620 Small Holdings in France. 
dilapidated appearance, but appearances are unusually deceptive 
at Vraignes. 
Accustomed as I am to my own three-bedroomed model cottages, 
I was painfully impressed by the bad state of repair of the 
labourers’ dwellings at Vraignes, and particularly by the very di- 
shevelled state of an isolated mud-and-thatch tenement, on the brink 
of an abrupt descent, into which it must have fallen before this had 
it not been propped up by a row of lopped stems of growing trees. 
It was really more like an overgrown bird’s-nest than a human 
dwelling. In a cellar excavated in the cool chalk bank, undermining 
the cottage, a well-dressed young woman was seen filling a basket 
from the family potato store. This young woman was the married 
daughter of the house, occupied by M. and Madame Laflandre, on 
a visit to her parents, and was profiting by their superabundance of 
well-preserved potatoes to eke out her own domestic scarcity. I 
could read on her countenance the anticipation of her husband’s 
welcome home with her two basketfuls of potatoes. 
From the cellar, passing round the house, through a farmyard 
gate, we mounted to the dwelling-house, Avhere I was surprised to 
find quite a comfortable interior, consisting of a roomy, clean kitchen, 
provided with a polished range, and serving as the family sitting- 
room. Madame Laflandre — bright and cheerful as her daughter, in 
spite of being the mother of seven children — was seated therein, 
busily engaged making a white muslin dress for la j^remiere Com- 
munion of one of her daughters. With the habitual cheerfulness 
of the French peasaiatry, she remarked : “Nous nous plaisons ici, 
monsieur.” (We like ourselves here, sir.) M. Laflandre, her husband, 
combines the occupation of woodman with that of farming on a small 
scale. He owns two cows in milk, ten sheep, two pigs, and twenty- 
five fowls, and has a yard and buildings. Madame Laflandre is one 
of the few housewives at Vraignes who still bake at home. She is 
very proud of her oven and her pastry. Like everyone else in the 
village, they are well provided with apples. 
Almost the entire village of Vraignes, which is very straggling, 
running down into several hollows as well as standing partly on a 
high plateau, seems to consist of mud-walled barns and farm build- 
ings mostly in a bad state of repair. Not only each cultivateiir, 
but each manager, has an enclosed farmyard, the dwelling-house 
being seldom visible from the village street. At the back of each 
group of buildings, of which there must be at least thirty in the vil- 
lage, is a good-sized orchard — sometimes two or three acres in extent, 
and affording excellent grazing for the cows, of which each family of 
the cuUivateur or menayer possesses two or three. In his mother’s 
kitchen-garden, leading to their splendid family orchards, M. de 
Vismes pointed out the plot where his ancestors lie buried — a 
common practice in France in consequence of the persecution of 
Protestants. 
The fact of the existence of all these yards, buildings, and orchard 
enclosures, in addition to the training and habits of the French pea- 
sants, make much possible in the way of small holdings in France 
