Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/163

Rh window, and every countenance was gay; every eye was directed to a distance with a look of eager expectation. The loud beating of drums was heard afar off, and you might read in every countenance, “Now they are coming!”

They are the Boy-legions who are entering the city after their manœuvring and fighting before it. And now they march onward, the youthful, future defenders of the fatherland, in separate detachments, according to their Cantons, in full uniform, with colors flying and excellent military bearing, and in advance of all, a large troop of little drummers, who drum as if they had never done any thing else all their days. It was in truth a joyous sight to behold these six thousand boys, with the roses of childhood on their round cheeks, with a gravity of expression and demeanor, as if they knew that they had already entered into the service of their native land.

Two of the young heroes of the future were quartered in the house where I found my home. They were from St. Gall, handsome lads of nine or ten years of age. I could not understand them, neither was their St. Gall dialect very intelligible to my hostess, but the politeness and the propriety, at the same time, with which these children conducted themselves in their strange home and at supper-time, testified to their excellent breeding. They were most hopeful examples of the rising generation of the republic. In the evening there were fireworks in the city, in honor of the six thousand young ones.

Canton Zürich is, after Berne, the most populous, and beyond comparison the most wealthy of the