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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by H. C. Ellis 



THE ARTICHOKE SECTION IN CENTRAL MARKET, PARIS 



The immense quantities of vegetables eaten by the French counteract in a measure the effect 



of some habits less healthful 



mantic to foreigners ; their passionate 

 protestations of love may seem too frank 

 to us of Puritan descent ; but in not only 

 financial affairs, but even their pleasures, 

 they minutely calculate all items. 



Probably there is not in the world the 

 equal of the French housewife in econ- 

 omy and efficiency. Before the war 

 wages were astonishingly low in France, 

 and there must have been continual 

 squeezing of each franc ; but, thanks to 

 the ability of the French wife, who could 

 tell from outside evidence that there was 

 unusual stinting in the average home? 



To see a French woman bargain at the 

 market is to learn much in economics, 

 mathematics — and oratory. She simply 

 refuses to pay the first price quoted ; her 

 genius for "getting what you can" is ad- 

 mirable. 



The Frenchman is not so careful and 

 is too liable to be drawn to the cafe for 

 a consoling drink or the seductive game 

 of piquet ; but the hand that holds the 



purse-string is the hand that rules the 

 world — and the French wife holds it 

 tightly. Her faith in small savings res- 

 cued France after the war of 1870, when 

 vast horded wealth was willingly brought 

 forth to pay the enormous national debt, 

 and the same faith made it possible for 

 France to preserve herself and the world 

 during the world war. 



FRENCH PARENTAL REVERENCE EQUALED 

 IN CHINA ONLY 



With such women, is it any marvel that 

 the French home is so admirably united ? 

 The family is the primal social fact in 

 France, and the parents are "the funda- 

 mental fact without which the organism 

 (the family) could never have come into 

 being." Hence there is a reverence for 

 parents equaled probably only by the an- 

 cestral worship of China. Indeed, it is 

 very doubtful whether the love between 

 husband and wife equals that existing 

 between parent and child. 



