Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/222

Rh into the peasant's salon, where there was a good stove, antique chairs, a bureau, pictures, and a crucifix. In the kitchen I saw a very well filled dresser. The good woman was eager to hear of America; some of her neighbours had gone there. "They had but money enough to carry them to the ship, and had since sent help to their friends." Strange, it seemed, that there should be a relation between this sequestered valley and our New World, and that our abundance should be setting back upon these poor people. "Ours is a fine country for the young," said I. "Yes," said an old woman from the corner, "but an old tree don't bear transplanting!"

I should like you to have seen us taking our repast at the mill gasthaus, seated on the pebbly plat in settles made of birchen sticks, served by a cheerful hostess, who sat knitting in the intervals of supplying our wants, and supplying them with ne-plus-ultra bread and butter, tender boiled beef, honey, Seltzer-water, and wine: four hungry women for sixty cents. The mill-wheel kept its pleasant din the while, and another din there was that amused us from a handsome youth, who occupied a table near us, and who was telling the hostess, with frequent glances at us, of a visit he had paid to London. As he spoke in French, I presume it was more for our edification than that of our hostess. After a very picturesque account of the shocking disparity between the amount of food and the amount of the bill at an English inn, he concluded, "Ah le triste sejour