The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-05-11
PROVINCIAL FRANCE.
People Whose Lives Appear to be Filled
with Gloom.

with Gloom.
We are always hearing in England
about our gay neighbors' across the
silver streak, but after living among
the French on the eastern frontier
these last few months l confess 1 can
never hear them called merry without
laughing. Wise, solemn, prudent, care
full, if you will-but merry never! Yet
they must have been gay folk once,
or else where did the prevailing notion
come from? Perhaps the weary end of
the century has infected them with its
ennui, or the war and the weight of
the indemnity have crushed their old
spirits. At all events, the gayety of
the French nation is somehow eclipsed,
in the provinces at least, and the peo-
pie have forgotten how to enjoy them
selves. We talk about our dull British
Sunday, and revile it in French, as
though we could learn lesson from over
the water. So we might perhaps from
Paris; but in the country, no. The Brit
ish laborer enjoys his Sunday infinitely
more than his French equivalent. At
least he rests. The French peasant
sweats over his field as much on the
dimanche as any other day. There is
not a particle of difference between
Sunday and weekday hereabouts.
There is no rest for the man-and it is
his own fault; but one cannot help
plying the poor patient oxen and
horses, who never get a day off and
have no choice in the matter.
You can see the grinding care and
greedy thrift which fill the lives of
these people in their faces. They are
not a lovely folk, these ever-toiling
French peasants. The long struggle
for land and money has prematurely
aged them, and the wizened look of the
inveterate miser is on their careworn
features. How they love the soil. Irish
"land-hunger' is nothing to it. These
French peasants scrape and scrape and
toll and toll to add foot of ground to
their property OF course they are own
ers of their land, not tenants; and
dearly do they love to pinch themselves
to increase it. A farmer close by draws
rente of something like one hundred
thousand francs a year; yet there he is,
working away in his fields like any
plowman, dressed in his worst clothes,
as intent on gain as ever. On the high
road dwells quite rich man: yet he
and his wife and four children live in
three wretched rooms like la borer' S
family, without the least pretenson
TO comfort. OF course, there is
scarcely any distinction of classes.
Every one is monsieur or madame;
and madame often wears no hat and
throws but shawl over her shoulders,
rich as she may be and fully prepared
to give her daughter an excellent dot.
Wealth does not bring comfort, any
more than honest toll brings merry
soul--in France At work or play you
never hear the jolly song of the plow-
man or the whistle of his boy. Every
body goes at his work solemnly and
gloomily. 1t is a rare thing to hear a
servant singing over her work.
Indeed, the whole people, of all ages,
are subdued and wear a crushed air.
Is it the government or the war? AT
any rate, the JOY seems to have gone
out of the lives of young and old. They
take no interest in anything. Out here
in the Jura the process Panama does not
arouse the smallest excitement. Home
politics possesses no attraction for
them. But name Germany or Bismarck,
and you will find you have touched the
sore place. They would fight against
Germany while they could stand They
have many of them been out in 1870,
and can tell long yarns of the war-ot
lying out on the hills, of being taken
prisoners. and all the memories of that
awful year. 1t is the one keen feeling
in the lives of these plodding plowmen;
it is their only story And they would
give anything to act /: over again,
with different fnale.-St. James Ga
zette.