FINE ARTS OF A COUNTRY HOME 239 



sewing lessons into our schools, for needle art will not 

 regain its domestic value. So with knitting and with 

 penmanship. Machinery is everywhere. The type- 

 writer has driven out the quill and even spelling is 

 no longer of as much value as the skill of the sten- 

 ographer on the keys. If my boy spells phonetically 

 instead of lexicographically I am not sure but he is 

 right. We must keep our eyes in our foreheads and 

 look out for new ways of doing things as well as 

 new tools to do with. 



The newer day is surely coming in, a day full of 

 new domestic arts. It will not recall the old, not 

 to any fulness; but the coming country life will be 

 very full of fine arts, that will reawaken content with 

 country living, while interest in domestic affairs will 

 be as great as in former days, or more so. No, we 

 are not going to adopt city arts nor city ways, we 

 have no need in the country for three changes of 

 dress in a day and as for automobiles, well, I sup- 

 pose that soon they will be built cheaper than horses 

 can be bred. 



It was between 1880 and 1890 that country trou- 

 bles culminated. About 1890 the trolley began to 

 run its fingers in among the hills, to find our isolated 

 homes, and link them to each other and to the town. 

 About the same time an inspired Postmaster General 

 inaugurated rural free mail delivery. It looked to 

 be paternalistic, and some called it a socialistic move- 

 ment, but soon the carrier came, to carry cosmopoli- 



