awkwardness there was not a trace. Of course there were speeches from
the Mayor, M. le Cure, and others, also music and singing, and a large
number of excellent books were distributed, each recipient being at the
same time crowned with a wreath of artificial flowers.

It is to be hoped that ere many years, thanks to the new law enforcing
compulsory education, the excellent education these children receive
will be the portion of every boy and girl in France, and that an adult
unable to read and write--the rule, not the exception, among the rural
population in Brittany--will be unheard of. A friend of mine from Nantes
recently took with her to Paris a young Breton maidservant, who had been
educated by the "Bonnes Soeurs," that is to say the nuns. What was the
poor girl's astonishment to find that in Paris everybody was so far
accomplished as to be able to read and write? Her surprise would have
been greater still, had she witnessed the acquirements of these little
Couilly girls, many of them, like herself, daughters of small peasant
farmers.

It must be mentioned, for the satisfaction of those who regard the
progress of education with some concern, that the elegant bonnets and
dresses I speak of are laid aside on week days, and that nowhere in
France do people work harder than here. But when not at work they like
to wear good clothes and read the newspapers as well as their
neighbours. Take our laundress, for instance, an admirable young woman,
who gets up clothes to perfection, and who on Sunday exchanges her
cotton gown and apron for the smartest of Parisian costumes. The amount
of underclothes these countrywomen possess is sometimes enormous, and
they pride themselves upon the largest possible quantity, a great part
of which is of course laid by. They count their garments not by dozens
but by scores, and can thus afford to wait for the quarterly