in
France--it came down at last to that "glass of beer," sheepishly enough
asked for, which of course instantly drowns the converse that has been
free on one side and independent on the other.

"Workmen," "working men," "artizans," or whatever they are, or whatever
you may call them--I mean the class now being spoiled by petting in
England--let them be told (perhaps it may be said plainest by their best
friends) that there are just as many proud exclusives among them as in
any other stratum of society, and that they have at least a full share
too of conceit, foppery, and affectation.

It may be heresy to say so, but the "horny hand" has no necessary
connection whatever with the "honest heart," as is the fashion to assert
on one side, and almost to believe on the other; and the friend who
really does shake that hand with a brotherly feeling is the most likely
and the best entitled to refuse to talk popular nonsense of this sort
about the "people."

For the night we stopped usually in towns, but once or twice we rested in
a great bend of the river where the steamer was run straight into the
trees and made fast ashore exactly as if it were on the Mississippi and
not on the Seine.

That thousands of solitary fishermen should sit lonesome on the river was
the same puzzle to me as it had been before in canoeing on other French
streams. Their silence and patience, during hours of this self-inflicted
isolation, were incredible for Frenchmen, fond as we at first think all
of them to be of "billard," cafe, or dancing puppies, of anything, in
fact, provided it assumes to be lively.

One thing I am at last decided about, that it is not to catch fish these
men sit there; and the only reasonable explanation I can find of the
phenomenon is that all these meek and lone fishermen are husbands unhappy
at home!

There are numerous sailing-boats and rowing-boats on the Seine; but I did
not see one that there was any difficulty in not coveting--their standard
of marine beauty is not ours. All rigs and all sizes were there, even to
a great centre board cutter, twenty-five feet broad, and any number of
yards long, in which the happy yachtsman could sail up and down between
two bridges which bounded him on either side to a two miles' reach!

The French national flag is perhaps the prettiest on the world's waters;
but as it is repeated to the eye by every boat and building, the sight of
it becomes tiresome, and suggests that absence o