But the Frenchman had no such pride. He resorted to a town, where the amusements of dancing, _fetes_, and social converse, were to be found--where the narrow streets were scarcely more than a division fence, "across which the women could carry on their voluble conversations, without leaving their homes."[75] This must have been a great advantage, and probably contributed, in no slight degree, to the singular peace of their villages--since the proximity afforded no temptation to going abroad, and the distance was yet too great to allow such whisperings and scandal, as usually break up the harmony of small circles. Whether the fact is to be attributed to this, or to some other cause, certain it is that these little communities were eminently peaceful. From the first settlement of Kaskaskia, for example, down to the transfer of the western country to the British--almost a century--I find no record, even in the voluminous epistolary chronicles, of any personal rencontre, or serious quarrel, among the inhabitants. The same praise can not be given to any American town ever yet built. A species of communism seems to be a portion of the French character; for we discover, that, even at that early day, _paysans_, or _habitans_, collected together in villages, had their _common fields_, where the separate portion of each family was still a part of the common stock--and their tract of pasture-land, where there was no division, or separate property. One enclosure covered all the fields of the community, and all submitted to regulations made by the free voice of the people. If one was sick, or employed in the service of the colony, or absent on business of his own at planting or harvest time, his portion was not therefore neglected: his ground was planted, or his crop was gathered, by the associated labor of his neighbors, as thoroughly and carefully as if he had been at home. His family had nothing to fear; because in the social code of the simple villagers, each was as much bound to maintain the children of his friend as his own. This state of things might have its inconveniences and vices--of which, perhaps, the worst was its tendency to merge the family into the community, and thus--by obliterating the lines of individuality and personal independence--benumbing enterprise and checking improvements: but it was certainly productive of some good results, also. It tended to make people careful each of the other's rights, kind to the afflicted, and brotherly in their social intercourse. The attractive simplicity of manners observable, even at this day, in some of the old French villages, is traceable to this peculiar form of their early organization.