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Glimpses of Life in France

By Clifton Johnson

With Illustrations by the Author

FTER a long day's railroad journey from Holland I arrived late one June night at Calais, and looked about the big, dim-lit station questioning how I should find a lodging-place. A clock whose pointers indicated that it was past midnight was the only intelligible thing in sight, for all the signs I saw were in French and only French words greeted my ears. As I knew almost nothing of the language, and still less of its proper pronunciation, it could about as well have been Chinese.

While I was hesitating, in doubt as to what to do next, a group of clamorous coachmen assailed me, each man intent on rushing me off to his particular hotel. My responses in English only served to increase their ardor without contributing a single iota of the information I desired. In the end I would have been compelled to trust my fate to one of them and take the chances of getting accommodations to my liking, had not a railroad porter come up who said he knew English. From him I learned that a large hotel was run in connection with the station.

I

knew from experience in England that railroad hotels were generally excellent, and I was rejoiced that there was no need to go further that night. I extricated myself from amid the disappointed coachmen, who must now return to their various hostelries emptyhanded, and followed the guidance of my new friend. He did not leave me till he had seen me to a room in the hotel.

On the following day I met this Englishspeaking porter again. He was off duty at the time, and offered to show me about the town. We lingered longest in the older parts. Their gray antiquity was very delightful, and I was especially interested in a tall, weather-worn lighthouse that rises above all the other town buildings on the borders of the market-place. It has outlived its usefulness as a lighthouse, and now serves as a watch-tower. Each night, from eleven o'clock on, a lone sentinel looks out on the town from the glass windows at the summit of the old lighthouse. Every quarter of an hour he blows a blast on a horn to let the citizens know that all is well, while the end of each

hour is marked by four blasts, one blown toward each quarter of the compass. If the watchman sees a fire or anything else wrong, he sounds the alarm by ringing a bell.

While the porter and I walked we talked, and I found him intelligent and entertaining. In his broken English he spoke with great frankness of his fellow-countrymen, and his comments on national characteristics seemed to me very suggestive.

For one thing, he said that the relations of the men and women were marked by mutual distrust. It is the Frenchman's belief that all women are deceitful and unstable. The women have the same ill opinion of the men, as is shown by the fact that no respectable girl goes about without a mature companion. The porter agreed with the justice of what he said was the general verdict on the character of the French women, though he palliated their faultiness by observing that it might be the result of the men's "leading on." Still, he said the men would not lead on if they were not encouraged to do so by the women themselves. A Frenchman likes sentiment, the porter explained, but responsibility sits lightly on him, and he forgets the most ardent professions and skips from one love to another as fancy dictates.

The people were unfailingly polite the peasantry no less than the upper classes. Even the accent, yes, and the look of their printed words, have an air of suavity that attracts and pleases. In the country districts the people bow to you when you meet them, and say, "B'jou', M'sieu'." It is a greeting that is given as a matter of course, and you receive it just as surely from the little children and the women as you do from the men,

ON THE WAY TO MARKET

who add a touch of the hat. It makes a very agreeable impression on the stranger to be accorded such courtesy and friendliness.

But whether this politeness was more than surface deep may be a question. I sometimes had my doubts of it when I noted how little hesitation the people showed in loading me with their bad money. Belgian, Swiss, Turkish, and other coins are in common circulation in France. In size and look they are much like French money, and some are good and some are not. Often, when I was buying a railway ticket, I would see the agent poke over his drawer in a search for what I believed was bad money. No one else would take these foreign coins, and the more the agent could inveigle into my change the better he was pleased. I always felt helpless and at his mercy, for I was usually in a hurry, and did not know enough of French to make an intelligent protest. I gradually gathered a pocketful of this poor currency, and knew not what to do with it till I returned to London, where I sold it at a money exchange.

I usually traveled on the railroads thirdclass. This was partly for economy, partly because my fellow-passengers were sure to disclose their impulses with much greater freedom than the wealthier folks who travel in the more aristocratic apartments. In England the third-class carriages are, as a rule, fairly comfortable, but on the Continent they were so rude that it was something of a hardship to travel in them. They were not much better than one of our freight-cars would be with some cushionless benches run across the interior. The occupants indulge freely in smoking, spitting, and loud talking, and the

only alleviation within reach is to sit near the front of the coach and keep a window open.

French nature as seen traveling third-class is characterized by a very grasshoppery liveliness. The people are extremely sociable; they chat together vociferously, and their talk is full of joking and laughter. Sometimes their animation runs into boisterousness, and they sing, shout, and gesture. If three or four of them come to a station

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to see friends off, there is almost a riot of affectionate parting. This is not confined to lively repartee, for every one has to be kissed, and French custom allows two kisses to a person, one on each cheek. Kissing and embracing are indulged in on all sorts of occasions, with more publicity than I have ever seen elsewhere. Indeed, I thought privacy of any sort seemed to be foreign to the genius of the people.

In my railway journeys I found every one I met friendly, and I never asked a question or made a request that did not call forth the most earnest effort to understand me and put me right. Once in a while some one would try to carry on a general conversation with me, but as our chief dependence had to be sign language, the results were rather discouraging. There was one occasion when a young Frenchman spent half a day in the attempt to tell me about himself and learn who and what I was. I suppose time hung heavy on his hands, for we were on a narrow-gauge rail

A COTTAGER IN THE CHIMNEY CORNER

road and our train was so leisurely that we might about as well have gone on foot. Our talk seemed to have the most absorbing interest for my companion, and the interest was shared by the other occupants of the car, who gathered about us and looked on with fascinated attention.

My new acquaintance knew a few words of English, and I knew a few words of French; but as he gave his English words a French pronunciation and I gave my French words an English pronunciation, this knowledge was well-nigh useless. It took so long to make connections that my friend finally got out a pencil and a piece of paper and we tried writing. Our progress by this method was a trifle smoother. Still, it was nothing to boast of, and I wondered at the pleasure my companion seemed to find in our halting interchange of thought. He would write, and then, to see if I understood, would look up

at me as raptly as if I had been his sweetheart. Toward the end of our journey he wanted to know if I would correspond with him. Judging from the experience we had already had, I thought it would prove too vast a task, and I tried to tell him, "No," but could not manage the language to say so gently, and was forced to acquiesce and give him my address.

The views that I had from the car window in my various journeyings seemed to me peculiarly attractive. Along the coast there were sand dunes looming constantly against the western sky, yet with gaps now and then that gave me a glimpse of the hazy sea, with perhaps a fleet of fishing-boats drifting in toward a town. Sometimes the railroad passed through a region of peat bogs, where frequent groups of men were at work digging out the black bricks of earth and laying them in the sunshine to dry. But these

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phases were incidental. In the main I saw a land highly cultivated and marked by a quiet pastoral beauty, akin to that of southern England, and yet different. Apparently the ways of the people have imparted to the country an individuality not due to either climate or soil. For one thing, the English and the French differ in their taste as to trees. The former like the sturdy oaks and elms; the latter seem to prefer the slender poplars, and the prevalence of these trees gives the French landscape a delicacy and a lightness that are very charming.

I noticed that every grade crossing on the railways was guarded by gates, and that when our train swept past there was always a woman standing just inside the gates, with a brass horn in one hand and in the other a stick with a red flag wound about it, which she held rigidly erect. This woman is the crossing guard. She and her family live close by in a small cottage that proclaims itself railroad property by having a mammoth number painted on it. Just before the passing of each train the woman closes the gates, blows a warning on her horn for the benefit of any traveler who may be approaching on the highway, and then gets herself into that petrified attitude of military

attention that one observes from the car window as the train flies by her.

At first the French method of guarding crossings seemed perfunctory and ludicrous; but it makes them safe. In our own land our country roads, as a rule, go over the tracks at grade perfectly unobstructed, and when the view is limited by buildings or trees or hills you cannot drive across a railroad without feeling that there are frightful possibilities in so doing.

Of the towns I visited, the most interesting was Falaise in Normandy, in whose ancient castle the cruel King John of England at. one time held prisoner his little nephew, Prince Arthur. It was thence the youthful prince was taken to meet his mysterious death-no one knows where or how.

I reached Falaise in the late evening. Several 'buses were waiting at the station entrance, and I picked out a driver who gave me to understand that at his hotel the folk talked English. With this assurance, I gladly stepped inside his vehicle, and he drove away over the stony streets, far back into the town. I suppose I misunderstood my driver as to the linguistic abilities of the hotel people. He probably only meant to intimate in a general way that at his hotel everything was perfect, for when we arrived

not a word could I get out of any of them but French. However, I parlevou'd lamely to a well-meaning, middle-aged maid till she caught the idea that I wanted a room, whereupon she conducted me to an apartment with alacrity, and my trials were over for that day at least.

The first thing in the morning, when I came down stairs, I met, in the hallway, the maid with whom I had talked the evening before, and she, very agreeably, motioned me to the kitchen. I expected to get something to eat, but, instead, the woman produced some blacking-brushes, set a low chair out in the middle of the floor, and motioned at my shoes. She wanted to remove the dust and give them a polishing, and I put a foot on the chair and let her work. I had the feeling that I ought to be doing the job myself, but the language presented too great difficulties, and I was helpless in her hands.

I spent most of the day in walking about the village. It seemed to me the strangest old place I had ever seen. The crooked lanes and highways ran up-hill and down-hill at random, and street-walks, dwellings, and public buildings were all of a gray stone, much worn and stained, and indicating great age. The aspect of the village was curiously stony and crowded and venerable, and I felt as if it had just been exhumed from the mediæval past. Th people in thei quaint costumes and with their antiquated modes of living only served to make this impression more em. phatic.

A good deal of sewing, knitting, and weaving was going on in the homes, and I saw many heaps of cloth and newly made garments. There were women spinning on the old-time wheels and men knitting with machines that they ran by hand. The town had known

prosperity, but now it was decayed and poverty-stricken; and no wonder, for how was it possible for these out-of-date hand methods to compete with modern machinery!

Falaise, like all the French towns I saw, was very dirty. This seemed in part due to the uncleanly habits of the people themselves, in part to the entire lack of any sewer system worthy the name. Sluggish rivulets coursed along the street gutters, and these, clogged with kitchen refuse and street garbage, were equally offensive to the sense of smell and sight.

It was market day in Falaise, and all the roads from the outer world were enlivened with teams driving in from the country, and by women on foot carrying big baskets on their arms full of butter and eggs. The market square was crowded with booths and strewn with heaps of vegetables and other merchandise; and the throng of buyers and sellers bargaining there with a gray old church looking down on them made a scene full of movement and picturesqueness. The townsmen of the lower classes and nearly all the men from the farms wore loose blue smocks, and the women of the same rank wore white caps that were sometimes of plain

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A RURAL BARBER

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