The Empty Flour Barrel
A young married woman, whose husband was not regarded as a very good “provider” and who had been housekeeping a year or two, was quite flattered one afternoon at receiving calls by two estimable old ladies of the neighborhood. It may be taken for granted that they knew pretty nearly all the facts regarding the young couple in question. And their disapproval of the husband was about equally balanced by their sympathy for the wife.
After devoting an hour or two to conversation with her guests, the young housekeeper excused herself in order that she might prepare the five o’clock supper. Styles of entertainment naturally change according to the times, but at that period no farm supper table with guests present would be considered as properly spread without an abundant supply of hot soda biscuits which would be made more palatable by serving some kind of fruit sauce.
Shortly after the young hostess had set about her task of preparing supper, a pounding was heard in the kitchen. The two old ladies looked at each other significantly. The pounding continued. The hollow sound could suggest but one thing. The housewife was making a desperate effort to gather up enough flour from a nearly empty barrel to make the biscuits de rigeur for supper.
The old ladies became more and more uneasy and the conversation died away. Finally one of them arose.
“Do you know, I’m going home! It doesn’t seem to me as though I could swallow a mouthful of one of those biscuits. That poor thing doesn’t have half enough to eat!”
While the other lady was hesitating, the hostess re-entered the room. She of the uneasy conscience had already put on her wrap. The hostess protested but with no results. Her decision being unalterable, the other guest decided that it would be more diplomatic for her to make an excuse also. And the ladies departed to their homes, each of them more disgusted with Jake’s improvidence than before they had apparently encountered the direct evidence that his poor wife must be going hungry.
This was many years ago and probably not even millionaires now buy their flour in barrels. But just because poor “Jake” had been a little slow about finding the wherewithal to lay in perhaps a year’s stock of flour for himself and wife, in one package, his wife’s social status received a serious jolt.
Under the strictly home rule township system of the New England states, only the large towns have their own resorts for the “down-and-outs” known as “poor farms.”