!

We had tasted already too much of this milky tree of knowledge not to
learn with pleasure from the Brixen calendar that in different parts
of the Tyrol co-operative _sennereien_ had been started with the
greatest success. A manager was employed in each who understood
perfectly the Swiss mode of cheese-making and the best manner of
churning. Thus, the most excellent produce was gained from the same,
or rather from a smaller, quantity of milk, when the reckless waste
was deducted. Each shareholder had the right of skimming the milk
from his own cows, taking what he required for his personal use, or
he might send his entire share of butter, cheese, whey and goats' milk
with the common stock to market, where such co-operative wares already
brought the highest price. Thus, the farmer gained both ways, not only
receiving more money, but saving in dairy utensils, house room and
fuel, and his wife in labor.

Great was our glee over these enlightened and successful efforts; but
a friendly dispute immediately arose when one amongst us expressed a
surprise that the half dozen bauers who shared the Olm