Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1914-02-25

some gainful principal occupation; in
Great Britain, "a per cent; in Ger
many, 80 per cent, and in France,
nearly 35 per cent
Peasant Woman Holds the Purse.
The French peasant woman, as
wife and mother, as village merchant
and farm manager, is a most impor-
tant parsonage. She holds the purse.
From her savings came the enormous
indemnity which Germany exacted
from France after Sedan. Often
shop-keeper, she is always a SOU
keeper Laboriousness and thrift
characterize her daily life. Because OF
this toll and thrift France, in mate
rial resource, is nation almost or
quite sufficient to itself
The thrift has been aided by the
fact, explanatory of much in present
France, that the French peasant is
land owner. His problems of legisla-
ton differ from those of his German
and British neighbors. He has no land
question. He is occupied with doing
things, rather than with undoing
things inherited.
Women Largely Self-Supporting.
The French woman shops with
market basket and not with tele-
phone, that modern promoter of high
prices. Essentially home-maker and
home-keeper, she enjoys an eco
nomic independence that her Anglo
Saxon sisters do not know. Many
French girls are self-supporting be-
fore marriage, and remain so after
wards. Even where they do not
earn their living, they have dot or
dowry-for which the parents save
from the girls babyhood-an she
pays her personal expenses from it.
1T is rarely, indeed, said a
French woman, that one sees in
France the helpless, incompetent wom-
an, who can turn her hand to moth
ing, having never learned to do one
single thing well. Adaptable and en-
ergetic, the French woman can do
| most things in the most efficient man.
ner possible-her knowledge is never
scrappy and what she knows she
knows consummately." The new wom-
Il
but when she arrives she will come
without strident voice or social revo-
luton, and will scarcely have more
power than now.
The Peasant at Home.
In journeying in rural France the
French peasant is seen at home and
at his best He is not on dress pa
rade as Paris is upon it's boulevards.
He is shrewd, almost cunning; digni-
fed, almost courtly; uneducated fire.
quently, but never boorish; possessed
of all the homely virtues, frugal, seri-
ous-minded and devout. To the
| stranger he is hospitality itself, and to
his own countrymen he has a per-
feet genius for friendship.
High Regard for Woman.
With all their family quarrels, there
is a continuous entente cordiale
among the French peasant folk. Three
appeals arouse their enthusiasm to it's
highest point: Woman, as wife and
mother; the tri-color with it's declara-
ton of liberty equality, fraternity;
and the republic, which to them stands
for political, social, economic progress.
Characteristic of the French, in deli
acy, woman-adoration and felicity of
speech, was the manner in which the
sad news of the death of the distin-
guished French statesman, M. Theirs,
was announced to his widow: Mad
anne, your illustrious husband once
lived" Again, a presidential candi-
date, peasants son, who married
woman of doubtful reputation, was
sharply attacked in the Paris and pro-
vincial press for his political views,
but never a word was published re-
garding his wife. No woman's name
is dragged into the public prints of
France.
''The English have a scornful in,
sular way
OF calling the French light. The lev.
ity
Is in the judgment only, which yet
stands;
For say foolish thing but oft enough
(And here's the secret of a hundred
creeds-
Men get opinions as boys learn to
spell,
By reiteration, chiefly the same thing
shall pass at last for absolutely
wise
And not with fools exclusively. And so
We say the French are light, as if we
said,
The cat news or the mich cow gives
us milk.
rs a bullet light
That dashes from the gunmouth, while
the eye
Winks, and the heart beats one; to
fatten itself
To wafer on the white speck of a
wall
A hundred PAGES off? Even so d.
rect,
So strongly undivertible of aim
Is this French people
"All idealists.