Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/270

250 tourist for the crumbling, the ruinous, and the leakily picturesque.

One feels a curious sensation in this principality undiscovered by Americans, untouched by the American invasion, whether of tourist or of trade; one feels as he would if, reaching the moon, he were to find himself in the full tide of twentieth-century improvement.

For in these anomalous country villages there are the telegraph and the telephone. A few of the better houses are heated by hot water. There are "gummi-schuhe." In the Governor's office there is a typewriter. There is electricity. The Vaduz streets are electric-lighted at night, and every house in the town, even the poorest, is supplied. And why not! For a single electric light costs for a year, in this country of unlimited water-power, only five crowns—less than a dollar and a quarter. There are two large "spinnereien" (spinneries), with several hundred operatives.

But there is an American invasion here, after all, though not of manufactures or business or finance—an invasion of precisely the kind to add the most unexpected touch. For there is a religious house here of an order whose head and administration are in the United States, and the local superior, a native of Liechtenstein, spent several years in America, and returned to found this branch.

Modernity has almost destroyed the peasant dress, though still there are suggestions of it in the short, full-waisted skirts, the knitted stockings, the fringed silk aprons, brightly barred, and in the soft green hats and jackets of the men. At a funeral the body is still carried through the street by the bearers, with the village population straggling deviously behind, with candles flaming faintly in the sunlight. Ox-teams are a familiar sight. As sunset approaches, the cattle, all of black-touched dun, come saunteringly along the main street, stopping at the public fountains for leisurely and thoughtful drink, and placidly shouldering aside the children who may be puffing propulsive breath at diminutive boats. Each Saturday night the house and dooryards are swept and garnished. At Sunday breakfast every Liechtensteiner eats a sweetened coffee-cake. At the close of service the men gather in front of the church, and a wall-perched official reads notices of official action and of private sale.

Curiously sufficient unto itself is little Liechtenstein. Small though it is, its people could comfortably exist if cut off completely from the outside world. The dweller in this tiny principality has bread and cheese and milk, "honey of the mountain," "wine of Vaduz," wood for his fire, material for his clothes. "Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, whose flocks supply him with attire;" and even, continuing, "whose trees in summer yield him shade, in winter fire."

German is the tongue that is spoken here, but the people do not give the impression of having come of either Swiss or German stock. Their German is peculiarly soft, and they still retain some words of Romance origin. One is tempted to ascribe to Southern influence the masculine wearing of earrings—a curious eccentricity for such simple and manly men. A great row of Lombardy poplars, stretching in highly pictorial fashion along the Rhine, is at least an indication of Italian influence of another kind. Bravely situated is the old castle, beetling above the town. Masses of fir and pine and beech rise beyond it, and many of the trees are of great girth and height.

An old sun-dial dominates the court, with a faded Time scything away the centuries. Thick-rooted ivy clings to the ancient walls, and dungeons and subterranean passages tell of the grimness of the deeds of the past. There are walls of enormous thickness; but once, four hundred years ago, the Swiss—hereditary foes—swarmed irresistibly over them, and after burning and destroying, carried away the baron into captivity at Lucerne. Much of the interior is still ruinous, but one sees the line of the great hall of the castle, with window-seats from which high-born ladies looked off over plain and rock and river. And in one of the arched window-embrasures, from which the floor has long since fallen away, are centuries-old frescos, in charming Renaissance designs, bringing back the bright and happy side of that ancient life.

A sweet and noble view from this old pile, for the crenelated heights across the