"In short, a child who has been given a little Noah's ark filled with painted animals and tiny men and women, cannot be more pleased with it than they are with their beloved little fatherland and all the thousands of good things that are in it, from the moss-covered old pike lying at the bottom of its lakes to the wild bird that flutters round its icy peaks. Oh, what different kinds of people swarm here in this little space, manifold in their occupations, in manners and customs, in costume and language! What sly rascals and what moonstruck fools we see running around, what noble growth and what weeds thrive here merrily side by side, and it is all good and fine and dear to our hearts, for it is in our fatherland. "So, considering and weighing the value of earthly things, they grow to be philosophers; but they can never get beyond the wonderful fact of the fatherland. True, they traveled in their youth and have seen many countries, not with arrogance, but honoring every land in which they found people of worth; but their motto remained ever the same: respect every man's mother country, but love your own! "And how graceful and rich it is! The closer one looks at it the finer does its warp and woof appear, beautiful and durable, a model piece of handiwork! "How diverting it is that there is not just one monotonous type of Swiss, but that there are various stamps of people from Zurich and Bern, Unterwalden and Neuenburg, the Orisons and Basle, and even two kinds of Baslers; and that Appenzell has a history of its own and Geneva another! This variety in unity--which God preserve--is the proper school in which to learn friendship, and it is only where political homogeneousness is transformed into the personal friendship of a whole people that the highest plane has been attained; for where the sense of citizenship fails, friendship will be successful and both will combine to form a single virtue. "These old men have spent their years in toil and labor; they are beginning to feel the frailty of all flesh, it pinches one in one place, one in another. Yet, when summer comes, they go, not to the baths, but to the national festival. The wine of the Swiss festival is the healing spring that refreshes their hearts, the outdoor summer life of the nation is the air that strengthens their old nerves, surging waves of happy fellow-countrymen are the sea that bathes their stiff limbs and makes them active again. You will presently see their white heads disappear in this sea. So now, fellow Helvetians, give us the cup of welcome! Long live friendship in the fatherland! Long live friendship in freedom!" "Long may it live! Bravo!" rang out from all sides, and the welcoming speaker replied to the address and saluted the old men, who made an odd and touching appearance as they stood before him.