ake sugar in France, it made me quite miserable to see them.
Bending all day over the long rows of beets, which required quite an
effort to pull out of the hard earth, their hands red and chapped,
sometimes a cold wind whistling over the fields that no warm garment
could keep out, and they never had any really warm garment. We met an
old woman one day quite far from any habitation, who was toiling home,
dragging her feet, in wretched, half-worn shoes, over the muddy
country roads, who stopped and asked us if we hadn't a warm petticoat
to give her. She knew me, called me by name, and said she lived in the
little hamlet near the chateau. She looked miserably cold and tired. I
asked where she came from, and what she had been doing all day.
"Scaring the crows in M. A.'s fields," was the answer. "What does your
work consist of?" I asked. "Oh, I just sit there and make a
noise--beat the top of an old tin kettle with sticks and shake a bit
of red stuff in the air." Poor old woman, she looked half paralyzed
with cold and fatigue, and I was really almost ashamed to be seated so
warmly and comfortably in the carriage, well wrapped up in furs and
rugs, and should have quite understood if she had poured out a torrent
of abuse. It must rouse such bitter and angry feeling when these poor
creatures, half frozen and half starved, see carriages rolling past
with every appliance of wealth and luxury. I suppose what saves us is
that they are so accustomed to their lives, the long days of hard
work, the wretched, sordid homes, the insufficient meals, the
quantities of children clamouring for food and warmth. Their parents
and grandparents have lived the same lives, and anything else would
seem as unattainable as the moon, or some fairy tale. There has been
one enormous change in all the little cottages--the petroleum lamp.
All have got one--petroleum is cheap and gives much more light and
heat than the old-fashioned oil lamp. In the long winter afternoons,
when one must have light for work of any kind, the petroleum lamp is a
godsend. We often noticed the difference coming home late. The
smallest hamlets looked quite cheerful with the bright lights shining
through the cracks and windows. I can't speak much from _personal_
experience of the _inside_ of the cottages--I was never much given to
visiting among the poor. I suppose I did not take it in the right
spirit, but I could never see the poetry, the beautiful, patient
lives, the resignatio