Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1867-05-08
French Women.

DR.. Guthrie, In commenting on the fact
patent to all travellers, that less of poverty
and wretchedness is visible in Paris than
in most cities of the continent, or in Lon
don and Edinburgh, pays a deserved COM
pliment to the industry and good taste of
the French women. He says:
Call her, if you choose, and as some do,
frivolous, or as others, deceitful, she has a
taste and sense of propriety, which would
make her ashamed to show herself with an
unwashed face, or send forth her husband
or children with a rag on their backs or a
hole in their dress In Paris you may see
people with mended, but none with ragged
clothes; so that until we came to Brittany.
where the people are as remarkable for
their popish bigotry, and deep drinking,
and dreadful swearing, as for their antique
and picturesque costumes, we almost never
saw IA Frenchwoman with a rag on her back
or spot on her face; and even here, the
women, speaking of them generally, as they
ply the distaff while they tend their cows
IN the field or walk the roads knitting,
sit at their windows sewing, show tidiness
that is as remarkable as their industry
In fact, for neatness of attire, respect for
personal appearance both in herself and in
her family, and habits of industry, the
French woman is pattern TO the world.
Scarcely ever do we find them what the
Scotch call handidle; and slatterns never
The girl who keeps a shop is busy with
some piece of work when customers do not
require her attention. The woman who
sits by her stall in the open street, with her
feet on box of lighted charcoal to keep
them warm, is usually sewing or knitting;
and only lifts her head from her work to
say, when she becomes aware of your pres
ence, g What do you wish, sir -
And but yesterday, in walking through
the weekly market at Quimper, where the
Breton women sat all tidily attired, with
towers and wings of snowy linen on their
heads, and on a table before them the pro-
duce of their dairy in curiously carved pats
and pillars of first-rate butter, was greatly
struck with the spectacle of industry which
the scene presented. Hardly one not en-
gagged with a customer but was busy with
wire or needle-a lively as well as pleasant
spectacle, for their tongues went as fast as
their tools. | have seen in the humble
homes of our own country how taste for
tidiness and habits of industry will throw
over poverty itself decent appearance;
and characterized as the Frenchwoman is
by these, to her in some measure may be
attributed that happy absence of the ap-
pearance of extreme and abject wretched-
ness which distinguishes the streets of
Paris
We boast of our superior virtues, but
there are minor virtues in regard to which
we would do well TO take a lesson from
France. 1t is nothing to the purpose to
say that the respect which is paid to the
personal, outward appearance here is but
the whitewashing of sepulchre; the en-
broidered pail which covers the coffin and
corruption. Whatever immortality may lie
concealed in France under the appearance
of outward decency-nOr do | deny its ex-
istence, although, according to the Scotch
proverb, Ill doors are i'll dreaders,' |
believe it has been often greatly exagger-
ated-the immortality in France is certainly
not owing to those habits of industry and
to that taste for personal decency which
eminently and honorably characterize its
women. These simple and attractive graces
are not vice; and so far is the absence of
them from being proof of piety, that it is
blot upon 1t. The body Is the temple of
the Holy Ghost; and experience proves,
as the old divine said, that holiness and
cleanliness are nearly allied-a remark
which owes its triteness to its truth.