represent wicked waste and shameful indulgence to a much richer
French peasant. I, myself, know a laborer on wages of less than
twenty shillings a week, who by thrift has bought ten acres of the
magnificent garden land between Fontainebleau and the Seine, worth
many thousand pounds, on which grow all kinds of fruits and
vegetables, and the famous dessert grapes; yet who, with all his
wealth and abundance, denies himself and his two children meat on
Sundays, and even a drink of the wine which he grows and makes for
the market."

"The French peasant has great virtues, but he has the defects of
his virtues, and his home life is far from idyllic. He is
laborious, shrewd, enduring, frugal, self-reliant, sober, honest
and capable of intense self-control for a distant reward; but that
reward is property in land, in pursuit of which he may become as
pitiless as a bloodhound."

"Take him for all in all, he is a strong and noteworthy force in
modern civilization. Though his country has not the vast mineral
wealth of England, nor her gigantic development in manufactures
and in commerce, he has made France one of the richest, most
solid, most progressive countries on earth. He is quite as frugal
and patient as the German, and is far more ingenious and skillful.
He has not the energy of the Englishman, or the elastic spring of
the American, but he is far more saving and much more provident.
He 'wastes nothing, and spends little,' and thus, since his
country comes next to England and America in natural resources and
national energy, he has built up one of the strongest, most
self-contained and most durable of modern peoples."