284 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



a brave man, bent on robbery or reprisal, or per- 

 haps on rude justice. I came away from it with 

 a sad heart and I had no desire to visit another 

 castle. 



It appeared to me that the people of France 

 whom I saw might be roughly divided into three 

 types : first, the dwellers at Paris small, dapper, 

 polite, pleasure-loving; second, the peasants who 

 live in small villages not far from the cities and 

 till their little ribbony strips of land by manual 

 labor, who were lacking in enterprise and intelli- 

 gence; their lives being uneventful and circum- 

 scribed there was little opportunity to break loose 

 or to do things in a large way in short they ap- 

 peared to be on a dead level. Third, those living 

 on the larger farms remote from centers of popu- 

 lation particularly those engaged in the produc- 

 tion of livestock who were large of frame, 

 virile, progressive and the reverse of dandified. 

 These were more like the Friesians who boast 

 that they were never in bondage to any man. 



Just now much is being written about small 

 farms and their economic value. When discuss- 

 ing this matter with a friend who is keeping a 

 large stationery and sporting-goods store, and who 

 employs seven clerks, I asked him what would be 



