Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1894 — WOMEN WORKERS IN PARIS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WOMEN WORKERS IN PARIS.

Hardy Old Peasants Who Manage to Look Picturesque While Bw«epl nK Streets. It is not altogether certain that the women who sweep streets and shell oysters on Parte streets would feel unduly elated if they were to be congratulated as “pioneers in an unusual field of woman’s work. ’ More

than likely they would go on about their several occupations without paying any more attention to the remark than proverbial French politeness would demand from them as representatives of the “polished nation. ” But the fact that they do both kinds of work remains. Picturesque figures they are, too, with that peculiar neatness which even in old clothes the women of Paris, from Princess to peasant, know how to preserve. Artists find in them that which sets their fingers itching for a pencil and a sketching pad, and all travelers would be sorry indeed to miss them from the boulevards and markets Not only in these two kinds of labor, but at the fruit and flower stalls, with the milk carts, and in a score of other capacities, one sees them

Sometimes one catches a glimpse of a pretty young girl who looks as if she were playing a part in a comic opera instead of really working; but oftenest wrinkled old peasants, made hardy by years of outdoor labor, satisfy one’s sense of fitness.

THE OYSTER SHELLER.

THE SWEEPER