library.

Long before dawn on the first day of vacation the two bright,
active boys would be on their homeward way, as happy as holiday
could make them, especially if they were returning for the summer
harvest or the autumn vintage. The latter was then, as now, a
season of festivity. In these more modern days something of its
primitive picturesqueness may have been lost; but when Agassiz was
a boy, all the ordinary occupations were given up for this
important annual business, in which work and play were so happily
combined. On the appointed day the working people might be seen
trooping in from neighboring cantons, where there were no
vineyards, to offer themselves for the vintage. They either camped
out at night, sleeping in the open air, or found shelter in the
stables and outhouses. During the grape gathering the floor of the
barn and shed at the parsonage of Motier was often covered in the
evening with tired laborers, both men and women. Of course, when
the weather was fine, these were festival days for the children. A
bushel basket, heaped high with white and amber bunches, stood in
the hall, or in the living room of the family, and young and old
were free to help themselves as they came and went. Then there were
the frolics in the vineyard, the sweet cup of must (unfermented
juice of the grape), and, the ball on the last evening at the close
of the merry-making.

Sometimes the boys passed their vacations at Cudrefin, with their
grandfather Mayor. He was a kind old man, much respected in his
profession, and greatly beloved for his benevolence. His little
white horse was well known in all the paths and by-roads of the
country around, as he went from village to village among the sick.