IV

THE WOMAN SEWING BY LAMPLIGHT


Though the peasant women of France have so large a share in the
laborious out-of-door work on the farms, they are not unfitted for
domestic duties. In the long winter evenings they devote themselves
to more distinctly woman's tasks, knitting and sewing, sometimes even
spinning and weaving. Their housekeeping is very simple, for they live
frugally, but they know how to make the home comfortable. Many modern
inventions are still unknown to them, and we should think their
customs very primitive, but on this account they are perhaps even more
picturesque.

There is contentment in every line of the face of this Woman Sewing by
Lamplight. It is the face of a happy young wife and mother. She
sits close by her baby's bedside that she may listen to his gentle
breathing as he sleeps, and she smiles softly to herself while she
sews. It is a sweet face which bends over the work, and it is framed
in the daintiest of white caps edged with a wide ruffle which is
turned back over the hair above the forehead, that it may not shade
her eyes.

The garment that lies on her lap is of some coarse heavy material. No
dainty bit of fancy work is this, but a plain piece of mending. It
may be the long cloak which the shepherd wraps about him in cold and
stormy weather. Made from the wool grown on his own sheep, spun by his
wife's own hand, it is unrivalled among manufactured cloths for warmth
and comfort. The needle is threaded with a coarse thread of wool,