"After a year was passed, fortune was favourable to me. The neighbours' children chose mine as playfellows, and the wives sought intercourse with mine, whilst many of the men persuaded me to join a union which was engaged in objects of general utility; it soon attained a great development, and introduced much improvement into the administration and economy of the property of the community. I learnt to esteem many excellent country people; many have passed away in the vigour of manhood. Her Vogt, justice of the peace, a genuine Allemanni, with a long thin face and dark hair, adapted by his understanding and acuteness to be the champion of the rising enlightenment, was killed not long ago by the fall of a tree which he was felling with an axe. The common councillor, Schmied Girard, met with an accident in the flower of manhood, on the occasion of a bonfire, which was lighted on the Warinfluh, high up on the edge of a rocky precipice, in order to show the Bernese neighbours sympathy in the celebration of the festival in honour of their constitution. He pushed a great log with his foot into the fire, slipped, and fell backwards over the rock into the abyss. He was an uncompromising opponent of the rotten system in the State, and had not feared to make known his sympathy for David Strauss, whose call to Zurich in 1839 had brought about the noted Zurich row, and to express his conviction that there could be no improvement till the community could choose their own pastor, and it should only be for five years. No wonder then that the ultramontane party spoke of his death in their papers as by the finger of God, for the edification of the good, and as a warning to the godless. The Grencheners answered the fleeting curse of the pious press by an enduring inscription on stone. In the village, by the side of the high road, in a place that every traveller who goes along the road must remark, there is a simple memorial stone. The inscription says that it is dedicated to the memory of the common councillor Girard, who was loved and esteemed by his fellow citizens, who laboured and met his death in the cause of liberty, justice, and enlightenment. He was a good neighbour to me, and a powerful support: my wife gazed at him with astonishment when he took her Italian iron out of the fire with his bare hand, and placed it in the iron stand.