St Nicholas [serial] . ndings ofthe gallant Miles Standish down to our nineteenthcentury unchanged. How they would be studied,and what an interesting study they would be! To-day the Bretons are very much what theywere a century ago,—yes, more than that,—perhapstwo or three centuries ago. They are superstitious, 728 AN AMERICAN CIRCUS IN BRITTANY. [September bigoted and picturesque. -They come to the marketsclad in skins in winter and in sackcloth in sum-mer. They cultivate the soil in the rudest mannerwith wooden plows, and are content in all the waysof life to live as their fathers lived. We
St Nicholas [serial] . ndings ofthe gallant Miles Standish down to our nineteenthcentury unchanged. How they would be studied,and what an interesting study they would be! To-day the Bretons are very much what theywere a century ago,—yes, more than that,—perhapstwo or three centuries ago. They are superstitious, 728 AN AMERICAN CIRCUS IN BRITTANY. [September bigoted and picturesque. -They come to the marketsclad in skins in winter and in sackcloth in sum-mer. They cultivate the soil in the rudest mannerwith wooden plows, and are content in all the waysof life to live as their fathers lived. We often hear of the son standing in the shoesof the father, and this may be said literally of the public square, a tremendous yellow-and-red posterhas been displayed for a week past, and crowds ofadmiring peasants, more picturesque than tidy,have stood before it in admiring wonder frommorning till night. Its long trains of mottledhorses, its hump-backed camels and bulky elephants, have been commented upon until their. fc ? ^{TjTkiHS- Jf^^-r- ~~~ THE PEASANTS BEFORE THE POSTER. Bretons. It often happens that a pair of leathershoes is handed down from father to son. Theseshoes last a long time, for they are only used onrare occasions, rude wooden shoes, or sabots, beingcommonly worn. Not one in ten of the grownpeople can read and write, and newspapers are aluxury enjoyed only by the rich. The people aresimple-minded and credulous, but in money mat-ters they are not too simple to make exceedinglyshrewd bargains. Now, in a country like this, in a town like thisquaint, old-fogyish Quimperle, just fancy an Amer-ican circus making its appearance. Here, in the minutest points are known to every peasant withinten miles. A commotion was created one day by acynical old one-eyed beggar declaring that the pro-prietors of the circus were emissaries of the Prussiangovernment, and from that suspicion it came to bepretty generally understood that the man whodrove the triumphal car in the pain
Size: 1445px × 1728px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthordodgemar, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookyear1873
