"ABBEVILLE, _Friday, 18th Sept._, 1868 "You seem to have a most uncomfortable time of it, with the disturbance of the house. However, I can only leave you to manage these things as you think best--or feel pleasantest to yourself. I am saddened by another kind of disorder, France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate and comfortless, compared to what it was twenty years ago--the people so much rougher, clumsier, more uncivil--everything they do, vulgar and base. Remnants of the old nature come out when they begin to know you. I am drawing at a nice tallow-chandler's door, and to-day, for the first time had to go inside for rain. He was very courteous and nice, and warned me against running against the candle-ends--or bottoms, as they were piled on the shelves, saying--'You must take care, you see, not to steal any of my candles'--or 'steal _from_ my candles,' meaning not to rub them off on my coat. He has a beautiful family of cats--papa and mamma and two superb kittens--half Angora." "_22nd Sept._ "I am going to my cats and tallow-chandler.... I was very much struck by the superiority of manner both in him and in his two daughters who serve at the counter, to persons of the same class in England. When the girls have weighed out their candles, or written down the orders that are sent in, they instantly sit down to their needlework behind the counter, and are always busy, yet always quiet; and their father, though of course there may be vulgar idioms in his language which I do not recognize, has entirely the manners of a gentleman." _30th Sept_. "I have the advantage here I had not counted on. I see by the papers that the weather in England is very stormy and bad. Now, though it is showery here, and breezy, it has always allowed me at some time of the day to draw. The air is tender and soft, invariably--even when blowing with force; and to-day, I have seen quite the loveliest sunset I ever yet saw,--one at Boulogne in '61 was richer; but for delicacy and loveliness nothing of past sight ever came near this." Earlier on the same day he had written: "I am well satisfied with the work I am doing, and even with my own power of doing it, if only I can keep myself from avariciously trying to do too much, and working hurriedly. But I can do _very_ little quite _well_, each day: with that however it is my bounden duty to be content.