and incidents of this sort
are often regarded as simple errors of youth and inexperience, to be
remedied by marriage. The marriage-tie when formed, however, is not less
respected than among our rural populations in general, and cases of
flagrant misconduct on the part of married women are rare.'

Offences against persons and property are not relatively numerous here.
On the contrary, while the proportion of persons accused of crime is 12
to the hundred thousand, for all France, in this Department of the Nord
it falls to 8-1/3 to the hundred thousand, and this notwithstanding the
numbers crowded into the great manufacturing towns of the department. In
the Department of the Seine, which includes Paris, the proportion rises
to 28 to the hundred thousand, and in the agricultural Department of the
Eure, which is the champion criminal Department of France, to 30 to the
hundred thousand. One might almost imagine that M. Zola must have gone
to the Eure for his studies of French peasant-life.

Without being particularly devout, the people of this region, I am told,
are fond of their religious observances, and much dislike the
persecution of the Church and the laicisation of the schools.

At Thiers the church, which is a large one, fronting on an extensive
Place Publique, was very handsomely decorated on Corpus Christi Sunday
by the people of the commune. Flags and garlands were put up, too, all
about the Place Publique. The Anzin Company are now building a large
school for girls very near this church; and I visited, with M. Guary,
one afternoon, the boys' school at Thiers. It is very well installed in
a large building, with a playground and a gymnasium roofed in, but not
walled. The teacher--a lay teacher, and a very quiet, sensible man--who
lives in the school-building with his wife, told me he preferred to keep
it thus, and the boys liked it better. They were at their lessons when I
visited the school, and a very sturdy, comely lot of lads they were.
Some of them were _en penitence_, having slighted their lessons, as the
teacher slily intimated, by reason of the great Church festival. This I
thought not unlikely, and he did not appear to regard it as an
absolutely unpardonable offence, while the juvenile criminals themselves
were evidently quite cheery in their minds. In a room near the
gymnasium were racks filled with wooden guns. These the teachers pointed
out with pride. They were a gift from the company to his battalion