44 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



eration ago, could be kept without the sacrifice of life and health, 

 which thej at present entail. Now, doors are shut by hearts that 

 would fain keep them open, and it is said that ministers' wives who 

 cannot shut theirs, are being rapidly carried to the grave in conse- 

 quence. Farmers' wives may shut their doors, and still have enough 

 to do to kill them. Their dearest friend could scarcely be welcomed 

 in haying time, and if one should ever visit them without ascertain- 

 ing by the latest mail that some kind of a girl was in the kitchen, 

 they would be doing at the best, a cruel favor. Nor is this limita- 

 tion of hospitality confined to the country and to farmers' wives. 

 The domestic life of the city suflFers much inconvenience and loss 

 from the same cause, and pleads along with the country for reform. 

 We go on now, to what we consider the strongest plea for reform 

 in the work of the farmer's wife, and the one which most afiects the 

 whole community and the subject of this essay. It lies in the fact, 

 that this unrelicvahlc toil on the part of the wife, shuts out the 

 cultivated class of men froon resorting to the soil for S7tbsiste?ice. 

 Said a young and talented lawyer, "I would go on to a farm, in 

 these hard times, and should enjoy it above all things, if I were not 

 afraid that my wife with her young child, would sink under the toil 

 and care that she could not escape as a farmer's wife." Said an- 

 other gentleman, the other day, " I sold my farm last fall; I farmed 

 it till my wife killed herself with hard work, and then I had to do 

 something else for a living; and yet, I always got the best help for 

 her that I could get." Young men resort to the trades and pro- 

 fessions, in choosing their vocations, for they know that intelligent 

 girls who have their eyes open, are more likely to accept their hands 

 in marriage, thus, than if living by the soil. Mothers (themselves 

 overworked) will foster the ambition in their daughters, for a showy, 

 superficial education, that they may marry in a sphere which does 

 not entail the hard work they have themselves endured. Said one, 

 "I would rather follow my daughter to the grave, than see her 

 marry and have the hardships to undergo that I have had." This 

 mother had reared eight children, whose ages were within two years 

 of each other, and her husband's limited means had made the burden 

 of toil so severe, that almost the strongest desire of her heart was 

 to save her daughters from a similar fate, by marrying them to rich 

 men. 



