XXXVII.

FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

ALL night, all day we rode, until some time the next afternoon, I think it was, we found ourselves driven into the yard of a French custom-house. The discovery of a lot of Swiss jewelry on the person of one of our fellowtravelers led the officers to be exceedingly rigid in their examinations. One of us they had discovered to be a rogue, and as several of us were of one language, they concluded we all belonged to one company. So, with many a suspicious look, and many a dark frown, they overhauled our dirty and ragged clothing, expecting at every turn to make some wonderful discovery. I had started from Geneva sooner than had been arranged, and was obliged to take some of my clothing out of the wash tub, undried and unsmoothed. Packing in a bag several articles with the water well drained out, I threw them on the diligence, and they jolted to the French frontier. The official came suddenly upon this bag of wet clothes, and at once was in "the suds" indeed. What to make of such a bundle he did not know, but concluded that something must be wrong about it, as in all his history as a revenue collector he had never known a traveler to journey with his clothing in such a plight. But after the most careful examination, he could find no bottles of cologne, no nicely-packed cigars, no rich silks, no Genevan watches, not even a child's toy, or a music box. But what could be the

object of this curious bag of clothes. A custom-house officer in Maine would at once have seized the whole as some mysterious device to smuggle liquors into the state; but the liquor law not being in force in France, this idea did not suggest itself to the poor, bewildered fellow, who still held up one article after another, from a nice linen handkerchief to a stocking with more holes in it than were necessary to get the feet in and out. He talked to me in French, and I talked to him n English; he pointed to the bag of suspicious articles, and I pointed to the diligence ready to start; he shook his finger, and I stamped my foot. The postilion mounted the horse and cracked his whip; a dozen heads were thrust out of the windows and doors of the carriage; and a dozen voices, in nearly as many different languages, vociferated with all their might. For a while, the chance of remaining over night at this horrible place, where I did not see room enough to put a bed, was very fair; but I concluded to try an experiment which I had tried once before with success. With an air of offended dignity, I took the bag from the hand of the officer, put my wet clothes into it, shouldered the bundle, marched with it into the diligence, and closed the door behind me with the air of a man who had been most egregiously abused. The officer opened his eyes wide; the postilion cracked his whip; the passengers shouted, "Bravo!" and the rest of the way I had the best seat in the diligence, and the most attention from my fellow-travelers. The last I saw of the officer, he was standing in the road, with his hand raised; and for aught I know, he stands there still.

At dusk we arrived at Dijon, a tolerable town in France; and I repaired at once to a second-rate hotel,

near the center of the place, took supper, and then wandered out to spend an hour, before the starting of the cars. In the street I saw an Englishman, of huge proportions, with a heavy carpet bag, trying to inquire of a French woman the way to the railway station. The poor fellow was trembling lest he should be left behind, and the woman was endeavoring to comprehend his lingo, but in vain. I very uncivilly stopped, looked, and laughed. With a no very complimentary expression of contempt for the ignorance of the woman, who knew as much of English as he did of French, he turned to me, and screwing up his lips into all sorts of shapes, tried to put enough French together to ask me how he should get to the cars. When, with a prodigious effort, he had got his sentence out, I said, "What?" At that one word the man's face brightened, and we went on together to the station. entering the cars, he persisted in paying my fare; and all night long we rode together towards Paris, at which place we arrived at four o'clock the next morning. I there parted from my new acquaintance, who was a merchant of Birmingham, and who almost extorted from me a promise that I would spend a day with him before leaving the country. One who has never gone beyond the reach of his own language can hardly estimate the difficulties of a man who is in a strange country, where he can hardly ask for a dish of soup without having set before him a tray of onions; and where, if he asks the way to the station-house, he is pointed to the penitentiary. One letter writer1 gives a description of a dilemma in which he was placed on Sunday, when he went from Leyden to Haarlem to attend

1 Rev. Henry Colman.

On

church and hear the great organ. He was to go back that night to Leyden, where he had left some friends. In traveling about, he lost the way, and did not know how to get to the cars. He tried English, but in vain. He used French with no more success. He attempted. German and Italian, of which he knew a little, but all tc no purpose. The men laughed, the women pitied him, and the children thought they had found a crazy Some thought he was begging cold victuals, and some took him for a madman. At length, he recollected seeing over the railway station the word Spoorweg, which, he thought, might be the Dutch for railroad station; so he began to shout, "Spoorweg! Spoorweg!" and, to his delight, found that, by crying it all along, he was enabled to arrive in season to take the cars for Leyden; and he declared, that he should bless the word "Spoorweg" all his life.

man.

You have heard the case mentioned by some other traveler-I do not remember who of the Frenchman, who, on arriving in England, was seized with sudden sickness. He knew that a certain part of his system was called the chest, and his dictionary told him that chest was a box to keep clothes in a portmanteau. So, confounding the two, he called upon a medical man, who asked him where the pain seemed to be located. 'O," said the poor man, “the pain is in my portmanteau, O, how my portmanteau aches!" he cried, laying his hand upon his chest. Another we are told of, who was endeavoring to address the Evangelical clergymen in Scotland. He had discovered that bare and barren, in some cases, meant the same thing; that a bare country was a barren one. So when he arose to speak, he, in his desire to compliment the aged, venerable, bald ecclesiastics before him, said he felt "much diffidence in

being called upon to address so many barren heads.' And you have also heard of the man in France, who, when one day almost exhausted, took some of the light wine of the country; and, in accordance with the suggestions of a friend, who knew as little of the language as he did, called sacre, instead of sucre, when he wished something to make the sour and simple beverage palatable.

I did not stay in Paris but a few hours, and took the train after breakfast for London. The narrow, uncomfortable car which I entered contained one man, who, as soon as the train started, drew from his pocket a little book, and began to read, stopping now and then, and uttering an exclamation of delight. I soon found he was reading a Testament, and judged from the fact that he was a religious man. On entering into conversation, I found that he was a colporter of the Baptist persuasion, and a man of considerable information and much apparent sincerity. He opened to my mind the condition of the Protestant religion in France, and gave me many facts illustrative of the zeal and devotion of the few and persecuted Christians of that misnamed republic. I asked his opinion of Louis Napoleon, but he seemed inclined to avoid a reply; but at length, with an expressive sigh, he answered, in indifferent English, "The president got no God." What single sentence could more fully describe the perjured wretch who is now at the head of the French government? His oath of office was one of the most solemn ever taken, but he violated it. The constitution of his country was a noble document, but he trampled it beneath his feet. Liberty had commenced her reign in France, but he struck down her angel wings. He is, indeed, without a God.