FRENCH CHILDREN DRUNK

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 363, 14 January 1880, Page 2

FRENCH CHILDREN DRUNK

——.», -. , , A writer in the Gentlemen's Magazine says : " I shall, I doubt not, startle not a few of ray readers when I state that during a recent visit to France I have frequently seen French children intoxicated, Strange as such an assertion may seem, I deliberately make it and stand by it. Again and again, at tables d'hote I have seen children scarcely more'than babies suffering distinctly from alcohol, It is, as travellers in France know, the custom in all districts south of the Loire to supply wine gratis at the two meals, breakfast and dinner, at which the residents in an hotel eat in company, Re* peatedly, then, in the hotels in French watering places, I have watched children of five years old and upwards supplied by their mothers with wine enough visibly to flush and excite them, M Sables d'Olonne one little fellow, whose age could not be more than six, drank at each of two consecutive meals three tumblers of wine slightly diluted with water. The result was on one occasion that he commenced to kiss his mother, proceeded to kiss the person on the other side of him, continued by sprawling over the .table, and ended by putting his head, in his mother's lap, and falling to sleep. It never seems to enter the wind of a Frenchwoman that water may be drunk at a meal. tVjien long journeys by rail are taken, there is alwayß in the noat easket in which the Frenoh mother carries provisions, a bottle of wine or wine and water, out of which those of her children who have passed the stage of absolute tnfancy are allowed to drink, I can indeed say with truth that in the course of a pretty long series of observations of the French, chiefly made, I admit, in public vehicles and hotels, I have rarely if ever seen a glass of cold water, unqualified with any admixture, quaffed by a native. It is now the fashion to mistrust water even when blended with wine, for which purpose the various springs of the Eau St. Galmier are largely employed,