238                THE WISCONS

  The railroad leads me through the beautiful h
plain which spreads out between Basic and t4
Lausanne, and afferds me once more a glimpse v
of broad fields, bearing rich crops of grain, c
of grass and roots.  On my left are the grand v
old Jura Mountains, shutting out from my view
the fields of sunny France.  Every few no-
ments the whistle calls us to a halt at some it
station old or new-for be it known villages m
are sometimes born of railroads in the old o
world as well as the new-but the most of them  z
present nothing worthy of note. But here is E
Iverdun, a town of considerable magnitude, c
and deserving of mention for that it introduces
the northward traveler to the well known lake I
Neuchatel, along whose pleasant border the a
railroad winds its way. For ."ume time aftera
the road was completed to IverdJun, the only i
link between it and the extremity of the lake i
was hy hoa l; ,hu  lw| i,; ,g puhlic could not i
long endure trtiuspur X i  so slow, and now
I am viewing the lake an the right, and the
mountains on my left, at the rate of thirty 1
miles an hour.
   Another scream of the locomotive, and the i
 station guards shout in at the windows, " Neu-
 chatel! Neuchatel!" But what of it? Noth-
 ing, only that this is the place famous in all
 the world for the manufacture of clocks and
 watches  It is a dingy looking old Swiss town,
 lying rather low, and presenting no particular
 attractions to the eye of the stranger.  Did I
 stop to visit the great factories which fill the
 world with the best of time-keepers? No; for
 the reason that there are no great manufacto-
 ries there. The Swiss have not yet learned to
 apply machinery to the manufacture of watch-
 es, and have no need, therefore, for large
 establishments. On the contrary, of the thou-
 sands of Neuckatelers who devote their lives to
 this business, each one giving himself exclu-
 sively to a certain branch of the manufacture
 takes the material to his own home and there
 does the work signed him. When a quantity
 of that particular artiele is completed, he takes
 them to the workman who next has need of
 them; he to another, and so on., until, at last,
 the several parts have found their way into the



IN FARMER.

ands of the man or men whose business it is
3o put them together; when the cecks or



ratches thus finished are turned over to the
apitalist who furnished the material and by
those order the work was executed by all
In this connection I should not omit to men-
ion that quite in contradiction of the asiti-
ient contained in the old adage, IIThe shoe-
aaker puts shoes on everybody's feet but his
own," almost every public building in Swit-
,erland is provided with a great clock-very
nany of them announcing the hour by means
if a pleasing chime of bells.
Off again. Good bye! 0 ye watchmakers!
.f at any time in the progress of your art you
should chance to discover some simple method
of converting minutes into days and days into
Fears, thus prolonging the life of man, be so
good as to let me know at your earliest con-
renience-by the sub-Atlantic Telegraph, if
you please!
  Lake Bienne! much smaller than Neuchatel,
but still a pretty feature of the landscape. At
Suleure we touch the river Aar, a branch of
the Rhine. Aarburg and Liestal are passed,
and Bale, Basle or Basel-as it is variously
written and pronounced-is in view.  Hardly
in view either, for it is night, and but little is
visible save the thousands of lights which,
glaring and glimmering high and low, prove
to my curious eye that this city also is built
on hilly ground.
  I am directed to the - Ilotel de le Savage,"
which, after a little time, I -tieceed in finding.
Hotel of the Savage! not a very inviting name
to be sure, but a really good hotel, neverthe-
less.
  I have risen with the morning light, and am
standing on the banks of the glorious old
Rhine' The sun pours a flood of golden light
across the flowing stream and gilds the old city
into a richness and a beauty not its own. But
my thoughts dwell most on the river, of which
I have a thousand times read and dreamed,
whose name is classic in history, in painting
and in poetry. Who can think of it without
the association of strange scenes in the far
feudal past of poetic legends, of more recent.



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