Dear Boys and Girls:

I expect you will agree with the Overall Boys that nowhere else can there be quite so many wonderful things to see and to do, as there are in Switzerland.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire are very small states, you know, but together they are larger than the whole of Switzerland, and more people live in these two small states than live in Switzerland to-day.

One fourth of this famous little country is covered with lakes and rivers and glaciers, and nearly another fourth with great forests, while a large part of the remaining land is used as pasturage for a million and a half cows.

Raising cows and making cheese is the principal industry, but the clever Swiss people have many other prosperous industries as well. They make fine silks and ribbons and marvelous little watches and music boxes and jewelry and delicious sweet chocolate. Some of the men do fine wood carving, and the women do beautiful embroidery.

One of the most important lines of work is hotel keeping. Many thousands of strangers visit Switzerland every year. In winter they go there for the skating and sleighing and snowshoeing and skiing and to enjoy the bracing mountain air. In summer they do what the Overall Boys did, besides many other interesting things.

Travelers spend so much money in Switzerland, and the people who live there work so hard, they have become the richest people in the world.

Swiss schools are especially fine. Children are obliged to attend school from the time they are six years old until they are fifteen or sixteen years old.

In summer the schools begin at seven o'clock in the morning and in winter at eight o'clock, holding four hours. During the winter months there is also a session of three hours each afternoon in the week, excepting two. On these two afternoons the boys are given other work to do, and the girls attend sewing classes. They have no regular holiday, but must go to school six days every week. The boys do a great deal of gymnasium work in the winter, which keeps them strong and trains them to be mountain guides and hunters and herdsmen.

There are three national languages in Switzerland—German and French and Italian. German is used much more than French or Italian, but nearly all Swiss boys and girls learn to speak at least two languages. Sometimes they learn three or four. In fact it is said that Swiss people learn to speak languages more perfectly than any other people in the world. They are certainly among the best educated and most courageous people in the world.

The Overall Boys learned a great deal while traveling in that beautiful little country, and they are glad to share it all with you.