18S2.] FARM LIFE. 295 



for? What have I done?" "There, now you will remember 

 never to touch a swamp." 



But farther hack I promised to tell what a tiny hand could do, 

 or facts and fallacies of matrimony, for there is no one thing that 

 so much enters into the weal and woe of farm life, as the choice 

 of a companion. It is one of the greatest events of our life; and 

 yet there is the least consideration given to it of any transaction 

 we ever make. In almost every town you can select a dozen or 

 more young ladies that are sensible, sober-minded, steady young 

 women, the salt of the earth, and to all appearance would make 

 the best of farmers' wives, and yet I will venture to say, that none 

 of our young farmers are particularly crazy after them, but they 

 will seek in another direction, and get some one wholly unsuited 

 to the position they are called to occupy. Soon the milk from the 

 dairy has to be sold, then the cows, and finally the farm sold, and 

 with it all their earthly happiness. And even some of our best 

 farmers' daughters ai-e aspiring to something higher than the farm, 

 but they make a grave mistake. 



Cease pointing the finger of scorn at our hardy sons of the soil. 

 Take to the farm, its labors, its cares, its duties, and love them as 

 you do the farmer, then will these sterile hill tops bud and blossom 

 as the rose, and a generation shall rise up and call you blessed, for 

 upon the young ladies of this generation hangs the future of our 

 agriculture, and if you would have an Eden home, keep the old 

 farm-house in order, always have a bright light and a cheerful 

 greeting when your husband comes home at eve; and there are a 

 great many ways you can be useful in the world, for the word useful 

 is written in large characters upon everything. 



About seven miles from where I live, there lives a wealthy farm- 

 er; he has a good farm, and as well fenced as any in the State, he 

 has one daughter at home, that is well educated and refined. One 

 day this fall this daughter was out on the farm, and found one of 

 her father's cattle choked with an apple; her father was gone, but 

 she looked up her brother, and the tw^o tied the heifer to a bar- 

 post, and put a plovz-clevis into the creatures mouth to hold it open, 

 and the young lady's hand and arm being smaller than her broth- 

 er's, she stripped up her sleeve, and put her arm through that clevis 

 up to her shoulder, and she could only reach the apple with the 

 ends of her thumb and fingers, but she pinched the apple in two 

 and brought out a part of it; the second time she brought out the 

 rest, thus saving the life of a valuable animal. Now that is what 



