186 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



The poetry that is written of farmers' wives is usually about like this: 



" Oh give me the life of the farmer's wife, 

 In the fields and woods so bright, 

 'Mong the singing birds, and the lowing herds, 

 And the clover blossoms wliite. 

 The note of the morning's heavenward lark 

 Is the music sweet for me, 

 And the dewy flowers in the morning hours 

 The gems I love to see." 



How true to life! though taken from the farmer's own paper, the Grange 

 Visitor. How many of us are in the fields and woods so bright, 'mong the 

 singino- birds and the clover blossoms white? The most of us are in a hot 

 kitchen, hurrying with all our might in the early hours instead of among the 

 dewy flowers. But after all, should not this j^oetry be nearer the truth than 

 it is? I know that few of us enjoy the peace and beauty of our surround- 

 ings as we might. ''He that hath no inward beauty sees none, though all 

 around is beautiful," but I do not know as it follows that she has no inward 

 beauty who sees none in her surroundings. Many of us do not seem to 

 think it right to pause in the busy day to listen to the birds singing in our 

 shade trees (if we have any) or to musingly watch the rain or note the 

 development of the foliage around our homes — things which should be such 

 a source of pleasure to us. 



I fear we do not value our position as we ought. We should feel that, as 

 the country home is the support of the nation, it is there should be found 

 its purest, truest women, a goodly share of its ladies. We must do away 

 with the idea that we must get away from the farm, away from the harvest- 

 ing, threshing, butchering and sausage, and have nicer work and less of it 

 before we can be ladies. Let us feel that to fill well our place, be it where 

 it may, to be a true woman, to add dignity to labor, is to be a lady; for 

 the refinement of feeling, Avhich is the first essential of the true lad}^ finds 

 a much broader field in which to manifest itself in the narrow circle of home 

 than in society where there is so much less to cause friction ; and it is this 

 friction which must come into the lives of us all, that tries our souls. But 

 let us try to remember that the great event of to-day is usually but a trifle in 

 the memory of to-morrow. 



Farmers do not realize, I am sure, many of them, how much 

 they can help their wives to gain and hold that patience, that content- 

 ment, which enables them to be pleasant and ladylike through all the 

 cares that press upon them and well nigh rob them of these qualities. 

 How few of us but have seen days when we were so tired and over- 

 worked and so much was to be done that we felt all but ready to sink 

 beneath the load, and hardly felt like answering a civil question, when 

 our husband has stopped a moment on his way through the kitchen, to 

 pump a pail of water for us perhaps, and to say he was sorry the threshers 

 came just then, and how the load was lifted, how bright was the sunshine, 

 how much more pleasantly we could, speak, how much more like a lady we 

 felt than a moment before; for "dearer than the lover's praise" are the 

 words which tell a wife her work is appreciated, for, as George Eliot has 

 said, "It is hard to believe long together that anything is worth while unless 

 there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word 

 uttered now and then to imply that what is precious to us is precious alike 

 to another mind." 



