No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 731 



Or in the bower to twine the jasmine wreath. 

 "Or at the earliest blush of summer morn, 



To trim the bed, or turn the new mown hay, 

 Or pick the perfumed hop, or reap the g^olden corn; 

 So should my peaceful life all smoothly glide away." 



THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 



By MYMHA ZIMERLY, New Sheffield, Pa 



The tongue and pen are both interperters of the mind; but I hold 

 the pen to be the more faithful. Much has been said and written 

 about the farmer's daughter as she is and as she should be and we 

 will find few subjects so agreeable and picturesque as this one. 



All night long she can rest, hearing Nature breath deeply and 

 freely; but there is one stirring hour, when a wakeful influence goes 

 abroad over the sleeping hemisphere and all the out door world is 

 on their feet. It is then the cock first crows, not that it is time to 

 announce the dawn, but like a cheerful messenger speeding the 

 courses of the night. Cattle wakes in the meadows, sheep break 

 their fast on the dewy hillsides and change to a new lair among the 

 ferns, and she, the farmer's daughter, opens her dreaun- eyes and be- 

 holds the early dawn. She makes a hasty toilet and goes forth to do 

 the farm chores, while her mother gets breakfast which is always 

 ready at a certain time. 



After breakfast she w^ashes the dishes, then churns and after that 

 possibly carries a large pail of water to the men in the field half 

 a mile away, rake hay or gather sheaves until eleven o'clock. Then 

 she goes home, helps her mother with dinner, waits on the table, 

 washes dishes again, drives cattle to water then she returns to the 

 field and assists in the work until five o'clock, or in other words, 

 supper time. She again waits on the table, washes dishes, brings 

 cows home, milks five or ten, and carries the milk to the milk house, 

 strains it, slops the pigs, feeds tl^e calves and shuts up the chickens. 

 Next she prepares a lunch for the men on their return from the field, 

 pares apples, potatoes, shells peas or strings beans for meals of the 

 morrow, puts younger members of the household to bed and then 

 weary with household and farm drudgery retires to her own couch. 



This picture is not exaggerated. To it I can add, that on Monday 

 her moments are all improved as they fly, in sorting, rubbing, wring- 

 ing and starching clothes, and as the days come and go we find her 

 ironing, folding, and mending, cooking, sweeping, scouring and scrub- 

 bing. In different seasons we find her boiling soap and apple butter, 

 gathering apples for cider, preparing peaches, pears, plums, grapes, 

 blackberries and raspberries for canning and preserving, and so the 

 days and weeks pass till at the end of a year, if a dairy had been 

 kept of her varied occupations, it would even astonish her brothers 



