For the first few miles the road lay through a succession of villas and cultivated gardens

For the first few miles the road lay through a succession of villas and cultivated gardens; indeed, these gardens and villas extend all the way to Chene, where a thin ribbon of a stream, the Foron, draws the boundary line between the canton of Geneva and Savoy. At this point the scenery begins, not too aggressively, to be picturesque; you catch some neat views of the Voirons, and of the range of the Jura lying on your right. Beyond is the village of Annemasse, and the Chateau of Etrambiere, with its quartette of towers, rises from the foot of the Petit-Saleve in the bluish-gray distance. You no longer see Mont Blanc, except at intervals. Here and there a knot of hamlets clings to some fir-dotted slope, or tries to hide itself away in the bosom of a ravine. All these Alpine villages bear the same resemblance to one another as so many button- moulds of different sizes. Each has its quaint little church of stucco, surrounded by clusters of gray and dingy-white head-stones and crosses-- like a shepherd standing in the midst of his flock; each has its bedrabbled main street, with a great stone trough into which a stream of ice-cold water is forever flowing, and where comely young women of substantial ankles,nike shox torch 2, with their flaxen hair braided down their backs, are forever washing linen; each has its beggar,moncler jackets men, with a goitre or a wooden leg, lying in wait for you; and each, in turn, with its purple and green and red tiled roofs, is charming to approach and delightful to get away from.

After leaving Annemasse, the road runs up the valley of the Arve and crosses a bridge over the Menoge. Then comes the village of Nangy,Replica Designer Handbags, and then Contamines, beyond which, on a bold height, stand the two wrinkled, crumbling towers of the ancient castle of Faucigny, whence the province takes its name. It was at Nangy that a pretty incident befell our travellers. On the outskirts of the village they met fifty or sixty school-children marching three abreast, the girls on one side of the road and the boys on the other. The girls--each in a coarse blue or yellow frock, with a snowy neckerchief pinned over her bosom and a pig- tail of hair hanging down her shoulders--seemed for all the world like little old women; and not one of the little men appeared to be less than a hundred and five years old,replica montblanc pens. They suggested a collection of Shems and Japhets, with their wives, taken from a lot of toy Noah's arks. As the carriage rolled between the two files, all the funny little women bobbed a simultaneous courtesy, and all the little old-fashioned men lifted their hats with the most irresistible gravity conceivable. "Fancy such a thing happening in the United States!" said Lynde. "If we were to meet such a crowd at home, half a dozen urchins would immediately fasten themselves to the hind axle, and some of the more playful spirits would probably favor us with a stone or two, or a snowball, according to the season."

"There comes the curee, now," said Miss Denham. "It is some Sunday- school fete."

As the curee, a florid, stout person, made an obeisance and passed on, fanning himself leisurely with his shovel-hat, his simple round face and white feathery hair put Lynde in mind of the hapless old gentleman whom he mistook for the country parson that morning so long ago. Instantly the whole scene rose before Lynde's vision. Perhaps the character of the landscape through which they were passing helped to make the recollection very vivid. There was not a cloud in the pale arch; yonder were the far-reaching peaks with patches of snow on them, and there stretched the same rugged, forlorn hills, covered with dwarf bushes and sentinelled with phantom-like pines. An odd expression drifted across Lynde's countenance.