what they promised; they would rather be upright than merely seem to be
so. Though provident, they were content, unless very poor.

Another peculiarity of Bâle: its clocks were one hour ahead of all
others, and so continued at least till the middle of the last century.
This of course depended on no difference of time; it was merely that
when, for instance, at mid-day, the clocks of neighboring towns struck
twelve, the clocks of Bâle struck one. The origin of this seeming effort
to hasten him who usually moves rapidly enough for us all is lost in
obscurity.

And now why is it that, we have gone back four hundred years and more,
to linger thus long with the Secretary of the Great Ecclesiastical
Council of Bâle, in that quaint and queer old town, with its half
French, half German look, its grand, grotesque old churches, hung round
with knightly shields and filled with women, each in a pulpit of her
own, its stork-crowned roofs, its houses blazing with wrought gold and
silver, its threescore fountains, and the magnificence in which, without
a court, it rivalled the richest capitals of Italy, its noble-spirited
and pleasure-loving, but simple-minded and unlearned burghers, its
white-limbed beauties, and its deceitful clocks? It is not because that
town is now one of the principal ribbon-factories of the world, and
exports to this country alone over $1,200,000 worth yearly; although
some fair readers may suppose that an all-sufficient reason,--and some
of their admirers and protectors, too, for that matter. Think of it!
nearly one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of
ribbons coming to us every year from a single town in Switzerland! The
statement is enough to carry horror and dismay to the heart and the
pocket of every father and brother, and above all, of every husband,
actual or possible, who hears of it. It is a godsend to the