HINDRANCES TO SUCCESSFUL FAR:\IING. 105 



everything ; casting her bread upon the waters, trusting that 

 after many days it should return to her ; and it is the duty 

 and shouhl he the joy of that husl)and to sec that she is not 

 disappointed. 



But how many have early started out to taste the antici- 

 pated happiness of the life of a farmer's wife, only to find it, 

 as in after years they ate, but as the "dead sea's fruit of 

 ashes." 



How much the farmer, absorbed in his severe or.t-door 

 avocation, is apt to forget the trials and hardships and lone- 

 liness of her whom he has taken to love, to cherish, and to 

 make his equal and his partner in everything. 



Must it stand as an everlasting reproach to us, that the 

 life of a New England farmor's wife is one of hard, uncom- 

 panioned endurance, which originated that harsh old coup- 

 let, — 



"INIan's work is from sun to sun, 

 But woman's work is never done " ? 



Every farmer should regard with practical, compassionate 

 assistance, the labors of an aml)itious, uncomplaining wife 

 in the kitchen, at the laundry and the dairy ; bearing, as she 

 does, the superadded cares of maternity and the endurance 

 of the unnumbered and unmentioned sufferino's incident to 

 her sex. The man who, not selfishly perhaps, but thought- 

 lessly, has allowed his Avife, earnest and anxious to promote 

 his interests and comfort, to gradually take upon herself one 

 after another of the heavy, constantly accumulating burdens 

 in a farmer's family, till they have broken her strength and 

 crushed out the vitality of her spirit by a premature old age, 

 will find too late, alas, for his own comfort and peace of 

 mind, if he have any sensiljility left, that he has brought 

 upon himself the greatest and most irreparable of all the 

 hindrances to successful farming:. 



Mr. Phillips. How are our young men to get farms 

 without mortgaging them, under our present social system? 

 Mr. Gkixnell. I don't know. 

 Mr. Phillips. Is there any remedy? 

 Mr. Grinnell. I only attempted to delineate some of 



