128 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



this point. In Scribner's last issue is the " Corner Cupboard," 

 which is made the basis for a pleasant little story that reminds 

 me somewhat of the kitchen cabinet. Have you seen " The 

 Corner Cupboard " ? 



Miss Van Rensselaer. No. 



Mr. Gold. Look it up in Scribner's, last issue, I believe. 



Mr. HoYT. I have been hesitating for some time whether 

 I ought to say anything about this important and. vital, and I 

 might say tender, subject. If there is anything that a wife hates 

 to hear talked about it is for her husband to tell how his mother 

 used to do things. Of course there is nothing that stimulates 

 work as well as love for that work, and there is nothing that 

 makes w^ork such a drudgery as to have no love or heart in 

 that work, and I am sorry to say the tendency at the present 

 time is for both boys and girls to look upon work as a drudgery, 

 therefore they do not like to do it. I know of instances where 

 young ladies will not do a particle of housework because they 

 haven't the strength. It makes their backs ache to sweep, and 

 yet they will take a stick and go into a forty-acre field and 

 knock a ball all day long, and chase it about with perfect ease 

 and contentment because their hearts are in it. It is no harder 

 work to sweep than it is to knock a ball over a ten-acre field, 

 neither should I think from the position that it would make the 

 back ache any worse. 



]\Iy mind goes back to my boyhood days, and I see my 

 mother doing her work, and her heart was in it. I have seen 

 her, day after day, skim thirty pans of milk and carry it to the 

 swill barrel perhaps forty feet away to empty it. I have seen 

 her, and I have helped her, pick her forty or fifty geese every 

 six weeks through the summer. I have seen her dip her five 

 hundred candles twice a year into the tallow to make the candles 

 for the family. We had men on the farm to work, and they 

 boarded in the family. I have seen her, for rest, take her knit- 

 ting needles and all the evening long, knit, knit, knit from the 

 W'ool, perhaps, that she had carded, and knit for seven children 



