Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/58

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
74
LIFE IN THE OLD WORLD.

life, and which has converted the domestic hearth to an altar. This is a peculiar trait in the reform movement, which, proceeding from Switzerland, has been planted in England, Holland, and France. But of this, more another time.

I will now go forth into nature, will live like the trees and the flowers there. Let me thank the good, great Father, for the beautiful weather which he has now given, for now they are making hay; now both the wheat and the vine is in blossom, and the whole face of the earth looks glorious and full of life. Now, however, it is very warm, and I exclaim, with all the people of Lausanne, “à la montagne!” “à la montagne!


SECOND STATION.


Rossinières—Our large Beehive—Life in the high valleys—The footpath—The young girls and the Sunday-school—Chateau-d'Œx—My Chateau—The meeting at La Lechevette—Rambles in the Alpine valleys—La Comballez—Les Ormondes—Pére Ansermez—The Folk-life of the high valleys—The Free Church—The Church of the future—Idea of Protestantism.

Rossiniéres, July 3d.—But lately, on the sunny heights of la Sauvabellin, at the gay folk's festival, with the vast and glorious view of Heaven and earth above and around me, now shut into a narrow, solitary valley of the Vaudois Alps, where one can see nothing but bare or wood-covered mountains, between which lie grass fields and low huts, and above which