436 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of water Avliich made it soft. Why did we uot use cistern water? Bless 

 you, I was out of my teens before ttie first barrel of cement came into 

 the county. Well, we washed out doors the most of the year, and hung 

 clothes on grape vines, and caught cold, and ironed and mended, fifty- 

 two times a year, and if I have had one nightmare haunt me above all 

 others through life it is the dreaded wash day! 



The Sci'iptural account of creation I took seriously, yet put my own 

 interpretation upon some things. I could not figure out much leisure for 

 Adam, who, without hired help, had to dress that garden which God 

 planted in Eden. The little help derived from the elephants' and camel- 

 opards' trimming, and the browsing of cattle, deer, sheep and goats, was 

 offset by the tramping, and the fruit picking of birds and the monkey 

 tribe was a bad job, while the potato digging by wild hogs was not 

 conducive to good nature. I still recognize that the four great rivers 

 which watered that part of the world had origin in a great spring in 

 Eden wherein Adam could bathe at will, but the matter of gi'eatest im- 

 port to me was, that the fashions did not require clothing, and conse- 

 quently there was no wash tub, wash kettle, water breaking, soap 

 making, rinsing, drying, ironing, mending and folding. No wonder 

 "Satan found some mischief still for idle hands to do." I used to wish 

 I had been Eve, I thought I could have resisted his majesty's offer of an 

 apple and a first class job in the laundry. 



In this picture of woman's duties in early farm life here I should not 

 withhold the sincere pleasure we had in congregating not for a picnic, 

 but to facilitate labor, as at wool pickings, quiltings. lard renderings, 

 barn raisings, apple and peach cuttings, etc., and the simple dances that 

 followed after. Children had their hollow stump playhouses, their 

 corncob dolls, with corn silks for hair, their bright pebbles and broken 

 ci'ockery for dishes. We all labored through years at corn dropping, 

 wheat shocking, feather pulling and apple picking to earn wherewith to 

 buy side saddles and new bridles — and then our earthly bliss was com- 

 plete, when some manly beau astride of his high stepping horse would 

 ask the pleasure of our company to church, singing or spelling school, 

 or to an apple cutting or quilting. We went fearlessly dashing along 

 forest paths, across the unfenced country and down the lanes. Now, 

 girls, don't blush, old ladies don't deny it, when we were kissed, as we 

 deserved to be, we did not smell the odor of a stinking pipe or sickly cigar- 

 ette, or catch the fumes of poisonous liquors. Did we like to be kissed? 

 Certainly, and we got husbands for wedding presents— and they got wives 

 who knew how to work. There were no buggies or can-iages, bicycles 

 or automobiles in the days of which I ■\\'rite. There was no leisure to use 

 them and no roads to use them on. There were no reapers and mowers, 

 corn planters, potato diggers or hay loaders. There were no sulky plows, 

 disk rollers or wheat drills, for the fields were one-fourth covered with 

 stumps and the soil full of roots, and modern implements could not have 



