THE ROMANCE OF THE WOOD CARVER.
The artists in wood are, however, very poorly paid, even for Switzerland. In America their wages would be considered as close to starvation as possible, without touching it. Think of a man capable of doing the most artistic work laboring at four francs a day, or eighty cents! This is as high as any, except an occasional phenomenal genius, gets, and they appear to be content with it. For this miserable sum they work so long as they can see, commencing at daylight and ending at dark.
True, living is very cheap, and such as it is it ought to be. The wretched beer of the region is only about a cent a glass, and the black bread of the country costs next to nothing, and so the artist works all day and at night sits himself in his little café, and with his cheap wine and cheaper beer, plays cards contentedly, and enjoys himself thoroughly.
After all he is as well as though he got ten dollars a day. He couldn’t drink any more wine than he does, and neither would additional pay enlarge his capacity for black bread, and what does he want of anything more? It isn’t what you want—it’s what you don’t want that makes you rich. Even in little wood carving Brienz, romance gets in.
We saw on the street, there is only one in Brienz, a young man whose demoralized clothing, fiery eyes and unsteady steps, all bore evidence to the terrible fact of dissipation. He was the first drunken man of the genus loafer we had struck in Switzerland. The Young Man who Knows Everything looked at him and promptly remarked:—
“That young man has wisdom. He is cultivating a vice. When he wants to economize he has a basis for economy. Suppose he had always lived a perfectly correct life, and some emergency should come to him that demanded economy, what would he have to economize on? Every man should so live that he can, if he must, better himself. I admire that young man, for he leaves himself room for development.”
The landlord gave us his history. The young man was ruined by prosperity. He was an industrious and very skillful carver, and had attained sixty cents a day with an immediate prospect of a raise of twenty cents, which is the summit of a legitimate Brienz ambition.
He was engaged to be married to the daughter of a poor Swiss farmer, who had three cows and a goat or two, and there was no reason under heaven why he should not have been happy. He had health, strength, skill; Josepha was beautiful, and there was nothing to prevent his marrying her, and settling down quietly to watch the development of her goitre, and passing a long and happy life.
But evil was hanging over them. An uncle of Rudolph’s, who was a cook in Paris, died without issue, and left his entire estate, sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents, to his nephew, our Rudolph, in Brienz.
Immediately Rudolph grew cold towards Josepha. He did not meet her on the little bridge after his work; he did not take her to fairs where the two drank beer lovingly out of the same mug; he did not always have some little present for her; in short, he avoided her. To use the strong though not elegant English of the wild and untamed West, he “shook” her.