remarks are published in their church calendar. He and his colleagues
must, however, use almost supernatural patience and energy before they
can move a Tyroler one jot from the beaten path which his ancestors
have taken for a thousand years before him. The people are perfectly
content, it is pleaded, with the existing state of things: why should
they change their sowing or ploughing any more than the sun his course
or the mountains their position? Changes, like bad weather, breed
discontent.

We had brought no books with us for our five days at the Olm, and in
the pauses of our out-door enjoyment the calendar, greasy rather from
contact with butter and milk than with fingers, afforded amusing,
profitable reading: a lecture may often be pleasant to hear when not
addressed to one's self.

Moidel, Jakob and Franz, though they had looked with blind eyes on
the print, did not turn deaf ears when we spoke; only we had to manage
that all we said and thought did not come as a quoted sermon, but as
suggestions and inquiries from us, who did not know half as much about
a dairy and farm-life as they did. First of all, we tried to make them
believe that the staff of life need not of necessity be rye bread
of so hard and flinty a nature as to require in every house a square
wooden board and iron chopper to cut it.

"Yes," said Moidel, "it is very hard for old people, who must needs
sop it, but while one's teeth are good the crunching is a pleasure.
And then it must needs be dry, because the oven can only be heated
once in three months. I wish it could come round oftener, for there
is no going to bed on baking nights, with some three hundred loaves to
pop into the oven."