How many great qualities are grafted into nations by their geographical position, by political necessity, and by institutions! Avarice was destroyed for a time among the Lacedaemonians by the creation of an iron coinage, too heavy and too bulky to be conveniently hoarded.
I found myself in a carriage with two middle-aged women belonging to the domestic and retired class of Parisians I have spoken of above.

A few civilities were sufficient to gain me their confidence, and after some minutes I was acquainted with their whole history.
They were two poor sisters, left orphans at fifteen, and had lived ever since, as those who work for their livelihood must live, by economy and privation.

For the last twenty or thirty years they had worked in jewelry in the same house; they had seen ten masters succeed one another, and make their fortunes in it, without any change in their own lot.

They had always lived in the same room, at the end of one of the passages in the Rue St.Denis, where the air and the sun are unknown.
They began their work before daylight, went on with it till after nightfall, and saw year succeed to year without their lives being marked by any other events than the Sunday service, a walk, or an illness.
The younger of these worthy work-women was forty, and obeyed her sister as she did when a child.

The elder looked after her, took care of her, and scolded her with a mother's tenderness.