billiard tables I found ballots of the different parties scattered.
Gendarmes had also distributed them about in the church pews; they were
enclosed in envelops, which were voted sealed. On a table before the
pulpit the ballot-box--a glass urn--was placed; and beside it sat the
judges of election, with lists of the registered voters. But in any
precinct of the canton an elector who could prove that he had not voted
at home might deposit his ballot in any other. The church bell rang for
the people to assemble, and the voting began and ended in perfect quiet.
But I could not witness an election of this ancient republic, where
Freedom was so many centuries old, without strong emotion; it had from
its nature and the place the consecration of a religious rite.


III

The church itself was old--almost as old as Swiss freedom, and older
than the freedom of the Vaud. The Gothic interior, which had once, no
doubt, been idolatrously frescoed and furnished with statues, was now
naked and coldly Protestant; one window, partly stained, let in a little
colored light to mix with the wintry day that struck through the others.
The pulpit was in the centre of the church, and the clerk's desk
diagonally across from it. The floor was boarded over, but a chill
struck through from the stones below, and the people seemed to shiver
through the service that preceded the election. When the pasteur mounted
the pulpit they listened faithfully, but when the clerk led the psalm
they vented their suffering in the most dreadful groaning that ever
passed for singing outside of one of our country churches.

It was all very like home, and yet unlike it, for there is much more
government in Switzerland than with us, and much less play of