farming in Seine et Marne will no longer be the prosperous business we
find it. It is delightful to witness the wide-spread well-being of this
highly-farmed region.

"There is no poverty here," my host tells me, "and this is why life is
so pleasant."

True enough, wherever you go, you find well-dressed, contented-looking
people, no rags, no squalor, no pinched want. Poverty is an accident of
rare occurrence, and not a normal condition, everyone being able to get
plenty of work and good pay. The habitual look of content written upon
every face is very striking. It seems as if in this land of Goshen, life
were no burden, but matter of satisfaction only, if not of thankfulness.
Class distinction can hardly be said to exist; there are employers and
employed, masters and servants, of course, but the line of demarcation
is lightly drawn, and we find an easy familiarity wholly free from
impoliteness, much less vulgarity, existing between them.

That automatic demureness characterizing English servants in the
presence of their employers, is wholly unknown here. There are
households with us where the servants might all be mutes for any signs
of animation they give, but here they take part in what is going on, and
exchange a word and a smile with every member of the household, never
dreaming that it should be otherwise. One is struck too here by the good
looks, intelligence, and trim appearance of the children, who, it is
plain, are well cared for. The houses have vines and sweet peas on the
wall, flowers in the window, and altogether a look of comfort and ease
found nowhere in Western France. The Breton villages are composed of
mere hovels, where pigs, cows, and poultry live in close proximity to
their owners, a dung-hill stands before every front door, and, to get