GROUP OF SWISS GIRLS.
A GENEVAN BAKERY.
The Genevan, like all other men of French or partially French extraction, is a tremendous worker, and this includes the female as well as the male. The male Genevan is up with the lark, or whatever bird in Switzerland has the disagreeable habit of early rising, and his labor continues as long as he can see, and even after. And he works, not in a perfunctory sort of way, but tackles his business as though he was doing it for the simple liking of it. He is a most persistent and rapid worker.
I was exploring the old part of the city one night, and in groping through the narrow, half-underground passages, I came upon a baker’s shop. As I wanted to get at the secret of the delicious bread for which the French are famous, I investigated. It was a scorching night, but nevertheless there was a roaring oven, heated seven times hotter than any furnace I had ever read of, except one. In front of this furnace, were the mixing and kneading troughs, and at them, in a space of not more than twenty feet square, were a score or more of men naked to the waist, with perspiration pouring from every pore, at work at the stiff and tenacious dough. They would lift a mass of it half as large as their bodies, and slap it about, and pull it out, and compress it, and elongate it, and torture it in all sorts of shapes, and in every way possible for dough to be tortured. It was as hard manual labor as I had ever seen performed.