A Swiss Boarding-School

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

WHEN I first made its acquaintance, a round year ago, it was a peripatetic school taking its summer holiday among the mountains,— walking, climbing, gathering Alpine flowers, or reading aloud and doing fancy-work under the pine-trees ; always in the company of one or both of the two shy, gentle, dignified sisters, called by their pupils “the aunts,” who seemed to feel themselves as responsible for the profit in health and enjoyment of the summer trip as for the intellectual gain of the winter. A large party of American schoolgirls in a summer boarding-house would have been likely to make their presence felt, agreeably of course, in every nerve of the establishment; this group of young girls, of from fourteen to eighteen, mostly Germans and Swiss, enjoyed every hour with genuine, hearty enjoyment ; but their pleasure was never conspicuous, and the fact of their being ten or a dozen in number was not an overwhelming one. Their names were all down in the visitors’ book with the word pensionnaire appended to each, and they kept within the bounds of the definition. They joined gladly in an excursion or an occasional dance, but did not feel called upon to lead in the social life of the place ; and their evenings were spent mostly in the dining-room, by reason of a fear in the minds of their teachers lest they should be tempted to monopolize the limited space and illumination of the salon. The little school kept its unity as an institution and its own government amid the changes of travel. The pupils had come to learn French, and though lessons were laid aside for the vacation, the conversation and reading were all in that language. They were kept together as much as possible, encouraged to share their pleasures and confidence in such a way that none should be excluded, and, as regarded personal favors, were placed on a footing of absolute equality. The capacity of each girl was, however, taken into consideration in every plan. If Tante A. took a party of the more robust on a mountain climb, Tante M. led her charge to pastures nearer home. “Oh, tante, I am sure mamma would let me go ! ” pleaded an eager damsel, ambitious beyond her strength. But the “aunt” was inexorable ; she was answerable to the mamma, and felt a double responsibility.

Our association did not end with the summer. On a gray day in autumn the wave of chance deposited me, bag and baggage, at the door of the pensionnat, to spend several weeks under its roof. The house stood on a high terrace, looking down upon a wide, green-blue lake, on the other shore of which, in clear weather, a row of white Alps rose above the purple line of foothills. The hill behind the house was laid out, save for the garden and little shady orchard, wholly in vineyards ; farther back was another hill, thickly wooded. The road between the house and the lake led along its border to the town, a mile away. The Alps, lovely and gracious on autumn days, veiled themselves with the approach of winter. For four or five weeks we had not a glimpse of them ; then we had a vision unforgettable in its loveliness. The mists mounted up and floated away in a sky of azure, leaving along the opposite shore of the lake a white feathery roll, which turned to gold ; the morning sun ploughed a long gold track in the water, and the mountains shone out in silvery resplendence. The sun had been almost as rare a visitor as they: an atmosphere of a soft luminous gray had taken his place, though the weather had been cold, the winter of the sort we call old-fashioned, with plenty of snow, and the air, except in hours of bise, delicious. We had another day to be gathered in and treasured by

a day when a mist had frozen on all the trees. The effect was not the prismatic glitter of an ice-storm in our own country. There was no sunshine ; instead of being cased in a smooth coat of mail, every branch and twig was covered with soft white stars and petals clinging in thick masses ; the air was still misty, the light intense, but softened ; the shadows were of pearl ; we seemed to walk in a strange picture of subdued whites and delicate caressing grays. And the picture stayed all day.

It was a very even, tranquil life that we led in the little boarding-school. Every morning at a quarter to seven we were aroused from slumber by the loudest event of our day, a sort of reiterated clatter and peal, familiarly termed le carillon, produced, in some manner unexplained to me, by the exertions of the chambermaid on a bell suspended in the hall. Another chime summoned us, shivering with recollections of the bath, to the dining-room, where we found a fire, and a breakfast of hot milk, coffee, excellent Swiss bread and butter, and preserves. This was over before eight o’clock, when the lessons began. At eleven the girls went to walk for an hour with one of the teachers, or, when the ponds were frozen, had the more congenial alternative of skating. At half past twelve came the dinner, a substantial and well-cooked repast, with soup, followed by meat and vegetables, served together in American fashion. After dinner the teachers made coffee and had their hour of recreation in the sitting-room. One or two of the girls generally assisted in handing round the cups ; they esteemed it a privilege to share in this daily sociability. Later, one of them served afternoon tea to the visiting teachers ; they had also, in turn, some little housewifely duties, such as setting the table and cutting up the sugar. Their own “four o’clock tea ” consisted of milk. They had lessons from two till four, in music or literature. At half past four another walk. On the days of the five o’clock lectures at the Academy in the town, we all repaired in a body to that institution, where we listened to very pleasant and sometimes very clever discourse, under the benignant presidency of a full-length portrait of Agassiz represented against a background of blue glacier. The memory of the great naturalist is warmly cherished in his old college, which still gathers about it men devoted to science and to literature.

The lecture furnished food for talk on the walk home in the winter twilight, or was discussed at the supper, a sort of New England high tea. Some of the Academy professors gave lectures or lessons at the school, and had thus trained there a little group of intelligent auditors. The girls followed the lectures easily, and learned to speak French with considerable fluency and command of language, in some instances with a very pleasing accent ; and though I heard among them many deviations from the perfect purity of its pronunciation and grammar, I scarcely ever heard a lapse into native English or German. Even newcomers, arriving with little or no knowledge of the language, struck bravely into its depths.

French and music being the chief ends of each girl’s sojourn, there was no grind of college preparation. Nobody was studying for an examination. This prevented a certain strenuousness of tone and tensity of excitement which are apt to exist with us in the more earnest schools. On the other hand, there was in the girls themselves none of that intellectual interest which we find among bright American girls who are pursuing classical studies together. They had among themselves no such eagerness of conversation ; they did not appear to discuss the problems of life or to feel personally answerable for their solution ; and as compared with a set either of clever or of fashionable girls they seemed very young for their years, though in some instances very bright, and in an interesting way. If the school had not the stamp of a college preparatory, neither had it the character of our fashionable institutions for young ladies. Careful attention was paid to instruction in manners and little niceties of social usage. The necessity for a woman of being womanly was frankly dwelt upon, and taken for granted as a basis of action; but a trivial or petty view of things was strongly discouraged, and the whole tone of the household was that of rare simplicity and unworldliness.

Besides the summer vacation there was a week’s holiday at the vintage, during which the girls had a merry day helping to gather the grapes in the hill-vineyard near the house ; there were also vacation weeks at Christmas and at Easter. The weekly holidays were Thursday afternoon and evening and Sunday. On Thursday afternoon there was sometimes an excursion, in fine weather ; in the evening the girls chose their own entertainment, and danced on the waxed floor of the salon, or improvised tableaux and charades, Sunday was spent in the European fashion. In the morning they attended the service of the National Church. In the afternoon they wrote letters, or went to walk, or enjoyed an extra bout of skating. Some Scotch girls refrained from this amusement, in which the rest of the company joined as a matter of course. In the evening there was singing, or there were little games of guessing and forfeits played round the dining-room table, in which all took part merrily. On other evenings of the week the girls studied, or sewed and embroidered, while one of the teachers read aloud from some novel. The range of their literature was not extensive. Erckmann-Chatrian and the Swiss novelists contributed much pleasure ; Round the World in Eighty Days was a favorite, and La Veuvaine de Colette was keenly enjoyed by those whose knowledge of the language enabled them to appreciate its finesse and grace. Once a week there was a singing practice; once in the winter a play of Molière was performed by the girls ; and there was also a yearly dancing soirée, to which young gentlemen were invited.

The Christmas holiday had begun when I left the school. I assisted, in the French sense, at the making of the bricelets, thin cakes cooked in a small iron with long handles like a pair of tongs. We had a large wood fire in the open fireplace of the salon, where the whole Christmas supply was cooked in one evening by the “ aunts ” before an admiring band of “ nieces.” The round yellow knobs of dough were transferred, two by two, from the kneadingboard to the bricelet-iron, which, propped on one handle, opened its capacious bill to receive them, and after a moment’s stay in the blaze stood up again, stork fashion, and allowed two thin honeycombed cakes of a delicious brown to be taken from its open mandibles. There were secrets in the air, and a Christmas tree, a green pine of the Jura, was waiting for its trimming. The girls pitied me for having to leave before those things came to pass. I accepted the pity, but regretted no less that peaceful existence of every day. “ It was so gemüthlich,” a pretty German girl said to me one day, looking back upon her year at the ponsionnat ; “ it was always quiet, and yet we were always so happy.”