Missouri Country Life Conference. 139 



to think about a possible automobile I don't think she will have 

 to go to Fulton! 



Now there is another thing. I read an instance the other 

 day that struck me as ver^^ singular. It was of a woman who 

 had been very saving and economical in the making of butter 

 and in the gathering of eggs and marketing them until she had 

 saved up enough money to buy herself a sewing machine; and 

 then, when she got it, her husband took it and bought a sulky 

 plow! Now, I don't think the man is here, but I tell you we do 

 need, men — now just write this down in your souls — we do need 

 to think a good deal more about our wives and their convenience 

 and comfort. Why, you don't provide any way by which slops 

 may be carried away from the house and the water piped into 

 the house for your wife's comfort as you ought to do. Pipe it 

 away down yonder in a field, down to the old red bull, but you 

 don't bring it into the kitchen for your wife. A man says, 

 "That is right!" Now you know of things like that. Just let 

 me write that down here, write it on the minds and hearts of 

 you men, that we ought to think a little more about our wives 

 and the things that will make them comfortable in their toil and 

 efficient in their service as wives and mothers and at the same 

 time relieve them of a good deal of the grind of life. There is 

 such a thing as having power to grind corn and there is such a 

 thing as having a little power to run the churn and washing 

 machine, and I don't see why, if you have power enough to run 

 the corn grinder or the crusher, that you don't harness the churn 

 to it in some way or the washing machine, and if you did your 

 wife would get a smile on that would last all the year through. 



Well, the third branch of my subject is the farmer's boy. 

 I am limited in time, and therefore I am just hitting a few of 

 what I think are practical suggestions as I go along. The 

 farmer's boy: I want to say to the farmer that I think most of 

 his peril is thinking, through a sense of false economy, that he is 

 making sufficient preparation of his boy for life if he gives him a 

 short-cut training in something or other. It is just as becoming 

 in a fellow to have a short-cut suit as it is for the boy to have a 

 short-cut education, and we are all in the habit of making re- 

 marks against the man whose clothes are too small for him. 

 It is said over yonder in China when they had the first reception 

 after the new President, Yuan Shi Kai, was installed that the 

 Chinese cut off their cues and came in mod-ern regalia and it was 

 a sight to see! Some of them had plug hats on with nothing 



