The Fact Is, They Are Poor - Poor
Because Invention, Enterprise, And Intellectual Vigor - All That
Surrounds The New England Mountain Farmer With Competence And
Comfort - Are Quenched And Dead, By The Combined Influence Of A
Religion And Government Whose Interest It Is To Keep People Stupid
That They May Be Manageable.
Yet the Savoyards, as a race, it seems to
me, are naturally intelligent; and I cannot but hope that the liberal
course lately adopted by the Sardinian government may at last reach
them.
My heart yearns over many of the bright, pretty children, whose
little hands have been up, from time to time, around our carriage. I
could not help thinking what good schools and good instruction might
do for them. It is not their fault, poor little things, that they are
educated to whine and beg, and grow up rude, uncultured, to bring
forth another set of children just like themselves; but what to do
with them is the question. One generally begins with giving money; but
a day or two of experience shows that it would be just about as
hopeful to feed the locusts of Egypt on a loaf of bread. But it is
hard to refuse children, especially to a mother who has left five or
six at home, and who fancies she sees, in some of these little eager,
childish faces, something now and then that reminds her of her own.
For my part, I got schooled so that I could stand them all, except the
little toddling three-year olds - they fairly overcame me. So I
supplied my pocket with a quantity of sugar lozenges, for the relief
of my own mind. I usually found the little fellows looked exceedingly
delighted when they discovered the nature of the coin. Children are
unsophisticated, and like sugar better than silver, any day.
In this _auberge_ was a little chamois kid, of which fact we were
duly apprised, when we got out, by a board put up, which said, "Here
one can see a live chamois." The little live representative of
chamoisdom came skipping out with the most amiable unconsciousness,
and went through his paces for our entertainment with as much
propriety as a New England child says his catechism. He hopped up on a
table after some green leaves, which were then economically used to
make him hop down again. The same illusive prospect was used to make
him jump over a stick, and perform a number of other evolutions. I
could not but admire the sweetness of temper with which he took all
this tantalizing, and the innocence with which he chewed his cabbage
leaf after he got it, not harboring a single revengeful thought at us
for the trouble we had given him. Of course the issue of the matter
was, that we all paid a few sous for the sight - not to the chamois,
which would have been the most equitable way, but to those who had
appropriated his gifts and graces to eke out their own convenience.
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