THE FARMER'S LIFE. 55 



dark night — unless he understood my latitude and longitude — 

 would be liable to excoriate his limbs in approaching my 

 dwelling. 



Ninth, I would not have my barn-yard so situated as to be 

 obliged to go over shoes in filth to reach my barn door ; nor 

 would I have every thing around my premises in a slip-shod, 

 helter-skelter condition, a board lying here, and a stick of 

 timber lying there, and a lye-leach and an ash-heap in the 

 same neighborhood, and other things to match. 



Tenth, I would not be everlastingly borrowing, but only 

 borrow enough to show that I was willing to lend. 



Eleventh, I would not upbraid my wife because she did not 

 understand her business in the kitchen, provided I had been so 

 improvident as to select such an one to take charge of my 

 culinary department. On this topic, will you allow me, fellow- 

 citizens, to say a word. Now, if I were a farmer, I would use 

 all due care to find a wife that understood her p's and her q's. 

 I would not introduce into my family, to be the queen of the 

 churn and the cheese-press, and to be mistress of the kitchen, 

 a young, lily-livered liliputian, who had been nurtured in a 

 lady's flower-pot, and brought up on cakes and sweetmeats ; 

 who would be seized with the horrors at the thought of boiling 

 a dish of pork and cabbage, and get most marvellously nervous 

 at the sight of a wash-tub and a few dirty clothes of a farmer's 

 wardrobe. Were I a farmer, I would not go to the city or its 

 suburbs in search of an help-mate. Nor would I seek for one 

 among those frivolous, doll-like exquisites, who, having ob- 

 tained a little smattering of music, French, et cetera, at some 

 second-rate boarding school, feel quite above the small fry 

 among our farming population. There are more reasons than 

 one, why, as a farmer, I would not seek such a wife. The first 

 is, she would not have me if I did seek her, and the second is, 

 I would not have her, anyhow. As a farmer, I would take 

 special pains at the outset, to get a wife of the right stamp, a 

 little better, indeed, than any of my neighbors, blessed with a 

 good share of common sense, enough to know that she is not 

 too good for the kitchen ; in whose ability and neatness as a 

 cook I may repose the fullest confidence, and who will do me 

 the pleasure to do the honors of the table, although I may be 

 surrounded with coal-makers or mud-diggers. Having secured 



