New Britain herald., 1930-03-21

| eAtrdOrdlnary abruptneSS, whereby one half of the heavens was already starry while the other half was still shot with lightning. The storm smashed branches, burned out fuses and damaged small craft, but for tunately our canoe escaped injury.
 By now we had left Gascony be- hind and were we'll into Languedoc. In the neat, measured out country side through which we were passing. the days work began at gray 5 o'clock. Then the first barge locks through, old crones marshal regi- ments of geese, and snow-white oxen drink at the canal side. At swelter- ing noon the chatter of the American baling machine ceases men put cab bage leaves in their hats, and the oxen stand flank deep in the back water. Such mild-eyed dignity as and festal processions.
 And So to Bed'
 "Field work and locking through continue until o'clock. Then there is an hour of mandolin tinkling and beer drinking in the canal-side cafe whose placard begs the amiable clientele to wish well to regulate the concentrations before departing.' And so to bed. Such is life in the back-doors country.
 Beyond Carcassonne lay the canals loveliest stretch, with the Black mountains peaks rising high CT and nearer, day by day, as we ap- preached the foothills of the Py-, renees. Apparently barren, save for occasional vineyards, their outf1ung line, as seen at sunrise and sunset, glowed like some barbaric necklace of mother-o of pearl and gold.
 From Carcassonne to Beziers the scene resembled one continuous vine yard 60 miles long. For us, thus far, it had remained unpeopled. But promptly at a. m., on September 15, we were awakened by the laughter of peasants bearing reaping hooks and buckets, as they filed along the towpath.
 Ahead marched monsieur the proprietor, leading a villages entire population into the fields. And they laughed and joked, these youths and maidens, these old folks and their little grandchildren, because la ven- dange, the long awaited, all-import- ant grape harvest, had begun.
 From now onward hayfields, cat tie, and even the canal patrol of geese vanished from scene which, for month of unbroken working days, sometimes IT hours long, was exclusively one of grape gathering. Shop keepers and even fishermen dropped their occupations for the harvest, and our line of supplies be- came threatened by this big reaping- hook offensive. One man thus met our supplication for some vegetables:
 Oh, there's nothing of that sort around here. One can't afford to raise anything but grapes, to the last square meter
 Finally our trip came to an end at Cette on the Mediterranean where hotel-fringed quays and busy ship basins lent 8 Venetian air to the scene. It was evening and we watch ed the sun sink over the Midi.
 The Midi, It is Frances sum- burned southland whose fires coursed in the veins of Bernard de Panassac, hlghWayman and troubadour; of daredevil d'Artagnan; of Cyrano de Bergerac, duelist-poet supreme; of dashing Richard Plantagenet, the most meridional of England's kings, It IS Frances music-loving, bull lighting southland, heady as it's own wines, whose ragged revolutionaries marching into Paris first popularized the 'Marseillaisc'
 "Quick loves, quick hates, quick laughter-of such is the Midi, the Land of the Midday Sum-"
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 Tokyo, March 21 LP-An agree