talkin' language onfit
for a deacon and a perfessor, and I put the bed where it belonged,
spread the sheets over it smooth, put my warm woollen shawl and our
railway rug on it and made a splendid bed.

The food wuz quite good, though sassage and cheese wuz too much in
evidence, and beer and pipes and bears. I always kinder spleened
aginst bears and wuz afraid on 'em and wouldn't take one for a
present, but it beat all how much they seem to think of bears there,
namin' the place for 'em to start with, and they have bears carved and
painted on most everything. Bears spout water out of their mouths in
the fountains, they have dead ones in their museums, and they have a
big bear den down by the river where great live ones can growl and act
all they want to. And bears show off in a wonderful clock tower they
have built way back in the 'leventh century. I never see Tommy so
delighted with anything hardly as he wuz with that, and Josiah too.
Every hour a procession of bears come out, led, I believe, by a
rooster who claps his wings and crows, and then they walk round a old
man with a hour glass who strikes the hour on a bell. But the bears
lead the programmy and bow and strut round and act.

The manufactures of Berne are mostly cloth, silk and cotton, straw
hats, etc. It has a great university with seventy-three professors.
Good land! if each one on 'em knowed a little and would teach it they
ort to keep a first-rate school.

And it also uses a Referendum. Arvilly disputed me when I spoke on't;
she thought it wuz sunthin' agin 'em, but it hain't. It helps the
people. If they don't like a law after it passes the legislature they
have a chance to vote on it. And it keeps 'em from bein' fooled by
politicians and dishonest statesmen. I approve on't and Arvilly did
when she got more acquainted with the idee. I wish America would get
hold of one, and I guess she will when she gits round to it, though
Arvilly don't believe they will. Sez she: "Our statesmen ruther spend
their time votin' on the length of women's hat-pins, and discuss what
a peril they are to manhood." Sez she: "Why don't they vote agin men's
suspenders? Everybody knows a man could hang a woman with 'em, hang
'em right up on the bed post." Sez Arvilly: "Why not vote that men
shall fasten their trousers to their vests with hook and eyes, they
are so much less dangerous?" But I don't spoze they ever will. It is a
job to fasten your skirt to your waist with 'em. But t