Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1879-05-21

| find in my notebook a humorous en-
try that have seen no country in the
world where the right to labor is more
generally conceded to women than in
France. In the early morning one is
helping to sort the refuse from the house.
See that basket with bits of paper. Here
is a pile of nice green salad leaves, and
there II basket of bits of bread. Perhaps
they have little donkey-cart to haul
these out to the city, where they will feed
the provender to rabbits, chickens, etc.
These people in general have not the de-
graded look of our rag-pickers. How few
people in France have Il degraded look!
Perhaps two-fifths of the women in Paris
wessr caps, and do not note a dirty one.
See women helping to sweep the streets
with big heavy brooms made of twigs.
o. her women, hard-looking but tidy, see
waiting on the Place st. Augustine for
some one 10 come and hire them. One
woman sets down "a heavy basket of bread
and takes loaf into grocer's; another
has II great load in her apron whose ends
are tied over one shouldar. In her hands
she has three of those long slendar loaves
that are cut into bits at the restaurants.
The loaves are about two yards long, look
ing like poles or stakes. She wears no
bonnet, and TO rest herself she sets the
ends of them down on the pavement, or
rests them against the wall. flow much
they carry bread uncovered in Paris Once
on the street l saw one of the infinite num-
ber of cap-women seated behind the little
box on which she cleans shoes. She hal
fallen asleep, and her knitting and folded
/, tI,o bov bafora hor
see q woman walking the street and knit
ting. Did some of the women of Paris
really take their knitting and sit down in
the street to see the heads cut off in their
great Revolution? Paris the grand hotel
of the world. 1t is now full of guests.
Paris is content. But what if Paris were
desperate?
At the Restaurant Duval, at the Expo
sition, notice the force of walters with
black dresses and white caps and hand
kerchiefs. One says that they used to pay
on coming each morning franc and a
half, but now they must pay two. On a
bench in the garden of plants sits a woman
working button-holes in machine-made
collars-miitary false collars. She is
working them beautifully, five in each
collar. She gets ten sous for a dozen col
lars, and she can earn thirty sous a day
Poor woman In the same neighborhood
| 90 into little creamery and get u bow
of chocolate for five sous. A woman says
that the shop is hers, and she has small
custom. Her husband works on the rail
road, and her two children are boarding
with her parents, who are alone near the
Volees Mountains. Not far off. upon the
street, u woman is frying potatoes very
nicely. She has stove in which she
burns coke. She sells her potatoes fol
one sou and two sous, and sells gooC
MANY at breakfast and dinner time. She
has cubby-hole or recess in the house
front, and pays ten sous rent day. Rid
inc on the circular railway to the EXposi
ton, there is nice young woman in thu
car with basket and can. She buy!
milk and makes that soft cheese of which
the French are so ford She put hers vi
in bits of cloth, and lays each pat into
bit of Il basket. She has custom ut th,
restaurants outside of the exposition. II
her can is the cream to pour over ant
make fromage la creme. She has beel
married n year, and her husband sell
flowers near the Madeleine church. How
many WOLHel uto HolPiuS W pun HtthH
carts, or pushing them themselves! Her
is one loaded with flowers, there anothe
with meat and fish. In the corner of
courtyard sits woman carding wool 70
mattresses. They can open the mat
trasses, card the WOOL and put it into
clean cover. My porter's wife tells m
that this wool is mixed with hair. / g
one morning to the grocer's and find onl
a woman there; and when go to the Of
flee OF tobacco near us-the government
oflice-to buy post-stamps, what prett
woman is ut one counter ready to Sc
stamps or the precious taxed weed! e
to the druggists and find Mrs. Apothe
cary at the desk on one side with he
crochetiug, and the account-book ope
before her. After her husbands death tn
law allows her one year to settle his a
, fairs.
At the exposition see my friend Mr.
c., from the Provinces. Her hui
, band exhibits, and she explains that sh
t must see that the s,les-women are polite
visited public school where three (
the four teachers are married. The dire,
' tress or head teacher tells me that she hf
+ taught in the public schools seventee
years, and has been married fifteen. Ht