Since Wednesday
lectures and public meetings have followed one another without
intermission; at home there are pamphlets and the newspapers to be read;
while speech-making goes on at the clubs. On Sunday, _plebiscite_;
Monday, public procession, service at St. Pierre, speeches on the
Molard, festival for the adults. Tuesday, the college fete-day.
Wednesday, the fete-day of the primary schools.
Geneva is a caldron always at boiling-point, a furnace of which the
fires are never extinguished. Vulcan had more than one forge, and Geneva
is certainly one of those world-anvils on which the greatest number of
projects have been hammered out. When one thinks that the martyrs of all
causes have been at work here, the mystery is explained a little; but
the truest explanation is that Geneva--republican, protestant,
democratic, learned, and enterprising Geneva--has for centuries depended
on herself alone for the solution of her own difficulties. Since the
Reformation she has been always on the alert, marching with a lantern in
her left hand and a sword in her right. It pleases me to see that she
has not yet become a mere copy of anything, and that she is still
capable of deciding for herself. Those who say to her, "Do as they do at
New York, at Paris, at Rome, at Berlin," are still in the minority.
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