FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 87 



knowledge. Read to grow in knowledge so that you may hold the respect of 



sous, 



"Who in their strength elate. 

 Challenge the van and Iront of fate." 



and daughters who ever need tlie wise counsel and sympathy of intelligent 

 mothers. There have been times and places in which there Avas as bitter per- 

 secution of a reading house-wife as it was possible for individuals to carry on 

 under this dispensation, but the reading has blessed tlic world. Never suffer 

 the blush to mantle your cheek as if you were a culprit because you are found 

 reading. If doubling the growth of grass blades is meritorious surely praise 

 is due to her who multiplies thoughts and ideas. Appreciate yourselves; your 

 own needs, as well as the needs of your families. I read a little history not 

 long since of seven women in humble toilsome life, who banded together to 

 study, and these are the words of one of the number whose liair is whitened 

 with fifty-two winters : " I really don't know what would have become of me if 

 the society had not happened when it did'" said she, with tears in her eyes. 

 " When I was fretted with our money troubles and tired with my work, I would 

 sit down in my big chair and read our next lesson, and try to think what it 

 meant, and somehow the load would melt away. If I did not read more than 

 ten minutes I felt refreshed." The woman in the farm-house needs to be 

 better supplied with substantial education before she takes up the duties of 

 her lot than any others; her equipment in physical and mental qualifications 

 should be as complete as is possible. The ancient Athenian matron believed 

 it to be a higli compliment which she paid to her Spartan visitor: ''0, dear- 

 est Spartan ! Welcome. How beautiful you look; how fresh your complexion. 

 You could throttle an ox ! " This home makes it necessary to Idc able to throttle 

 something more formidable than the patient though powerful ox. The igno- 

 rance and vice of tlie old world is often drifted in upon her own hearth -stone. 

 It is possible that tlie farm-hand may smirch her boys with the accumulated 

 filth of generations, and there are numberless shapes of vice and wrong that 

 she must be powerful and vigilant to contend against. 



She is i>olated, and must of necessity be left mucli to her own resources of 

 thought for companionship. She is where her influence will be felt upon the 

 mind and character of the great middle class in this republic, and she will 

 more often be called upon to meet emergencies in her own strength. 



AVe who stand to-day in the midst of the never finisiiod duties of our homes 

 know that a crowd of callow youths are about us, eagerly looking 

 forward to life, and unless wisely restrained, will set out early in the great busi- 

 ness of home-making, to repeat the experiment of using untutored heads and 

 undisciplined hands. What can we do for our daughters and sons that they 

 may be better prepared to live? tiiat they may have a larger lease of life's real 

 good? that they may not be so nearly ready to die when they iiave just learned 

 to live? Fathers and mothers hurried and worried with the duties of each day 

 are not competent to do what is needed, and the common school will by no 

 means supply the lack. We shall perhaps call in question our own good sense 

 and sanity wiien we review what we have done through our representatives in 

 Lansing. An appropriation of §3O,0UO was made to establish a reform school 

 for our criminal girls, while a bill based upon the reriuest of our State Board 

 of Agriculture that an api)ropiiation be made of $IU,U0U to build a hall for 

 ladies, S-^,(K)U to furnisii it, §1,000 fur lady teachers' salary, and §G00 for mat- 

 ron's pay, making a total of §iy,G00, so that our virtuous daughters might be 



