LIFE AMONG FARMERS.
There is much complaint among farmers' wives and daughters, of want of time for rest, recreation, and literary pursuits. "It is cook, eat, and scrub—cook, eat, and scrub, from morning till night, and from year to year," says many a farmer's wife. And so it is in many families. But how far this results from the very nature of the situation, and how far from injudicious domestic management, is a query worthy of our attention. A very large proportion of my readers, who are now factory girls, will in a few months or years be the busy wives of busy farmers; and if by a few speculations on the subject before us, and an illustration to the point, we can reach one hint that may hereafter be useful to us, our labor and "search of thought" will not have been in vain.
Mr. Moses Eastman was what is technically called a wealthy farmer. Every one in the country knows what this means. He had a farm of some hundred or more acres, a large two-story dwelling house, a capacious yard, in which were two large barns, sheds, a sheep-cote, granary, and hen-coop. He kept a hundred sheep, ten cows, horses and oxen in due proportion. Mr. Eastman often declared that no music was half so sweet to him as that of the inmates of this yard. I think we shall not quarrel with his taste in this manifestation; for it is certainly delightful, on a warm day, in early spring, to listen to them, the lambs, hens—Guinea and American—turkeys, geese, and ducks and peacocks.
Mr. Eastman was unbending in his adherence to the creed, prejudices, and customs of his fathers. It was his boast that his farm had passed on from father to son, to the fourth generation; and everybody could see that it was none the worse for wear. He kept more oxen, sheep, and cows than his father kept. He had "pulled down his barns and built larger." He had surrounded his fields and pastures with stone wall, in lieu of Virginian, stump, brush, and board fence. And he had taught his sons and daughters, of whom he had an abundance, to walk in his footsteps—all but Mary. He should always rue the day that he consented to let Mary go to her aunt's; but he acted upon the belief that it would lessen his expenses to be rid of her during her childhood. He had all along intended to recall her as soon as she was old enough to be serviceable to him. But he said he believed that would never be, if she lived as long as Methuselah. She could neither spin nor weave as she ought; for she put so much material in her yarn, and wove her cloth so thick, that no profit resulted from its manufacture and sale. Now Deborah, his oldest daughter, had just her mother's knack of making a good deal out of a little.—And Mary had imbibed some very dangerous ideas of religion,—she did not even believe in ghosts!—dress, and reading. For his part, he would not, on any account, attend any other meeting than old Mr. Bates's. His father and grandfather always attended there, and they prospered well. But Mary wanted to go to the other meeting occasionally, all because Mr. Morey happened to be a bit of an orator. True, Mr. Bates was none of the smartest; but there was an advantage in this. He could sleep as soundly, and rest as rapidly, when at his meeting, as in his bed; and by this means he could regain the sleep lost during the week by rising early and working late. And Mary had grown so proud that she would not wear a woolen home-manufactured dress visiting, as Deborah did. She must flaunt off to meeting every Sabbath, in white or silk, while chintz was good enough for Deborah. Deborah seldom read anything but the Bible, Watts's Hymn Book, "Pilgrim's Progress," and a few tracts they had in the house. Mary had hardly laid off her finery, on her return from her aunt's, before she inquired about books and newspapers. Her aunt had heaps of books and papers. These had spoilt Mary. True, papers were sometimes useful; he would have lost five hundred dollars by the failure of the —— Bank, but for a newspaper he borrowed of Captain Norwood. But the Captain had enough of them—was always ready to lend to him—and he saved no small sum in twenty years by borrowing papers of him.
How Captain Norwood managed to add to his property he could not conceive. So much company, fine clothing, and schooling! he wondered that it did not ruin him. And 'twas all folly—'twas a sin; for they were setting extravagant examples, and every body thought they must do as the Norwoods did. Mr. Norwood ought to remember that his father wore home-made; and what was good enough for his good old father was good enough for him. But alas! times were dreadfully altered.
As for Mary, she must turn over a new leaf, or go back to her aunt. He would not help one who did not help herself. Mary was willing, nay, anxious to return. To spend one moment, except on the Sabbath, in reading, was considered a crime; to gather a flower or mineral, absurd; and Mary begged that she might be permitted to return to Mrs. Barlow. As there was no prospect of reforming her, Mr. Eastman and his wife readily consented. Mr. Eastman told her, at the same time, that she must be preparing for a wet day; and repeatedly charged her to remember that those who folded their hands in the summer, must "beg in harvest, and have nothing."
Mary had often visited the Norwoods and other young friends, during the year spent at home; but she had not been permitted to give a party in return. Why, Deborah had never thought of doing such a thing! Mary begged the indulgence of her mother, with the assurance that it was the last favor she would ever ask at her hand. The mother in her at last yielded; and she promised to use her influence with her husband. After a deal of cavilling, he consented, on the condition that the strictest economy should attend the expenditures on the occasion, and that they should exercise more prudence in the family, until their loss was made gain. So the party was given.
"You find yourself thrown on barren ground, Miss Norwood," said Mary, as she saw Miss Norwood looking around the room; "neither papers, books, plants, plates, nor minerals."
"Where are those rocks you brought in, Molly!" said Deborah, with a loud, grating laugh.
Mary attempted to smile, but her eyes were full of tears.
"What rocks, Deborah!" asked Clarina Norwood.
"Them you see stuffed into the garden wall, there.—Mary fixed them all in a row on the table. I think as father does, that nothing is worth saving that can't be used; so I put them in the wall to keep the hens out of the garden. The silly girl cried when she see them; should you have thought it?"
"What were they, Mary?" asked Clarina.
"Very pretty specimens of white, rose, and smoky quartz, black and white mica, gneiss, hornblende, and a few others, that I collected on that very high hill, west of here."
"How unfortunate to lose them!" said Miss Norwood, in a soothing tone. "Could not we recover them, dear Mary?"
"There is no room for them," said Deborah. "We want to spread currants and blueberries on the tables to be dried. Besides, I think as father does, that there is enough to do, without spending the time in such flummery. As father says, 'time is our estate,' and I think we ought to improve every moment of it, except Sundays, in work."
"I must differ from you, Miss Eastman," said Miss Norwood. "I cannot think it the duty of any one to labor entirely for the 'meat that perisheth.' Too much, vastly too much time is spent thus by almost all."
"The mercy! you would have folks prepare for a wet day, wouldn't you?"
"I would have every one make provision for a comfortable subsistence; and this is enough. The mind should be cared for, Deborah. It should not be left to starve, or feed on husks."
"I don't know about this mind, of which you and our Mary make such a fuss. My concern is for my body. Of this I know enough."
"Yes; you know that it is dust, and that to dust it must return in a little time, while the mind is to live on for ever, with God and His holy angels. Think of this a moment, Deborah; and say, should not the mind be fed and clothed upon, when its destiny is so glorious? Or should we spend our whole lives in adding another acre to our farms, another dress to our wardrobe, and another dollar to our glittering heap?"
"Oh, la! all this sounds nicely; but I do think that every man who has children should provide for them."
"Certainly—intellectual food and clothing. It is for this I am contending. He should provide a comfortable bodily subsistence, and educate them as far as he is able and their destinies require."
"And he should leave them a few hundreds, or thousands, to give them a kind of a start in the world."
"He does this in giving them a liberal education, and he leaves them in banks that will always discount. But farther than education of intellect and propensity is concerned, I am for the self-made man. I think it better for sons to carve their own way to eminence with little pecuniary aid by way of a settlement; and for daughters to be 'won and wedded' for their own intrinsic excellence, not for the dowry in store for them from a rich father."
"There is no arguing with you, everybody says; so I'll go and see how my cakes bake."
Mr. Eastmam came in to tea, contrary to his usual custom.
"Clarina, has your father sold that great calf of his?" he inquired, as he seated himself snugly beside his "better half."
"Indeed, I do not know, sir," answered Clarina, biting her lip to avoid laughing.
"I heard Mr. Montgomery ask him the same question, this morning; and Pa said 'yes,' I believe," said Miss Norwood, smiling.
"How much did he get for it?"
Miss Norwood did not know.
"Like Mary, I see," said Mr. Eastman. "Now I'll warrant you that Debby can tell the price of every creature I've sold this year."
"Yes, father; I remember as plain as day, how much you got from that simple Joe Slater, for the white-faced calf—how much you got for the black-faced sheep, Rowley and Jumble, and for Star and Bright. Oh, how I want to see Bright! And then there is the black colt—you got forty dollars for him, didn't you, father?"
"Yes, Debby; you are a keen one," said Mr. Eastman triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you so, Julia?"
"I do not burden my memory with superfluities," answered Miss Norwood. "I can scarcely find room for necessaries."
"And do you rank the best way of making pies, cakes, and puddings, with necessaries or superfluities?"
"Among necessaries in household economy, certainly," answered Miss Norwood. "But Mrs. Child's 'Frugal Housewife' renders them superfluities as a part of memory's storage."
"Oh, the book costs something, you know; and if this can be saved by a little exercise of the memory, it is well, you know."
"The most capacious and retentive memory would fail to treasure up and retain all that one wishes to know of cooking and other matters," said Clarina.
"Well, then, one may copy from her book," said Mr. Eastman.
"Indeed, Mr. Eastman, to spend one's time in copying her recipes, when the work can be purchased for twenty-five cents, would be 'straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel,'" remarked the precise and somewhat pedantic Miss Ellinor Gould Smith. "And then the peculiar disadvantages of referring to manuscript! I had my surfeit of this before the publication of her valuable work."
"Ah! it is every thing but valuable," answered Mr. Eastman. "Just think of her pounds of sugar, her two pounds of butter, her dozen eggs, and ounces of nutmegs. Depend upon it, they are not very valuable in the holes they would make in our cash-bags." He said this with precisely the air of one who imagines he has uttered a poser.
"But you forget her economical and wholesome prescriptions for disease, her directions for repairing and preserving clothing and provisions, that would be lost without them," answered Miss Smith.
"But one should always be prying into these things, and learn them for themselves," said Mr. Eastman.
"On the same principle, extended in its scale, every man might make his own house, furniture, and clothing," said Miss Norwood. "With the expenditure of much labor and research, she has supplied us with directions; and I think it would be vastly foolish for every wife and daughter to expend just as much, when they can be supplied with the fruits of hers, for the product of half a day's labor."
"Does your mother use it much?" asked Mrs. Eastman.
"Yes; she acknowledges herself much indebted to it."
"I shouldn't think she'd need it; she is so notable. Has she made many cheeses this summer?"
"About the usual number, I believe."
"Well, I've made more than I ever did a year afore—thirty in my largest hoop, all new milk, and twenty in my next largest, part skimmed milk. Our cheese press is terribly out of order, now. It must be fixed, Mr. Eastman. And I have made more butter, or else our folks haven't ate as much as common. I've made it salter, and there's a great saving in this."
"There's a good many ways to save in the world, if one will take pains to find them out," said Mr. Eastman.
"Doubtless; but I think the best method of saving in provisions is to eat little," said Clarina, as she saw Mr. Eastman putting down his third biscuit.
"Why, as to that, I think we ought to eat as much as the appetite calls for," answered Mr. Eastman.
"Yes; if the appetite is not depraved by indulgence."
"Yes; it is an awful thing to pinch in eating," said Deborah.
"I never knew one to sin in doing it," said Miss Norwood. "But many individuals and whole families make themselves excessively uncomfortable, and often incur disease, by eating too much. There is, besides, a waste of food, and of labor in preparing it. In such families, there is a continual round of eating, cooking, and sleeping, with the female portion; and no time for rest, recreation, or literary pursuits."
"I have told our folks a great many times, that I did not believe that you lived by eating, over to your house," said Mr. Eastman. "I have been over that way before our folks got breakfast half ready; and your men would be out to work, and you women folks sewing, reading, or watering plants, or weeding your flower garden. I don't see how you manage."
"We do not find it necessary to manage at all, our breakfasts are so simple. We have only to make cocoa, and arrange the breakfast."
"Don't you cook meat for breakfast?" asked Mrs. Eastman.
"Never; our breakfast invariably consists of cocoa, or water, cold white bread and butter."
"Why, our men folks will have meat three times a day—warm, morning and noon, and cold at night. We have warm bread for breakfast and supper, always. When they work very hard, they want luncheon at ten, and again at three. I often tell our folks that it is step, step, from morning till night."
"Of course, you find no time to read," said Miss Norwood.
"No; but I shouldn't mind this, if I didn't get so dreadful tired. I often tell our folks that it is wearing me all out," said Mrs. Eastman, in a really aggrieved tone.
"Well, it is quite the fashion to starve, now-a-days, I know; but it is an awful sin," said Mr. Eastman.
Miss Norwood saw that she might as well spend her time in rolling a stone up hill, as in attempting to convince him of fallacy in reasoning.
"Clarina," said she, "did you ask Frederic to call for the other volume of the 'Alexandrian?'"
"Why, I should think that you had books enough at home, without borrowing," said Mr. Eastman, stopping by the way to rinse down his fifth dough-nut. "For my part, I find no time for reading anything but the Bible." And the deluded man started up with a gulp and a grunt. He had eaten enough for three full meals, had spent time enough for eating one meal, and reading several pages; yet he left the room with a smile, so self-satisfied in its expression, that it was quite evident that he thought himself the wisest man in New Hampshire, except Daniel Webster.
This is rather a sad picture of life among farmers. But many of my readers will bear me witness that it is a correct one, as far as it goes. Many of them have left their homes, because, in the quaint but appropriate language of Mrs. Eastman, it was "step, step, from morning till night." But there are other and brighter pictures, of more extensive application, perhaps, than that already drawn.
Captain Norwood had as large a farm as Mr. Eastman. His family was as large, yet the existence of the female portion was paradisiacal, compared with that of Mrs. Eastman and her daughters. Their meals were prepared with the most perfect elegance and simplicity. Their table covers and their China were of the same dazzling whiteness. Their cutlery, from the unfrequency of its contact with acids, with a little care, wore a constant polish. Much prettier these, than the dark oiled-cloth cover and corresponding et cetera of table appendages, at Mr. Eastman's. Mrs. Norwood and her daughters carried system into every department of labour. While one was preparing breakfast, another put things in nice order all about the house, and another was occupied in the dairy.
Very different was it at Mr. Eastman's. Deborah must get potatoes, and set Mary to washing them, while she made bread. Mrs. Eastman must cut brown bread, and send Deborah for butter, little Sally for sauce, and Susan for pickles. One must cut the meat and set it to cook; then it was "Mary, have you seen to that meat? I expect it wants turning. Sally, run and salt this side, before she turns it." And then, in a few moments, "Debby, do look to that meat. I believe that it is all burning up. How do them cakes bake? look, Sally. My goodness! all burnt to a cinder, nearly. Debby, why didn't you see to them?"
"La, mother! I thought Mary was about the lot, somewhere. Where is she, I wonder?"
"In the other room, reading, I think likely. Oh! I forgot: I sent her after some coffee to burn."
"What! going to burn coffee now? We sha'nt have breakfast to-day."
"You fuss, Debby. We can burn enough for breakfast in five minutes. I meant to have had a lot burned yesterday; but we had so much to do. There, Debby, you see to the potatoes. I wonder what we are going to have for dinner."
"Don't begin to talk about dinner yet, for pity's sake," said Deborah. "Sally, you ha'nt got the milk for the coffee. Susan, go and sound for the men folks: breakfast will be ready by the time they get here. Mary, put the pepper, vinegar, and salt on the table, if you can make room for them."
"Yes; and Debby, you go and get one of them large pumpkin pies," said Mrs. Eastman. "And Sally, put the chairs round the table; the men folks are coming upon the run."
"Oh, mother! I am so glad you are going to have pie! I do love it so well," said Susan, seating herself at the table, without waiting for her parents.
Such a rush! such a clatter of knives, forks, plates, cups, and saucers! It "realized the phrase of ——," and was absolutely appalling to common nerves.
After breakfast came the making of beds and sweeping, baking and boiling for dinner, making and turning cheese, and so on, until noon. Occasional bits of leisure were seized in the afternoon, for sewing and knitting that must be done, and for visiting.
The situation of such families is most unpleasant, but it is not irremediable. Order may be established and preserved in the entire household economy. They may restrict themselves to a simpler system of dietetics. With the money and time thus saved, they may purchase books, subscribe for good periodicals, and find ample leisure to read them. Thus their intellects will be expanded and invigorated. They will have opportunities for social intercourse, for the cultivation of friendships; and thus their affections will be exercised and warmed. Then, happy the destiny of the farmer, the farmer's wife, and the farmer's daughters.
A. F. D.