Albert Brisbane Author:Albert Brisbane Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. After a few months of consideration, my father consented to my departure ; and in the month of May, 1828,1 sailed in an American packet for Havre.... more » The long sea voyage was without event worthy of remark, unless it be the absence of sea-sickness —a sensation I have never known. At Havre a new world of manners and customs burst upon my gaze. The first thing that struck me was the position occupied by woman in the practical world. She seemed more active and independent than in the country of my birth. She was permitted to work and earn an honorable livelihood. At the Custom House a woman took the lead in all the operations necessary for the examination of my baggage, afterwards ordering a man to transport it to the hotel. On entering the H6tel de 1'Europe, I was met by a woman who assigned me to my room. No man appeared, until, happening to require some personal service, a man answered the call. Thus the functions seemed to me all inverted. The chambermaids were all chamber-gaons ; the cooks were men, and the director of the house was a woman. The whole social life in France seemed to me a strange spectacle. I felt that I had been suddenly transported into a world not my own, and was looking upon a play in which I bore no part. The next day I took the diligence for Paris. The route lay through a beautiful country, well calculated to impress a green American, who had not yet dreamed of the diversified culture which often gives to the landscape of the Old World the aspectof a -work of art. In this case the picture, with its manifold tints and miniature contours, suggested to me a Scotch plaid. The impression produced by my fellow-travelers was less favorable. I was struck with what appeared to me the limited scope of French intelligence ; for not to have a definite ...« less