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Very many years before slavery had become by tacit consent avoided as a subject for discussion, Mrs. Ann critical of what his farm cost, being herself country-bred, had said that if it were worked with Maryland blacks it would pay and pay well. "You mean, dear, that if I owned the labour, it would pay." "Yes," she returned gaily, "and with me for your farmeress."

And Parleyvoo Pickens, the wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and farmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, second and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an idyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on the red barns it certainly had all other impostures I know about beat to a batter.

I have no doubt that an English farmeress in her circumstances would have the neatest little parlour, a tidy maid to wait upon her, and most likely take afternoon tea in a black silk gown. Our hostess here wore the dress of a poor but respectable working woman. Her interior was almost as bare and primitive as that of the Boer farmhouse in the Paris Exhibition.

Where's that gone to? You didn't happen to inquire of your farmeress person whether she'd had any other visitors with archæological tastes during the last few days?" "I didn't; but I don't think she knew of any one being about on that tack, or she'd have told me about it. The woman was garrulousness personified."

As for myself, I could have gazed at this marvel of doorways and have forgotten all else; and I was not sorry that the small farmeress had a will of her own, and that this will elected to stay. Oh, that superb eastern façade! Never before has its like been seen. Never in such a setting and in such gigantic proportions will we see it again.

Generations must elapse ere they are raised to the level of the typical French peasant. On the score of health they may compare favourably with any race. A fruit and vegetable diet seems sufficient in this climate. Besides her poultry and pigs my farmeress had not much to show me; but a plot of flowers for market, a little corn, and a few olive trees added grist to the mill.

Abijah Green, travelling over to Little Bethel school-house for to preach next Sunday. The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is pursuing them with the plow mules and the buckboard. So the Reverend Green, after hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a bit and pats the bride on the shoulder.

Yet, if not here in contact with the zero of peasant property, we are considering its most modest phase. A step higher and we found an instance of the levelling process characteristic of every stage of French society, yet hardly to be looked for in a remote Pyrenean village. In one of our afternoon rambles we overtook a farmeress, and accepted an invitation to accompany her home.

Peter Paul's sisters had inherited the farm. They managed it together, and they had divided their mother's clothes, and also her rings and ear-rings, her gold skull-cap and head-band and pins, the heirlooms of a Dutch farmeress. "It matters very little how we divide them, dear," Anna had said, "for I shall never marry, and they will all go to your girl."

Then there is the "farmeress" at the home farm which gives the hospital its milk; a splendid, grey-eyed creature, doing the work of her husband who is at the front, with a little girl and boy rounder and rosier than anything you ever saw; and a small, one-eyed brother-in-law who drinks. My God, he drinks!