At Markersdorf I left the highway for a cross-road, leading through a succession of hamlets, so close together that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends. Now the signs of labour multiply, and there is a ceaseless noise of the shuttle and polishing wheel. The little houses have a very rustic appearance, built of squared logs black with age, set off by stripes of white clay along all the joints, and a stripe of green paint around the windows. There is variety in their architecture: some imitate the Swiss style, with tall roofs and outside galleries; some exhibit dumpy gables and arched timbers along the lower story; and pretty they look in the midst of their poppy-strewn gardens and embowering orchards, watered by little brooks, which here and there set little mills a-clacking.
Not a hamlet without its school; and you will see with pleasure how the importance of the school is recognised. Over the door of one at Gersdorf I read:
Den Kleinen will die Schule frommen
O laß sie alle, alle kommen.[C]
At Meistersdorf, a furlong or two farther, on a little hill that overlooks miles of country, the school-house is one of the best buildings in the place. And here again a rhyming couplet, embodying a benevolent sentiment, crosses the lintel:
Kommt hier zu mir ihr Kleinen, O kommt mit frommen Sinn
Ich führ den Weg des Heilen euch zu dem Vater hin.[D]