And all through the mountainous parts the carving of wood is the great business of the people. Saw-mills are run to cut up the trees to be made into ornamental articles for sale, and these extend from mantel clock cases worth $1,000 to some gimcrack not worth a cent. The centre tables and chairs, the game pieces and desks, knives and forks, and whatnots, are far too numerous to mention; but they display a degree of skill and taste in execution that would do no discredit to Greece or Italy in the days when sculpture was their glory. And all this mechanical work is done by men, and men only. The tendency of things is always to extremes, and here in the working-classes, and nearly all are in those classes in Switzerland, the men have pushed the women too largely out of doors, usurping employments that women might follow with success, while the men should take upon themselves the labors that are too heavy for their wives. But Switzerland itself is an exceptional country. It has no fair chance in the world as a nation; and so large a part of its surface is impracticable for the use of man, and it has become so great a resort for foreign tourists, they are expected to spend all the money they can afford in the works of art which the natives produce. Walking out with a young German friend, who did not understand a word of the English language, I saw at a little distance an enclosure, neat gravel walks and shrubbery, with flowers showing through the iron railing that surrounded it. I asked what the enclosure was, and the answer, in German, struck me pleasingly: “GOTTESACKER.” I had never heard the word for graveyard before in German, though the English of it, “GOD’S ACRE,” is familiar, and has often been the theme of poetry and prose. GOTTES ACKER is the acre or piece of ground that belongs not to man of all the land in the earth that he claims as his own, but is the Lord’s. And why is it his? The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness. The mountains and the valleys, the plains also, and all that are therein. Why is this small enclosure, a petty piece of ground in the midst of a wide, magnificent domain, alone called God’s? Yes, it is his, because all who inhabit this place have gone to him. We walked into the sacred enclosure, for the gate was open, inviting the passer-by to come in. The paths were neatly gravelled, and the plots surrounded with flowering shrubs, and the graves not raised above the ground as ours often are, but levelled, and each grave bordered with boxwood and planted with flowers. Few were marked with a headstone, but most of them had a staff set up in form of a cross, and on it a plate with a brief inscription. The centre of the graveyard was laid off in a circle, planted with trees and furnished with seats, where friends could sit in the shade, and meditate among the graves of departed friends. “And is Gottesacker the only word for this place in your German tongue?” I asked. “It is also called FRIEDHOF.”