i86 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



At Dieppe I first saw the wooden shoe, and heard 

 its dry, senseless clatter upon the pavement. How 

 suggestive of the cramped and inflexible conditions 

 with which human nature has borne so long in these 

 lands ! 



A small, paved square near the wharf was the scene 

 of an early market, and afforded my first glimpse of 

 the neatness and good taste that characterize nearly 

 everything in France. Twenty or thirty peasant- 

 women, coarse and masculine, but very tidy, with their 

 snow-white caps and short petticoats, and perhaps half 

 as many men, were chattering and chaffering over little 

 heaps of fresh country produce. The onions and po- 

 tatoes and cauliflowers, etc., were prettily arranged on 

 the clean pavement, or on white linen cloths, and the 

 scene was altogether animated and agreeable. 



La belle France is the woman's country clearly, and 

 it seems to be a mistake or an anomaly that woman is 

 not at the top, and leading in all departments, com- 

 pelling the other sex to play second fiddle, as she so 

 frequently has done for a brief time in isolated cases 

 in the past ; not that the man is effeminate, but that the 

 woman seems so nearly his match and equal, and even 

 so often proves his superior. In no other nation, dur- 

 ing times of popular excitement and insurrection or 

 revolution, do women emerge so conspicuously, often in 

 the front ranks, the most furious and ungovernable of 

 any. I think even a female conscription might be ad- 

 visable in the present condition of France, if I may 



