drink was: so we presented our remaining bottles to the officers to save
them the trouble of making change. Up to that time we had turned our
horses to the right: once over the Austrian line, custom demanded we
should turn to the left, a change to which the _Kutscher_ readily
accommodated himself. One is kept geographically informed in that region
by this difference in manners on the high-road in Austria and Bavaria.

We argued a little about the fittingness of women working in the fields.
Cecilia thought it preferable to washing dishes, and one of us, who
believes herself not born to sew, maintained that to rake hay was more
agreeable than sitting at sewing-machines or making shirts at twenty
cents apiece after the manner of New-York workwomen. But once
indignation and excitement took possession of us all as we caught sight
of a bare-footed, slight young girl toiling up a ladder and carrying
mortar along a scaffold to men laying bricks on the second story of a
new building. The girl had a complexion like a rose-leaf, her uncovered
hair gleamed like gold in the sunshine, her head was exquisitely set on
her shoulders. The curate sighed deeply, Samayana uttered a strong word
in Hindoostanee, and there was a feminine cry of "Shameful!" when the
girl, putting down her load, folded her white arms, whose sinew and
muscle an athlete might have envied, and, with teeth and smile as
faultless as our Elise's, threw us down a "_Gruss Gott_!" If there ever
beamed content and happiness from human face we saw it in that of this
peasant beauty, who had no conception of our commiseration. We gave her
back a "God greet thee!" "All the same," said Cecilia indignantly,
"women should _not_ carry mortar." We had noticed that Cecilia's
indignation on account of the workingwoman of Germany was extreme if the
woman was pretty.

We came at last to the mouth of the mine, from which issued a narrow