Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1919 — WRITES USUAL WAY [ARTICLE]

WRITES USUAL WAY

COLONEL HEALEY SEEING MUCH OF FRANCE AND FRENCH CUSTOMS. ■ ■ _ iSerrigy, Yonne, France, March 18, 1919. Friend Louis: A quaint little town is Serrigny. I came here Monday from Cheney, 36 Div. Hq., and as I bade good-bye to the old French lady where I had been billeted I told her I was coming here. She said: “Ah, Serrigny wee petite villazh,” which meant that Serrigny is a very small village. I am quite certain that you would scarcely know it was a village unless you approached it from one of the hills that surrounds it. The town occupies a bowl that' is surrounded by quite high hills, the smothh macadam road on which I traveled entered the town after a sharp turn and I was confronted by winding, narrow streets, the old stone walls and tiled roofs that compose the town. Today I viewed it from the top of one of the hills and it is indeed a quaint village. I have not learned what its particular contribution to history is but every old town lays claim to something that happened centuries ago and I was told that Serrigny was quite important in this particular. I should say at;a guess that 250 people live here. The town is, however, built so compactly that it scarcely covers more than three ordinary town squares. Its homes are plain stone structures;

the houses, sheds, barns, etc., being built side by side at the edge of the narrow streets. Stone walls enclose small rear and stone walled springs are in a dozen places while water as crystal as I have ever seen gushes up from small places in the streets. In the very center of the town is the public work house, where I saw a dozen women washing clothes. I do. not know whether this custom has ever been told to you. In every town is r one or more laundry houses. Where there are rivers the houses are on' the banks of the stream or in house boats, but the process is the same. This house is heavily formed to support the tile roof. Its floor is concrete and from end to end through the center is a deep basin of water supplied through a spring. Each woman has a little stool on which she kneels, the stool being boarded up in front and each side to prevent the water from splattering on her. The’ stool is pushed to edge of the basin and she leans over and soaks the garment in the water, wringing it out, spreads it along the sloping edge of the basin, soaps it thoroughly and scours it with a stiff brush, rolls it up and pounds it with a heavy paddle. This process is followed over and over again until the article is clean. From the wash house I followed a winding road to the top of a high hill and from there I could see many miles in each direction. My companion, an officer, who had been here for some time, said that he wanted me to see the country from there and I found it mighty pleasing to the eye. lam sure I could count a thousand patches of cultivated ground from the hilltop. Square patches, various shades of green and brown, a great panorama in valley and on the hillside; The farms are not fenced here except occasionally when some wealthy land owner encloses his possession in a solid rock wall. Farmers do not own great tracts of land but their fields may be in small patches here and there. The farming all radiates from a village, there being no individual farm houses in this part of France. We .were descending the hill at a steep point when the blast of a horn and some cheering attracted our atten•tion;. I saw some fifteen or twenty men moving down a hiU across the narrow valley; They were exhuberant with pleasure. My companion knew at once what the reason was and said: “The Frenchman have killed a wild boar.” We watched them as they moved down the hill, talking proudly and swinging their arms. There were three men in front pulling a heavy load, a pack of small dogs were snooping at the object be-

ing pulled and people were rushing from their homes to greet the hunters. They were soon at the road that enters the town, where we joined them. Each hunter had a shotgun slung across his shoulder and the exaltation seemed equally distributed. The boar was a large one, weighing about 300 pounds. The meat is said to be excellent. 'Hie town crier blasting on his horn led the triumphant hunters through the streets, where they were greeted with handshakes by all. The parade lasted for some time before the bulky body of the boar was hung up to be scraped preparatory to being cut up and divided among the hunters. The celebration was not finished however, for the jovial nimrods had also to be wined a bit and they visited many a wine cellar and drank to the health of everybody in Europe except the Hun. Wild boar hunting is great sport and is frequently rewarded with success. France pays a bounty on each one killed as they are very destructive to crops. This was a vicious looking old fellow with great tusks. The boar dogs are very small, mere phists in facts, and the one credited with chasing this boar from his lair would scarcely weigh 5 pounds. The dog is said to be a wonderful boar hunter and the natives were making much over him. ? Wine and champaign drinking and cognac, too, for that matter, are indulged in by almost everybody. It is said that many men boast that they have not tasted water for fifty years. Some one irreverently said, one time that water was made to run under bridges. This had a parallel recently in France. An American officer was thirsty and asked a French for “eau fraish.” She dipped a bucket of water from an old pond and handed him a cup. He saw skippers, tadpoles as well as dirt in the bucket and said he did not like the looks of it. The woman said: “pro pas patable,” meaning not drinkable. The officer asked What the water was good for and the woman said: “Baptism,” meaning good to baptise people in. Wine here is known as “vin.” The popular ordinance wines are white and red. Give a Frenchman or woman a ring HEALEY ( GAL)—2 of bread and a bottle of wine and they will satisfy both thirst and hunger. ,1 am certain, however, that France would be much better off if it followed America and dispensed with wine, champaign and cognac. It seems to me there would be happier homes, more crops, fewer broken down women, more industrious men if the wine shops were closed. But surely that reform is far distant for practically every cellar is filled with wine and it is the beverage mornipg, noon and night, and then a French peasant generally has a bottle before be goes to bed. I have seen small distilleries for making cognac at many private homes. I guess none of us will live to see the day when France goes dry. - .r—-r-=r-~ "Sißecrely> GEORGE H. HEALEY.