Note 14 — LETTER XXX.

From this moment, Hansli began to take good heart to his work: his cart was for him his farm;14 he worked with real joy; and joy in getting anything done is, compared to ill-humour, what a sharp hatchet is to a rusty one, in cutting wood. The farmers of Rychiswyl were delighted with the boy. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t say, ‘When you want twigs, you’ve only to take them in my field; but don’t damage the trees, and think of the wife sometimes; women use so many brooms in a year that the devil couldn’t serve them.’ Hansli did not fail; also was he in great favour with all the farm-mistresses. They never had been in the way of setting any money aside for buying brooms; they ordered their husbands to provide them,15 but one knows how things go, that way. Men are often too lazy to make shavings,16 how much less brooms!—aussi the women were often in a perfect famine of brooms, and the peace of the household had greatly to suffer for it. But now, Hansli was there before one had time to think; and it was very seldom a paysanne17 was obliged to say to him, ‘Hansli, don’t forget us, we’re at our last broom.’ Besides the convenience of this, Hansli’s brooms were superb—very different from the wretched things which one’s grumbling husband tied up loose, or as rough and ragged as if they had been made of oat straw. Of course, in these houses, Hansli gave his brooms for nothing; yet they were not the worst placed pieces of his stock; for, not to speak of the twigs given him gratis, all the year round he was continually getting little presents, in bread and milk, and such kinds of things, which a paysanne has always under her hand, and which she gives without looking too close. Also, rarely one churned butter without saying to him, Hansli, we beat butter to-morrow; if you like to bring a pot, you shall have some of the beaten.18