412 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept. 



For the New England Farmer. 



LETTER FROM MR. FRENCH. 



Paris, June 24, 1857. 



My Dear Brown : — To record all the strange 

 sights that meet my eye in my wanderings, would 

 require the whole weekly sheet of the Farmer, and 

 I must content myself, therefore, with giving an oc- 

 casional hasty sketch. 



I have been in France about one week. I was 

 advised in London to hasten on my way hither, be- 

 cause it was said the weather would be so hot in 

 Paris that I could not endure it. A New England 

 education, however, affords wonderful preparation 

 for endurance of the vicissitudes of climate. The 

 English in London, during the three weeks I was 

 there, were grumbling constantly about the sudden 

 changes. One day it would be intolerably hot, and 

 another, so chilly that their teeth almost chattered. 

 "While, to my constitution, there seemed no change 

 worth noticing. I think, during the whole time, 

 the thermometer was not above 75°, nor below 55°. 

 I did not wear an overcoat after I stopped in Lon- 

 don, nor did I put on a thin garment, or change 

 my winter dress ; and suffered neither from cold 

 nor heat. In France it has been warmer, but the 

 thermometer had not yet risen to 80** at midday, 

 and at night it is perfectly comfortable to sit, with 

 all the population of the city, in the open air, with 

 DO covering to the head. 



One who has seen the glass, in a cool, shady 

 place at home, indicate 102° at one time, and in 

 the same spot a few months later, at 36° below ze- 

 ro, as I have observed the thermometer at my own 

 door at Exeter, within a year past, is prepared for 

 almost any emergency in the way of weather, that 

 lie will be likely to meet. A glance at the people 

 lere, would show at once, that they have no expecta- 

 tion of any violent changes of temperature. More 

 than half the women go about the streets and public 

 squares, without either a hat, or bonnet, or parasol. 

 Many of them wear a sort of night-cap, the worst 

 looking garment known to France. All the common 

 people — females I mean, such as I saw at work in the 

 fields on my way here from Havre — wear them, and 

 probably it is only the same order here, who sub- 

 mit to so ungraceful a head-dress. 



Generally, everything is gracefully done in France, 

 but there are exceptions. One does not like to 

 make invidious comparisons, but coming from Eng- 

 land, the difference in the manners of the people, to 

 a stranger, is very striking. 



There is nothing, perhaps, that makes one feel 

 more like a man that is lost, or rather, that has just 

 been found, than to stand suddenly on the wharf, 

 as I did at Havre, for the first time in his life, in a 

 crowd of people, all of whom speak a foreign 

 tongue. I read French tolerably well, and speak 

 it, after a fashion, but as to comprehending the 



least idea which the various men, women and chil- 

 dren about me were so busy in communicating, it 

 was out of the question. 



I had the custom house to go through, and my 

 own way to make, for the only person I had found 

 who spoke English, on board the boat, was absorbed 

 in the crowd in a moment. I was, of course, pre- 

 pared for the scene, and amused myself by replying 

 to the various porters and cab-drivers who beset 

 me, in good strong English, looking them in the 

 face as if I was utterly ashamed of them for not un- 

 derstanding such an easy language. I have tried 

 it a good many times, and I believe they feel 

 ashamed of themselves. It is a method of carry- 

 ing the war into the enemies' country, which I 

 would recommend to my countrymen who travel 

 abroad without the requisite knowledge of foreign 

 tongues. A sli/^ht knowledge of the French ena- 

 bles one to make his wants understood. You have 

 time to compose your own questions, and the 

 French are so quick of apprehension, and so polite, 

 that you manage common affairs very easily ; while 

 my countrymen who speak French very well, can 

 understand about as much of ^ hat two Frenchmen 

 are saying to each other, as they would of the chat- 

 tering of two blackbirds. I, however, find Eng- 

 lish and Americans everywhere, and they are, usu- 

 ally, in this foreign land, civil and inclined to asso- 

 ciate. 



The land from Havre to Paris, about 170 miles, 

 is the poorest I have seen since I landed in Europe, 

 though it is highly cultivated, and has none of the 

 wild appearance of our railroad routes in America. 

 The banks and sides of the cuttings of all the rail- 

 ways, both in France and England, are carefully 

 graded and cultivated. In England I saw fine 

 crops of clover and of vetches mowed for fodder 

 on these slopes. Near the stations, these banks, 

 and the little spaces about the station-houses, are 

 laid out into flower beds. The railways are usually 

 fenced with living hedges; so that a European rail- 

 way presents a very different appearance from what 

 we are accustomed to see. Flowers, indeed, are 

 seen everywhere in France. The attendant who 

 showed us the door at the station in Havre, had a 

 large bouquet in his hand. The tables and shop 

 windows, the stairways and porticoes at the hotels 

 in Paris, are all ornamented with flowers. 



Along the route from Havre, we saw grapes 

 growing in the fields. The land, though not 

 divided by fences, appears to be occupied in 

 small parcels, of an acre or less, for much of the 

 wa)'. The grapes are tied to single stakes, and al- 

 lowed to run only to the height of three or four 

 feet. Light wines seem to afford the common bev- 

 erage of that portion of the people who eat at the 

 hotels and restaurants. 



At breakfast, the first question is, "What wine 

 will you have ?" not will you have wine ? At din- 



