rn out and come down the mountain
to meet and embrace him. "The rocks, the cascades, nay, the very
glaciers," he wrote to a friend, "all seemed animated, and presented a
smiling aspect; the savage country became agreeable and dear to me
from the moment its inhabitants were my brethren."

Unresting and indefatigable, Neff was always at work. He exhorted the
people in hovels, held schools in barns in which he taught the
children, and catechised them in stables. His hand was in every good
work. He taught the people to sing, he taught them to read, he taught
them to pray. To be able to speak to them familiarly, he learnt their
native patois, and laboured at it like a schoolboy. He worked as a
missionary among savages. The poor mountaineers had been so long
destitute of instruction, that everything had as it were to be begun
with them from the beginning. Sharing in their hovels and stables,
with their squalor and smoke, he taught them how to improve them by
adding chimneys and windows, and showed how warmth might be obtained
more healthfully than by huddling together in winter-time with the
cattle. He taught them manners, and especially greater respect for
women, inculcating the lesson by his own gentleness and tender
deference. Out of doors, he showed how they might till the ground to
greater advantage, and introduced an improved culture of the potato,
which more than doubled the production. Observing how the pastures of
Dormilhouse were scorched by the summer sun, he urged the adoption of
a system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in
their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal,
and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out,
pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part in the work; and at
last the waters were let into the canal amidst joy and triumph. At
Violens he helped to build and finish the chapel, himself doing
mason-work, smith-work, and carpenter-work by turns. At Dormilhouse a
school was needed, and he showed the villagers how to build one;
preparing the design, and taking part in the erection, until it was
finished and ready for use. In short, he turned his hand to
everything--nothing was too high or too low for this noble citizen of
two worlds. At length, a serious accident almost entirely disabled
him. While on one of his mountain journeys, he was making a detour
amongst a mass of rocky debris, to avoid the dangers of an avalanche,
when h