There are landholders, especially Germans, who wish to accustom the peasants to better living, especially to more healthful houses, and they first urge them to provide their huts with chimneys, which they offer to have put up at their own expense. They thought they could do this first with the houses of the soldiers home on furlough, who as soldiers were acquainted with the German and Italian provinces. But they beg them with tears in their eyes not to make them so unhappy, for they would then be shunned and avoided by the rest of the inhabitants as innovators. The landlord who did not yield to this would forthwith be complained of to the authorities, and such an opposition would be raised against him in the community that for the sake of peace he would have to give up his well-meant resolution.¹

¹ Anonymous, , 268, 1850.