Many maid-servants, who enter a farmer's service for a year at Christmas, do so for a trifling annual wage of fifteen or twenty gulden. On the other hand, they stipulate with their employers that, in summer, when there is hardly any pressing work to be done at home, they shall be allowed to follow their own business for a few weeks. The lasses then go reaping. In the month of June they wander away, with bundle and sickle, to the lowlands or the Mürzthal, where the corn is ripe early; and they find plenty of work and amaze everybody by their eager and indefatigable diligence. This done, they cheerfully come home again with their reaping wages and once more apply themselves briskly to the needs of field and garden. It is very seldom that one of them, lured by love or other worldly advantages, remains away; they like home best, where they form part, so to speak, of the family of their employer, with whom maid and man alike live on fraternal terms. A fine characteristic of this little land is the cohesion that reigns among neighbours. If one of them is visited with misfortune, the others stand by him fairly and squarely; do his urgent work for him, if he be ill; come to his aid with building materials, carpenters and masons, if fire or water have destroyed his house; send in food as well; and generally put the sorely-tried one on his legs once more. Again, in certain forms of labour, such as copse-cutting, flax-scutching, corn-mowing, they gladly work for the common cause--on this farm to-day, on that to-morrow--with the result that everything goes sociably and cheerfully. One for all and all for one! The young lads stick together for their particular objects. They form clubs--each district according to its own requirements--through which they mutually support one another in their feuds and love-adventures. They help and protect one another in "window-haunting" and "street-strolling," as the nocturnal love-walks are called; they humbug the father, when one of them is after the pretty daughter; they help to defeat the rivals; and, in addition, they play all sorts of practical jokes, which their brains are very quick at inventing. The youth of one parish will often hatch deliberate plots against that of another; and bloody fights take place on many a Sunday and holiday. Amorous relations between unengaged couples do not, as yet, occur to the same extent in the Jackelland as elsewhere; morals are stricter, opportunities fewer and frivolity less marked. Manners, upon the whole, are more serious and sober, a fact which is in no way detrimental to the pleasure of living, but, on the contrary, increases it and keeps it fresh and clean.