OF A CERTAIN PENNSYLVANIA FAMILY. 39 



mental ability. They have lived on various rented farms, and for the 

 past 15 years have worked a small place near C. At first glance it is 

 inexplicable why they are not more prosperous, for both are honest, 

 hardworking, and sober. They have no children. It appears, though, 

 that there is some mismanagement on the part of the husband and a 

 too-great willingness to oblige his neighbors, leading to neglect of his 

 own interests. His wife's defects are also a serious factor in the case. 

 She is a very short, corpulent woman, small head, rather good features, 

 neat in her person, and civil in her manner, gets about with great 

 difficulty, but manages nevertheless to keep house in a fashion. She is 

 extremely defective in her sense of number, quantity, and proportion ; 

 can tell the time of the day, the day of the week, and count in a me- 

 chanical fashion up to 20, but can not handle even small numbers or 

 quantities intelligently. She knows, for example, that you save a 

 "good piece" by taking a certain road, but can not tell whether that 

 "piece" is more nearly 1 mile or 3. She remembers that she was 

 married on a Wednesday, but can not tell the month or year, or whether 

 it was 15, 20, or 30 years ago. She herself is "pretty old," but not so 

 old as her mother, who may be 35 (in reality 84). In trading in the 

 village store she was pleased with some bulk coffee which had been 

 put up in different colored sacks; her sack chancing to be red, she has 

 henceforth demanded that color, regardless of the quality of the coffee 

 it may contain. Her house is poorly furnished and not very clean; 

 walls discolored, rag carpet faded and dirty, rusty box-stove in one cor- 

 ner, pictures awry. Cottage organ and dresser crowded with a queer 

 assortment of ornaments, suggestive of a child's playhouse. There 

 was a huge china dog wearing her husband's collar, a broken lamp- 

 stand, a mirror flanked by a pepper box, a shaving mug, an ancient 

 Christmas bell, and a patent-medicine bottle containing a bouquet of 

 soiled paper flowers. She can not make her own clothing. Her favor- 

 ite occupation is sewing patch-work for quilts, of which she is said to 

 have dozens; the pattern is always small squares, which, however, are 

 more apt to be oblong; these are sewed with clumsy stitches into long 

 strips; if they prove too long when laid on the bed, she chops them 

 off, and finally, by the trial-and-error method, she is able to sew all 

 together into the proper rectangular shape. With all these defects, 

 she still had sufficient sense of the fitness of things to resent the too 

 cordial interest in her private concerns. She is, moreover, a kindly, 

 obliging person, childishly stubborn and unreasonable at times, but, 

 in the main, a good neighbor and friend. Two children of this couple, 

 a boy and a girl, involving extremely difficult labor, were born dead. 



The third child (IV-97) of III-35 and 36 was born 1859. He is a 

 very short round-bellied man, with brawny arms, and a fat, childish 

 face, china-blue eyes, toothless mouth, and a chin nearly always 



