In the open air, the children play where the cattle graze

And in the kitchen the women work together, even at peeling the potatoes

Will the reader believe that these pictures show a people dwelling in the United States of America today, and not in ages gone by?...

Just so, they use neither telephone nor electricity nor the rest of the modern inventions...

Their rest is work, their life simplicity and calm. As for farming, they rely on their own arms, shunning the modern agricultural appliances — and yet their land yields the most abundant of harvests!.. They grow tobacco, but smoking is permitted only to the men, and only when they have come of age. When one of them wishes to undertake some task, all the neighbors hurry to help him, and the work is followed by the traditional feast; they finish their labors with a speed beyond all description — the building of an animal barn, however large, needs no more than a single night and scores of arms.

The Amish allow their children to receive the elementary schooling; then the girl turns to the kitchen and the boy to the farm, for their life clings forever to the good earth.

Perhaps the most curious of this people's features is the traditional dress, from which they do not swerve by a hair's breadth. The children wear the dark colors to make up beforehand for their tomorrow, since the men and women carry the wearing of artless costume to its limit, its colors never departing from black or white. The girls take a coquettish pride in wearing the traditional bonnet, and the boys appear in their uniform dress, as though they were a drilled army!..

They are skilled at several handicrafts, such as embroidery, the ornamenting of vessels, and carving on wood; and you find them free in their worship, practicing it in the home of one of their number, for they take no interest in raising places of worship.

The government has tried, several times, to intervene in their life and persuade them to fall in step with modern living, but it has not succeeded; just as the men of social science have failed to change the path that the Amish have chosen and follow today... and their sons tomorrow!...