A Farmer's Home. 297 



grand when it was built, but times have changed. We should 

 farm and live, and not live just to work and make money. I do 

 not believe in extravagance, but a good; comfortable house with 

 many of the modern conveniences, where one has the means, 

 would be an investment to be proud of, and no matter how poor 

 I was I would work for suoh a home and work to win, too. It 

 seems to me a most laudable ambition, and just as right and 

 proper for the farmer as for any town man. I would not run in 

 debt for this under any ordinary circumstances. Better live in 

 the cheapest shell of a house. But I would work hard and save 

 until the neat, tasty, comfortable, beautiful home could be built 

 and paid for cash down. We lived in the old house fourteen 

 years until we dug out of the earth enough to pay for a better 

 one. We lived in the new one in our thoughts a good while before 

 we got it, and most every poor young farmer will have to do the 

 same, and it is all right providing he isn't satisfied, but keeps 

 steadily working for better things. As you read in Chapter V., 

 we built a new house before we did a barn, and furnished it well, 

 too. The welfare of wife and family was placed first. I remem- 

 ber my wife's begging me not to buy new furniture until after I 

 got my barn. But I was rather obstinate, I fear, and the old barn 

 was sort of passable ; we could get along with it two or three 

 years longer. As a matter of business, however, friends, you had 

 better build the barn first. It will help to make money to pay 

 for house. The new. house will help you to spend money. But 

 I should do just the same way again. 



^ut now, be the house itself as good as you can afford or not, 

 how about the kitchen ? Is there a pump in it to draw water 

 from the cistern or well, or both ? Is there a wood shed opening 

 out of it filled with dry wood, or coal, if you burn that? Have 

 you some convenient and perfectly safe way of disposing 

 of the house slops ? Have you an oil or gasoline stove 

 for hot weather? Are there doors and windows and porches 

 to ventilate and make pleasant this room where the women 

 on most farms spend the most of their time? Are the 

 windows hung with weights so they can be opened easily or let 

 down from the top ? And are there screens in the windows as well 

 as screen doors to keep out the flies in the summer time ? All 

 these things and more are necessary in order to have anything 

 like a perfect kitchen in a farmer's home. Look around and see 

 if you have got them all ; if not, keep pushing, and never be quite 

 satisfied until you do get them. 



It is wrong to make a woman with her thin clothing go from 

 a heated kitchen out doors in cold weather for water and wood. 

 A pump can be put in the kitchen for a trifle. Water can be 

 drawn long distances, practically. Some farmers seem to think 

 that the pump must be right over the well or cistern. It is not 

 at all necessary. The water in our barn is drawn, practically, 



