MAINE STATE SOCIETY, 43 



that is, what "my mother used to do." " She not only did all the 

 cooking and washing, ironing and mending, and dairy work, but 

 spun and wove the clothes we wore, into the bargain." Stop my 

 dear sir, and reflect. Did your mother do all this herself? A 

 generation ago, good, efficient and reliable American girls worked in 

 kitchens, at four shillings per week, the year round. Perhaps your 

 mother had "help" like that; perhaps, too, the habits of living w^ere 

 every way simpler ; the house and furniture, smaller and plainer, 

 requiring far less care than now ; perhaps a healthier race of men, 

 with more active habits, and less dyspeptic stomachs, than the pres- 

 ent, demanded less devotion to the niceties of cooking ; and perhaps 

 fashion and custom, with their thousand demands, never proved a 

 burden to tJiem. Or perhaps your mother, and all our mothers, 

 did perform Herculean labors, and perhaps the present generation 

 is feeble and weak from that very reason; at any rate, one thing we 

 do know, Avomen now, who are wives and mothers, especially in the 

 country, do often work beyond their strength, and when the cares 

 of maternity are many, and unrelieved, they do go into their graves 

 in consequence. If, worse than this, crimes, which we cannot name, 

 are committed in consequence, by the already overburdened mother, 

 in her despair at the prospect of additional cares, while we can offer 

 no apology for the sin, we can perceive the extenuating circum- 

 stances which she offers to her God and her conscience, for her guilt. 



Take the "well to do" farmer's wife, in midsummer, when all the 

 hopes of the year may be disappointed, if the kitchen fails of its part 

 in the performance, and let her be, as we know she is at any moment 

 liable to be, left without help ; let breakfast, dinner and supper, 

 kitchen and bed chamber, washing, ironing and mending, butter and 

 cheese, all depend upon her single hands, and then add, as some- 

 times it is added, a sick child, or a crying baby, and own if one 

 could be more sorely pressed, than his wife and mother is, through 

 her ambition for her husband's prosperity, and her own sacred ma- 

 ternal instincts? 



One evil consequence of this toil on the part of the farmer's wife, 

 operates directly to cut off a great source of intellectual improve- 

 ment to him, by limiting his hospitality. The exercise of few virtues 

 carry with them more direct profit and pleasure, than that of hospi- 

 tality. The good old-fashioned open house, and open doors, a gen- 



