These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing--brown arms
lounging on the table, and red hands folded in white aprons--serious
at first in hymn-like cadences, then breaking into wilder measures
with a jodel at the close. There is a measured solemnity in the
performance, which strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the
singing was good; the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation
and no shirking of the melody. It was clear that the singers enjoyed
the music for its own sake, with half-shut eyes, as they take dancing,
solidly, with deep-drawn breath, sustained and indefatigable. But
eleven struck; and the two Christians, my old friend, and Palmy, said
we should be late for church. They had promised to take me with them
to see bell-ringing in the tower. All the young men of the village
meet, and draw lots in the Stube of the Rathhaus. One party tolls the
old year out; the other rings the new year in. He who comes last is
sconced three litres of Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine
was ours to pay to-night.

When we came into the air, we found a bitter frost; the whole sky
clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from alp and forest through
the murky gloom. The benches and broad walnut tables of the Bathhaus
were crowded with men, in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze.
Its low wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke, denser
than the external snow-drift. But our welcome was hearty, and we found
a score of friends. Titanic Fopp, whose limbs are Michelangelesque in
length; spectacled Morosani; the little tailor Kramer, with a French
horn on his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the
Troll-shaped postman; peasants and woodmen, known on far excursions
upon pass and upland valley. Not one but carried on his face the
memory of winter strife with avalanche and snow-drift, of horses