Holidays in Eastern France | Page 3

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 indoors and out, you have always to cross a pool of liquid
manure. Here order and cleanliness prevail, with a diffusion of
well-being, hardly, I should say, to be matched out of America.
Travellers who visit France again and again, as much out of sympathy
with its people's institutions as from a desire to see its monuments and
outward features, will find ample to reward them in Seine et Marne. On
every side we have evidence of the tremendous natural resources and
indefatigable laboriousness of the people. There is one point here, as
elsewhere in France, which strikes an agriculturist with astonishment,
and that is the abundance of trees standing amid cornfields and
miscellaneous crops, also the interminable plantation of poplars that
can be seen on every side, apparently without any object. But the truth
is, the planting of apple and pear trees in fields is no extravagance,
rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn
they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside canals
and rivers is the work of the Government, every spare bit of ground
belonging to the State being planted with them for the sake of the
timber. The crops are splendid partly owing to the soil, and partly to the
advanced system of agriculture. You may see exposed for sale, in little
towns, the newest American agricultural implements, whilst the great
diversity of products speaks volumes for the enterprise of the farmers.

As you stroll along, now climbing, now descending this pleasantly
undulated country, you may see growing in less than an acre, a patch of
potatoes here, a vineyard there, on one side a bit of wheat, oats, rye,
and barley, with fruit-trees casting abundant shadow over all; on the
other Indian corn, clover and mangel-wurzel in the green state, recently
planted for autumn fodder; further on a poppy field, three weeks ago in
full flower, now having full pods ready for gathering--the opium poppy
being cultivated for commerce here--all these and many more are found
close together, and near them many a lovely little glen, copse, and
ravine, recalling Scotland and Wales, while the open hill-sides show
broad belts of pasture, corn and vineyard. You may walk for miles
through what seems one vast orchard, only, instead of turf, rich crops
are growing under the trees. This is indeed the orchard of France, on
which we English folk largely depend for our summer fruits. A few
days ago the black-currant trees were being stripped for the benefit of
Parisian lovers of cassis, a liqueur in high repute.
We encounter on our walks carts laden with plums packed in baskets
and barrels on their way to Covent Garden. Later on, it will be the
peach and apricot crops that are gathered for exportation. Later still,
apples, walnuts, and pears; the village not far from our own sends fruit
to the Paris markets valued at 1,000,000 francs annually, and the entire
valley of the Marne is unequalled throughout France for fruitfulness
and abundance. But the traveller must settle down in some delicious
retreat in the valley of the Marne to realize the interest and charm of
such a country as this. And he must above all things be a fairly good
pedestrian, for, though a land of Goshen flowing with milk and honey,
it is not a land of luxuries, and carriages, good, bad, or indifferent, are
difficult to be got. A countless succession of delightful prospects is
offered to the persevering explorer, who, each day, strikes out in an
entirely different direction. I have always been of opinion that the best
way to see a country is to make a halt in some good central point