I tried, and was approved of. "And now,"
continued the operator, producing a piece
of black silk, "look at this, and don't be afraid.
It must cover your shirt bosom for a while;
then I shall come and snatch it away: but
you must not budge an inch. Some Englishmen
spoil their portraits, by jumping up
when I have to do this."

The elder lady took a large looking-glass to
illuminate, by reflected light, my right cheek,
and ear, and whisker. The awfully effective
slide of the camera obscura was drawn; in a
few seconds the junior stole round and
whisked the black silk away; and presto!
the slide was shut again, with a clap. "There!"
said the senior; "your tooth is drawn,
Monsieur, and I hope you have not suffered
greatly."

When I paid for my portrait, I could not
help wishing that a few pale-faced, under-fed,
thin-clad English girls could see how cheerfully
Mademoiselle Lebour was living by the
practice of Daguerréotype. She seemed
almost as happy and as independent as a first-
rate governess at fifty pounds a year; if such
a comparison will bear the making.

On a subsequent adventure, arrived at a
railway station, we wanted to take our
tickets. At the pigeon-hole or wicket, or
(guichet, as they call it, appeared a female
clerk with an assistant of the same sex,
doubtless her younger sister: both very
business-like and very polite. A train was
soon coming. Might we go on the platform
and see it? No; as we were not going by
that. But, if we liked, we might enter the
clerk's bureau, and view it from the windows.
Thence followed chat about Jerome
Bonaparte, and reviews, and mad dogs, and
spaniels (for the clerk's husband was a great
sportsman, and had been keeper to Charles
the Tenth), and about forest life among the
Vosges, and sea-bathing in the gulf of the
Seine;—interrupted by the tinkling of a
little bell. Silence, all; for Madame looks
at the dial-plate of her electric telegraph,
handles its crinkum-crankums with the
decision of a Faraday, concludes her message,
and returns to the subject of wild boars
under Charles the Tenth and Frascati's
establishment at Le Havre. But I was spoiled
for further talk; I could only mutter to
myself,"If French women are clever enough to
take Daguerréotype portraits, and to work
electric telegraphs, and can get a
comfortable living by such honest means, why
should not English women do the same?"

Female labour of a humbler kind had
previously furnished me with a hint to the
benevolent. At Boulogne-sur-Mer, the office
of removing all passengers' luggage from the
vessel in which they arrive, for inspection at
the Custom House, is an old privilege of the
widows of sailors and fishermen who have
been lost at sea. It is instructive to behold
them—a band of blue-stockinged, short-
petticoated, warm clad matrons, some with their
heads covered by black veils to indicate their
recent loss, hauling and carting the chattels
of lighter-hearted mortals. The bottle-green
customs' men look on and walk beside the
cargoes, but not a male creature is allowed to
lay a finger on a package. At their head
marches a sort of Queen of the Widows, who
is their mouth-piece, their treasurer, and
sometimes, perhaps, their order-keeper.

The Folkestone boat was due; and while
it was entering the harbour, Her Majesty
offered me a pinch of snuff.

"They are des gueux (beggars), these
folks!" said she, with a toss of her head and
a shake of her ear-rings.

"Why are they worse than the people from
Dover or London?" I inquired, rather in
surprise.

"Because when travellers go by the twelve
hours' route, and their luggage is visited at
Paris instead of here, it does not enter our
Custom House, and the sailors' widows are
robbed of their dues."

The boat approached, and Her Majesty
sailed away to attend to her duties; but I
could not help thinking that whoever watched
the bill for the railway from Boulogne to
Paris, might have stuck on some little rider
in support of the vested rights of the bereaved
porteresses. It was also a question to my mind,
whether their sorrows were not as well
alleviated by social hard work in the open
air, as they would have been by the solitary
indolence of an alms-house.

After this, when you read in a French
paper the advertisement of an auction, when
you go to the auction (say of wholesale fish
held in the open air), when you behold a
sharp, quick-witted auctioneer in petticoats
conducting the affair with all the method, and
more than the adroitness of a man, you must
not be surprised. At least, I have seen one
or two who might challenge George Bidder
himself to calculate francs and centimes.

Instances in still humbler life are
innumerable. At the corner of the street is a
public shoe-black, who has two strings to his
bow; for he is a commissionaire, also, or
runner of errands. But he cannot be in two
places at once; so whenever he finds it his
interest to drop the shoe-black and metamorphose
himself into a light-heeled Mercury, his
wife takes his place and flourishes the blacking-
brush.

Our morning's milk is brought round, not
by a milk-man—the women here would
drown him in a hogshead of the skimmed and
sky-blue article—but by a stout lass on horse-
back. She rides up the côte, or hill, on which
we are perched; on each side of her is a
large pannier filled with tin cans and pots
close bunged for the customers; she, mounted
in the middle, looks down upon the world,
and distributes her favours with the serenity
of a goddess.

Yesterday evening we went up to Madame
Hauttot's, the farmeress's, to purchase some