Asheville Daily Citizen

Women Workers in Brittany.

While the Men Idle Away Their Time Their Wives Labor.

The women of Brittany are remarkable for their individuality, industry and strength of character. In "Artistic Travel" the author says that while the men slumber and smoke, the women are building little fortunes or propping up old ones.

Let us picture a prominent personage at the old Hotel du Lion d'Or. She has a beautiful name, Augustine, pronounced with enviable accuracy by all the household.

She hovered about us like a fairy, attending to all our wants in the most delicate way; to outward seeming a ministering angel with pure white wings, but in truth, a drudge, a methodical housewife, massive and hard to the touch.

She did the work of three Parisian garcons, and walked upstairs, unaided, with portmanteaus which would require two men to lift, anywhere out of Brittany. She slept in a box in the kitchen and dressed "somehow" in five minutes. She ate what was left, contentedly, at the end of the day, and rose at sunrise to do the laborious work of the house, helping also at harvest time in the fields.

She had the sweetest of smiles, when she liked, an unconquerable habit of taking snuff, and a murderous way of killing fowls in the early morning which we shall not easily forget.

How it comes to pass that this girl of nineteen occupies such an important position in the household is one of those things which are peculiar to Brittany. All through the land, in the houses, in the factories, and in the fields, the strong, firm hand and arm of a woman does the work.