WOMAN ON THE FARM.

BY MRS. G. E. DUGAN, SEDALIA, MO.

Having been invited to present individual views on the above theme, I shall do so conscientiously and according to the light of my best understanding.

Woman on the farm, as in all other spheres, is quite necessary for advancement and prosperity. The weight of the universe seems to rest on her slender shoulders, and old Atlas appears to have shirked from his original duty, leaving her to stagger on as best she may under this great weight, or to sink beneath its responsibilities; even as Adam, coward-like, laid all the blame of the mischief done in Eden on his gentle spouse. It has been frequently said-and by those of his own sex-that "man is proverbially selfish," and while spending any amount of money to lighten his own labor, gives grudgingly the mite which should be accorded unasked to make easier the work of the household.

My experience in farm life was in one of the Middle States, and there, at least, was no need for complaint. The farmer's wife had her sewing machine, her washing machine, the latest improved churn, and whatever else would best aid her to perform her tasks easily. Besides, she never did any out-door work, such as carrying wood, water and milking cows, these "chores" were relegated to the sterner sex, except, perhaps, in harvest time, or in the rush of "threshing machine" experiences.

Missouri is practically a pioneer State, notwithstanding the fact that her first American settlement dates back almost a century, and that she has such a grand area of tillable and beautifully diversified farming land, and other resources of the greatest magnitude. It is not necessary in this paper to discuss the "whys and wherefores" of

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this fact, let it stand simply as a fact, and from its standpoint discuss woman on the Missouri farm.

Pioneer life is the bravest, the noblest and the hardest kind of life. Beginners on the farm are subjected to trials, inconveniences and hardships literally unknown to beginners in any other sphere of action. Labor is harder, and results more tardy, than the unthinking have any conception of, and the pinching economies of such a commencement will leave dwarfing marks on the minds of every person who does not see the danger and guard well against it.

Granted that you have economized and toiled until the iron yoke of poverty is lifted from your neck and you feel yourself to be once. more a free man. Now is the time to set your foot upon pettiness and to show your noble self-sacrificing wife how much you appreciate her brave spirit. Make her burdens as light as possible and spend your money freely in the home. No investment that you can possibly make will pay you so well, and nothing you ever did, or ever will do, can bring you such a yield of happiness.

From bright, cheerful, happy homes, children seldom go to destruction, therefore let the necessary books be purchased and periodicals be subscribed to, that will feed the mind and satisfy the youthful craving for knowledge, which is just as natural and strong as the stomach's desire for bread.

Provide brain food for your family, and then watch them grow in mental grace and beauty day by day, and you will feel amply repaid for the outlay.

Every woman who does her own sewing should have a sewingmachine, not an old broken down, second-hand affair, but the best and lightest running machine the market affords.

Then she should, by all means, have a good steam washer and a wringer, and one of those justly celebrated "Bentwood churns" the the only real labor-saving and superlatively excellent churn I have ever seen, though there may be others quite as good which have not come beneath my observation. Women themselves are often to blame for degenerating into mere drudges.

As a rule, I believe that women are a trifle "stingier" than men know how to be.

A little money seems to them such a vast amount, sometimes, (because they have had such slim purses always) that they think to spend it would be shameless extravagance, even when it is given to them freely, to buy some needed improvement to save their own health and strength.

Let me advise you my dear sisters on the farm! Get what you need and rest when you are weary, even though you wear nothing but five cent calico all your lives, and John's supper waits when he is in an "awful hurry" to get down to the corner grocery or out there by the old school house where the boys and idle men are pitching quoits, and surreptitiously passing a suspicious looking bottle which is not filled with cold tea, even if they do declare it to be "young hyson."

Sons like to be proud of their mothers, and husbands doubly respect and venerate wives who are refined and educated, therefore, do not sink from the level of a loved companion to the position of a semidespised slave. Take time to read, not now and then, a little while on Sunday afternoon, but every day or evening of your life.

Don't let me catch you with a huge basket of mending by your side on a winter evening, unless your husband or one of the children intends to read some good newspaper or book aloud for your benefit.

If your husband does not like to read aloud and the children are too young to favor you, it is your duty to employ at least one hour of each evening in reading aloud to them, even if they are obliged to wear ragged clothes in consequence.

The soul is of much more consequence than the body, and scientists locate the temporal home of the soul in the intelligence, or brain cells.

If you have no books and are not able yet to buy any, borrow from your neighbors, but do not soil, tear or "dog-ear" a borrowed volume of any sort. Put a paper cover on it, keep it out of the way of children too small to read or understand it, and just as soon as you have finished its perusal, send it home.

All this may sound dictatorial and impudent, but if you could only understand how deeply I have your welfare at heart, you would not take offense at the minutia which may seem irrelevant, but which is too often neglected in papers designed to do good. Marriage is a copartnership where one has the same right to the common purse as the other. No married man can thrive without the consent of his chosen companion, yet women do not receive one-half the credit due to them for the good management which brings affluence and respectability to the family.

Dear reader, you can recall to your mind some family held together and kept respectable by the thrift, economy and persevering industry of a good woman, unequally yoked to a miserable, thriftless, idle and good-for-nothing man, but have you, in all the years of your experience, ever known a man to do well and a family to be respectable with a slatternly, slipshod, "no-account" woman at the head of the home?

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You may answer at your leisure, and if you can bring forward one such instance, please notify me, as I should be glad to know if there be such a case in existence.

When mothers are degraded to the level of beasts of burden, the children are sure to be common and coarse. The mother's mind is the formative one, and children receive their earliest and most lasting impressions from her instruction, therefore it is a great mistake and an absolute retrograding toward barbarism when women are looked upon as fit only to toil as does the horse or ox.

I believe that men, as a rule, intend to be kind, generous and appreciative, but women who are accustomed to overworking, spoil their husbands and also spoil their sons, which is not only unfortunate so far as the women are concerned individually, but also bad for the future of their sons' wives.

I personally know a mother who is far from being strong, yet she has so systematically spoiled her only son, that he is looked upon with contempt by his neighbors and despised where he might have been respected had he received proper training. He will sit by the fireside and allow his mother to bring in heavy buckets of coal, and on the coldest days he will not milk a cow, and she has all of the outdoor and indoor work to do, although he is man grown and healthy. To compensate his mother for her hard labor, he cheers her up by "strumming" on an old guitar or banjo most of the time. It is a spectacle to make the gods weep, and yet one cannot feel a vast amount of pity for so foolish a woman.

There is a great deal of quiet romance, and real love, and genuine tenderness in the homes of many farmers, and there is a lamentable "other side" to the picture, so bleak, so chilling, so utterly desolate, that we turn from its contemplation in absolute despair.

What does it signify though the sentient blossoms generously shed their heart's richness on the tender atmosphere, if the senses are too dulled by care and toil to note their sweet offering?

Or what signifies the rapturous warblings of the happy birds, to souls so full of trouble that they neither see nor hear them?

The green blades of the spring grass come forth smiling, and the heavy foot that crushes them down might as well tramp over cheerless pavements for all the beauty its owner can see in the luxuriant carpet of verdure.

The leaves whisper, sigh and rustle with joy and thankfulness, and man goes out to feed his herds and has no eye for the beautiful pictures they make and is scarcely grateful for the refreshing shade. These things ought not so to be.

The truly æsthetic man and woman ought to find their purest enjoyment in the country.

We build for ourselves monuments of pain and care; we rear them as carefully as the ancients did the pyramids, and when we get them high enough they topple over and crush us into nothingness beneath their grinding surfaces. We do not know why we do this, and we often think we will stop it, but having once begun to rear these awful things we work at them by a strange facinating fatality until they are great enough to finish our earthly career.

There is a world of quiet philosophy in that question asked by Jesus of Nazareth, the savior of mankind, and I wonder that more persons do not pause to ponder the pertinent inquiry: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”