I lately asked a lawyer in Northampton County why certain persons had allowed the Lutheran and Reformed farmers, men of very little school learning, to outstrip them in the pursuit of wealth. He answered that all the tendency of the education of these last was saving. “In old times,” he continued, “when we had no ranges nor cooking-stoves, but a fire on the hearth, I used to hear my mother say to her daughters that they must not let the dish-water boil, or they would not be married for seven years.” On the same principle, when a young “English” girl whom I knew told a young “Dutchman” that she was going to make bread, he said, “I’m coming for a handful of your dough-trough scrapings;” the idea being that there should be no scrapings left.
Mr. S., of Lehigh County, says, “We make money in Pennsylvania by saving; in New York, they make money by paying out.”
Mrs. E., of the same county, says, “We Pennsylvanians are brought up to work in the house and to family affairs, but the Eastern girls are brought up more in the factories, and they don’t know anything about housework. Many have been married, and lived here in this town (Allentown), of whom I have heard speak, who have not lived happily, because they were not used to keep house in the way that their husbands had been accustomed to. They were very intelligent, but not accustomed to work, and their families would get poor, and stay poor.” Mrs. R.’s daughter added, that “the New England men, the Eastern men, milk and do all the outside work.”
The writer thinks, nevertheless, that New England women will not be willing to admit that they do not understand housework, and are not eminently “faculized.”
We Lancaster “Dutch” are always striving to seize Time’s forelock. We rise, even in the winter, about four, feed the stock while the women get breakfast, eat breakfast in the short days by coal-oil lamps, and by daylight are ready for the operations of the day. The English folks and the backsliding “Dutch” are sometimes startled when they hear their neighbors blow the horn or ring the bell for dinner. On a recent pleasant October day the farmer’s wife was churning out-of-doors, and cried, “Why, there’s the dinner-bells a’ready. Mercy days!” I went in to the clock, and found it at twenty minutes of eleven. The “Dutch” farmers almost invariably keep their time half an hour or more ahead, like that village in Cornwall where it was twelve o’clock when it was but half-past eleven to the rest of the world. Our “Dutch” are never seen running to catch a railroad train.
We are not a total-abstinence people. Before these times of high prices, liquor was often furnished to hands in the harvest-field.
A few years ago a meeting was held in a neighboring school-house to discuss a prohibitory liquor law. After various speeches the question was put to the vote, thus: “All those who want leave to drink whiskey will please to rise.” “Now all those who don’t want to drink whiskey will rise.” The affirmative had a decided majority.
Work is a cardinal virtue with the “Dutchman.” “He is lazy,” is a very opprobrious remark. At the quilting, when I was trying to take out one of the screws, Katy Groff, who is sixty-five, exclaimed, “How lazy I am, not to be helping you!” (“Wie ich bin faul.”)
Marriages sometimes take place between the two nationalities; but I do not think the “Dutch” farmers desire English wives for their sons, unless the wives are decidedly rich. On the other hand, I heard of an English farmer’s counselling his son to seek a “Dutch” wife. When the son had wooed and won his substantial bride, “Now he will see what good cooking is,” said a “Dutch” girl to me. I was surprised at the remark, for his mother was an excellent housekeeper.
The circus is the favorite amusement of our people. Lancaster papers have often complained of the slender attendance which is bestowed upon lectures and the like; even theatrical performances are found “slow,” compared with the feats of the ring.