No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 187 



This interest would have given his girls those pretty things in 

 which girls so delight. It would have given his boy that better 

 education he so much coveted. It would have bought that strong 

 te«m the heavy work of the farm demanded. It would have brought 

 water to the house and barn, the wind doing the pumping and carry- 

 ing. 



To some of you, one hundred and fifty dollars does not seem much; 

 you have given it for the ring that glistens on your wife's finger. 

 You cannot imagine how so small a sum could put dark curtains 

 round a man's conscience, and so shut out the light that he would 

 be apt to swerve from the path of strict integrity. His neighbor, 

 in talking over matters, had said to him, ''You are foolish to expect 

 to get along doing as you are doing. I am not a man that ever had 

 much schoolin', but I know a few tricks that are worth more than 

 allyour book larnin'. I'll tell you one or two, if you won't give them 

 away, for it don't do for too many to catch on. Now, when I want 

 to hire a man, I always look out for one who has no friends in this 

 part of the country. When his time is about out — and I never have 

 any money for him between whiles — when his time is about out, I 

 trump up some dreadful charge against him, threaten him with the 

 law, etc. The outcome is the man is so frightened he is glad to get 

 away — wages or no wages. Our girls, when we have any, we man- 

 age in the same way. Oh, it's easy, after you learn how, and those 

 fellows eat so much anyway, they don't earn more than their board." 

 Various other "ways that were dark and tricks that were vain" were 

 recited for Gabriel's education. But one night, the light of a burn- 

 ing barn showed to this worse than ''Heathen Chinee" that in some 

 of these games two could play. 



As the stress of poverty became more and more heavy, he brooded 

 over these confidences and temptations of his rich neighbor until 

 his mind was so clouded with melancholy that he hardly knew the 

 right from the wrong and almost lost faith in the justice of God or 

 the integrity of man. 



Seeing her father's distress of mind, his oldest daughter often 

 asked herself the question, what can I do to help? 



She knew that school teaching was out of the question, as her 

 education had not been such as would enable her to obtain the cer- 

 tificate necessary to enter the ranks of that profession. As that 

 door was closed, was there any other she could open? A friend of 

 hers taught music, going from house to house on her bicycle in 

 good weather, and using one of the farm horses when the roads 

 were bad. But the song of the birds, the humming of the bees, and 

 the joy of the young life within her were the only factors in her mu- 

 sical education. On this farm, the piano and the mortgage had not 



