f the women;" but I saw only one man drunk in the streets there, and
what the disorders of the women were I don't know. Possibly their labors
in the field made them poor house-keepers, though this is mere
conjecture. Divorce is theoretically easy, but the couple seeking it
must go before a magistrate every four months for two years and insist
that they continue to desire it. This makes it rather uncommon.

[Illustration: _Cattle at the Fountains_]

If the women were not good-looking, if their lives of toil stunted and
coarsened them, the men, with greater apparent leisure, were no
handsomer. Among the young I noticed the frequency of what may be called
the republican face--thin and aquiline, whether dark or fair. The
Vaudois as I saw them were at no age a merry folk. In the fields they
toiled silently; in the cafes, where they were sufficiently noisy over
their new wine, they talked without laughter, and without the shrugs and
gestures that enliven conversation among other Latin peoples. They had a
hard-favored grimness and taciturnity that with their mountain scenery
reminded me of New England now and again, and gave me the bewildered
sense of having dropped down in some little anterior America. But there
was one thing that marked a great difference from our civilization, and
that was the prevalence of uniforms, for which the Swiss have the true
European fondness. This is natural in a people whose men all are or have
been soldiers; and the war footing on which the little republic is
obliged to keep a large force in that ridiculous army-ridden Europe must
largely account for the abandonment of the peaceful industries to women.
But the men are off at the mountain chalets too, and they are away in
all lands, keeping hotels, and amassing from the candle-ends of the
travelling public the fortune with which all Swiss hope to return home
to die.

[Illustration: _Washing Clothes in the Lake_]

XIII

Sometimes the country people I met greeted me, as sometimes they still
do in New Hampshire, but commonly they passed in silence. I think the
mountains must have had something to do with hushing the people: far and
near, on every hand, they rise such bulks of silence. The chief of their
stately company was always the Dent-du-Midi, which alone remains
perpetually snow-covered, and which, when not hooded in the rain-bearing
mists of that most rainy autumn, gave back the changing light of every
hour with new splendors, though of