164 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



• 

 A school-teacher finding her health giving out from her 



mental labors, and unable from the small amount of her salary 



to seek refreshment at expensive watering places, resolved to 



devote herself to her garden during her summer vacation. 



She found in the autumn that she had gained a greater 



degree of vigor than ever before, and that instead of a doctor's 



bill to pay, she had a hundred dollars in her pocket as the 



result of her summer's work. . 



Our climate is a pretty tough one, but like every other brave 

 enemy, so often a friend in disguise, the only way to conquer it 

 is to meet it boldly. None suffer so little from the weather as 

 those who are out in it every day, and all day. Wise old Dr. 

 Jackson used to say, " that the danger was in staying in the 

 house," and it is most often there, by what in poetry we call 

 " the family hearth and cheerful fireside," but which is too 

 often in fact the air-tight stove and the hot-air register, that 

 catarrhs and consumptions begin, and not out in the east wind 

 or north-east snowstorm. 



The next consideration which makes the wider opening of 

 horticultural pursuits to women of great importance, is the wide 

 field of profitable labor which it opens. Undoubtedly the ques- 

 tion of woman's labor is an intricate and difficult problem ; it is 

 complicated by the fact that she is fitted by nature for part of 

 the duties of life, whose value is so difficult to estimate in 

 money that the world has settled the question by usually con- 

 sidering them worth nothing at all. The savage has his easy 

 way of solving the problem of woman's work. He settles it that 

 woman is to do all the work and he — none ! This has the merit 

 of simplicity, but has not on the whole been found especially 

 conducive to domestic felicity or the development of higher 

 qualities in either man or woman. 



Chivalry took the other view of the subject, and exalting the 

 lady into a porcelain angel, proclaimed her to be only the orna- 

 ment of society. This, too, was consistent as regarded the lady 

 of high degree, and chivalry took small note of any other. The 

 noble lady was the ward of the state or king, who was bound to 

 provide her with a dowry and — a husband. But at present we 

 vibrate between these two extremes. The working-woman can 

 do any work she pleases for very small pay, as in the Tyndale 

 iron works, and the fine lady may do absolutely nothing, if she 



