Il6 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



work feeling that the dinner hour is much easier than she 

 anticipated, and she meets her family with a cheerful counte- 

 nance. She has a right to that rest. Perhaps she may pick 

 up a book at that time, perhaps that is relaxation to her ; it may 

 be a book of poems, it need not be a recipe book necessarily, it 

 may be something that will refresh her soul. Let her go to the 

 piano any time during the day. You know when a woman 

 leaves school and goes onto a farm she is still just as much inter- 

 ested in books, she is still just as much interested in music as 

 that woman who went into the village or the city and settled in 

 life, who hired her help, went around the corner when she 

 wanted a loaf of bread instead of having to make it, who calls 

 in a milliner when she wants a hat or goes to the dressmaker 

 for her dress, and finds life a great deal easier in these respects. 

 The same two women possibly went to the same school, stood 

 as high in their classes, had the same ambitions in life, had 

 equal ability, and yet, when a woman goes onto a farm there is 

 work for her from morning until night. Shall we say that 

 woman is not as well educated, has not just as high ambitions 

 in life; shall we say that she is not just as intelligent as the 

 other woman who married a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher? 

 What do we expect of the farm woman? We expect that she 

 will be an all-around, well educated woman. What does she 

 do? She is her own cook, she must know all about cooking; 

 she is her own milliner, possibly her own dressmaker ; she takes 

 care of the animals about the place, or at least part of them ; 

 she attends to the flower garden ; she is the nurse of the house- 

 hold, and very often nurse for the neighborhood. She is the 

 woman who takes some interest in public afifairs in the neigh- 

 borhood ; she is a pillar of the church. I might enumerate a 

 good many things that she is. Do you say that the farmer's 

 wife, then, isn't an intelligent, all-round woman? She is a 

 woman with a broad education, with a practical education, the 

 woman upon whom we are all depending. She is the woman 

 whose sons and daughters we are relying upon. She is the 

 woman whose sons have gone to college, whose sons are occu- 

 pying important places in this world. She is the mother of the 

 household ; she is the woman who is staying at home and doing 

 that housework, taking up the cares of the household to let the 

 son and the daughter go away to school. In the city or village 

 it is the man a great many times who is furnishing money to 



