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 V. THE YANKEE BOYS' HOLIDAY IN PROVENCE. peasants now began to return to the village, while the boys prepared to camp out. Walter, at a hasty glance along the side of the mountain, perceiving many trees, took it for granted, without further examination, that they were forest trees, and would fuj-nish material for a fire ; but as they approached, to his great chagrin, he noticed that they were mulberry, olive, and figs, and that there was not even a bush or a bramble that could be taken to feed a fire. This at once reversed the whole train of his ideas, and threw him into a state of mind entirely foreign to his usual cheerful, buoyant frame, and a mood not to be pleased with anything, which communicated itself, though with less intensity, to Ned, who, never having experienced those peculiar emotions begotten of the J'ree wild life in the woods, was not peculiarly touched by the disappointment. " I think it is a great way for people who live by their labor to be so far from their work. I should think it would take half of their time to go and come." " They don't know how to put things ahead with a rush, as we do," said Walter. " How can a man think much of his time when it's worth only twenty cents a day ? " " It ain't worth that, for a sou ain't quite a cent. They will work all day in a half bushel, and don't know how to take advantage of work. I've heard the captain say that they were once little better than slaves to the aristocracy, and have been so long used to working at a slave jog that they keep it up, and always want to huddle together like a nest of rats." While talking they had gained the declivity of the hill, and sat down. " Only look at that troop, Wal." It was, indeed, a curious spectacle, that peasant train, — some driving asses, ot...