Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/133

Rh money of the people. There it was that Landenberg, who, after desiring to take the oxen from the plow of the young Arnold of Melchthal, put out his old father's eyes, and laid a heavy fine upon him for the imagined crime of his son. “This thing,” says an old historian, “went so deep into the heart of many an honest man, that they resolved rather to die than to leave such a cruel action unrevenged.”

But it was not alone men's hearts that rose against oppression and deeds of violence.

It was thus that Margaretta Herlobig, the wife of Werner Stauffacher, spoke to her husband: “In former times the men of Schwytz did not remain satisfied under, and patiently bear such treatment; and it will become worse yet if they have not courage enough to oppose it, and to meet force with force. At this rate there will soon be an end of our liberty and our peace!”

If they who guard the domestic hearth admonish their husbands to defy dangers which in a twofold measure must press upon the heart of the wife, then,—then a great combat is at hand, a combat of life and death.

Against the avalanche which threatens to over- whelm the life of the vale, is opposed the holy forest of Freedom's Sworn-Confederates, who will either break, or themselves perish in the fight. This holy forest is the people of the Swiss Forest Cantons.

, on the Lake of Lucerne, or the Vierwaldstädter See, Aug. 28.—Never did nature adorn more beautifully the cradle of Freedom than in Sweden and in Switzerland. There is Dalecarlia, here the Forest