Every member of a Swiss family produces his share. The whole family take up their daily work before sunrise, suspend it only for their meals, and end it only when the candles are put out at early bedtime. The feeble efforts of old age and the petty industry of childhood contribute to the sum of human toil. Children all work with their hands for the common support, they help the elders in the common family interests as soon as they can rock a cradle, drive a cow, or sweep a floor; they thus acquire at home habits of application and industry which stand them in good stead in after life. The little ones who are taken by their parents to the field and are too young to work have bells fastened to their belts, not for amusement, but, as the mothers explain, “when we are in the fields and the children wander away, thanks to the bells, we can always hear and find them, and, besides, the sound of the bell drives away the serpents.”[91] Even the infant in its baby-carriage passes the day amid the scenes of labor in which it will soon be called to join. The women are not exempt from work, even in the families of very substantial peasant proprietors. A stranger, seeing the smart country girls at work about the cows’ food or in the harvest field, perhaps barefooted, is apt to consider it as a proof of extreme destitution. This is a mistake; it is merely the custom of the country. A well-to-do peasant’s daughters, who are stylishly dressed on Sundays, may be seen in the fields during the week. You see the sturdy sunburnt creatures in petticoats, but otherwise manlike, toiling side by side with their fathers and brothers in the rudest work of the farm. They wear a broad-brimmed straw hat, and as the breeze blows back its breadth of brim, the sunshine constantly adds depth to the brown glow of their cheeks. In the absence of the men the women do all the work,--mow the grass, cut the wood, look after the cattle, make the cheese, bake the bread, and spin the wool. Whether they are employed in spreading the litter on the floor of the stable, in carrying the pails foaming with the freshly-drawn milk, or in turning up with long wooden rakes the newly-mown hay, all their different labors resemble festivals. From one hill to another, above the bed of the mountain torrent, they reply to the songs of the young reapers by chanting national airs, it may be _Rufst du, mein Vaterland_ (“callest thou, my country”)! Their voices resemble modulated cries emitted by a superabundance of life and joy; musicians note them down without being able to imitate them; they are indigenous only on the waters or on the green slopes of the Alps. The distinction between the sexes as to labor in Switzerland has passed the temporary stage of evolution. Is it not true everywhere that women are entering a new era of self-care; that they are undertaking not only office-work, but professions, and trades, and farm-work? and the change is going on with great speed.