190 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



April 



hurts a sheep, but rains in winter are frequently 

 injurious, particuhirly if of open-wooled varieties, 

 as they soak to the skin, and give them severe 

 colds. A severe snow storm, if dry, is less hurt- 

 ful than a warm rain, and a sleet is worse than 

 both together. — American Agriculturist. 



Fur the Neio England Farmer. 



LIGHTENING THE BURDENS OP HOUSE- 

 KEEPEKS. 



Mr. Editor: — Your Gardner correspondent, 

 !Mrs. Barlow, may not fully apprehend me after 

 all, when she compliments me on my eflbrts to 

 lighten the burdens of woman. For since it is a 

 scriptural injunction on us all to bear one anoth- 

 er's burdens, itwas not so much my ol)ject to les- 

 sen or lighten the toils of woman, in the aggre- 

 gate, as to change the form of these toils. I Avas 

 anxious — and still am so — to have what I call 

 woman's sacred fire expended more wisely than it 

 usually is when she is enslaved — bound hand and 

 foot and heart too — to custom and fashion. 



"Woman may, like her compeer, sometimes 

 work too hard ; but I doubt M'hether she as fre- 

 quently works too much as too little. She works 

 too much for the body, in my opinion, and too 

 little for the mind and heart, particularly the 

 latter. 



When, however, I say she works too much for 

 the body, I mean for certain departments of the 

 body. Too much is done for the brain, stomach 

 and skin, too little for the lungs, heart and mus- 

 cles. Appointed, though she is, to elevate and 

 purify and ennoble humanity, by her misdii'ected 

 efforts she depresses it and degrades it. 



Pity, indeed, it is that she who has it in her 

 power to raise man — the grace of God assisting 

 her — to capabilities which no angel or seraph 

 knows, should, by her mismanagement, so often 

 sink him below the beasts that jjerish. Pity that 

 while her whole nature is tenderness and love and 

 jiurity, her mistake, in education — especially in 

 physical education — should tend to the opposite 

 of all these, viz. : to cruelty, hatred and sensual- 

 ity. Yet is this not the usual result ? 



How can a child l)e other than impure and 

 brutal and cruel, whoso blood is made so stimu- 

 lating as to over-excite, and in truth over-heat 

 and irritate the heart and all the vessels connected 

 therewith through which it is continually sent 

 forth ? 



I would lighten the labors of cooks and dress- 

 makers, and consequently of those mothers who 

 arc their own cooks and dress-makers — if, indeed 

 any such mothers are left to us. That cookery 

 is for the most part unneccssarv and even hurt- 

 ful, whether done by one person or another, seems 

 to be conceded in giving currency to the old ad- 

 age, "God sends meats, but the Devil sends 

 cooks ;" but Ave have as yet, so far as I know, no 

 equivalent adage or saying with regard to dress- 

 making. Perhaps it migld be said, that God 

 sends us clothing but Paris sends us dress-mak- 

 ers ; or clothing comes to us from God, through 

 the windows of heaven, but dresses come from 

 Satan, through the chambers of death at Paris 

 and London. 



When I speak with doubt whether we have any 

 mothers left to us who are cooks and dress-makers 

 for their children, I may seem to some, after all, 



to utter a slander. But is it so? Fifty years 

 ago, mothers with the aid at most of elder sis- 

 ters, were bo.th cooks and tailors to their own 

 families, in many parts of our country ; but now 

 how is it ? Not one mother in a hundred is tail- 

 or in her own family ; and I do not believe that 

 a majority of our mothers do their own cooking. 

 I know of one mother in Massachusetts who fills 

 with her own hands both these offices, and I be- 

 lieve there are more ; but they are becoming 

 scarcer and scarcer every year. If things are to 

 go on for the next fifty years as they have done 

 for the last fifty, I know not what we shall come 

 to. If the devil now sends us cooks and dress- 

 makers, whether they come straight up from the 

 nether regions or come by way of Paris and Lon- 

 don, what shall hinder him, ere long, from send- 

 ing us shoe-makers and carpenters and farmers 

 — aye, and school-masters, too, and other teach- 

 ers high and low ? Extremes, it is said, some- 

 times meet. Lawyers have, for sometime past, 

 been regarded as Satan's emissaries ; doctors are 

 beginning to be thought so, and ministers are by 

 some suspected — what are we coming to ? 



I Avould return, not to nature in a savage or 

 uncultivated state, but to nature in her simplici- 

 ty. Mothers are the natural teachers and educa- 

 tors of their own children. They are, of course, 

 as physical educators, the natural cooks and 

 dress-makers of their children. I do rot say that 

 there are no circumstances in which these same 

 offices can be delegated ; for there are such. — 

 These, however, ave the exceptions, and not the 

 general rule ; and as in other such cases, they 

 seem to confirm and strengthen it, rather than in 

 the least to invalidate it. 



But hoAv can mothers find time to do every 

 thing for their children ? you will perhaps ask. 

 There is, in the nature of things, no real or in- 

 trinsic difficulty here. My own mother had no 

 advantage of birth or education or fortune be- 

 yond ihe women of her time. Early thrown up- 

 on her oAvn resources, she came to the head of 

 her family in the deepest poverty, except of mind 

 and heart ; yet she educated four children. She 

 was for the most part — that is, as a general rule 

 — spinster, Aveaver, dyer, tailor, cook, physician, 

 nurse, teacher and general housekeeper. Nor 

 Avas she alone. Fifty years ago, as I have inti- 

 mated already, there were many more like her. 



I Avill not say that my mother is the standard 

 — midAvay between a savage and a cultivated 

 state — to Avhich it is needful to return ;"but I do 

 say that a return is necessary, to something like 

 it. Nor do I say that the golden age is past, and 

 that all things eartliAvard tend. I am not yet old 

 enough to see everything in the retrograde. But 

 I do say that just in proportion as Ave depart 

 from nature's simplicity — not nature's barbarity 

 — in any society Avhatcver, Ave begin to have 

 among us those materials which give rise to 

 peace societies, temperance societies, moral re- 

 form societies and charitable societies and chari- 

 table and home institutions. 



There may be no harm in buttering my bread, 

 apart from the fact that butter seems to be the re- 

 sult of a degree of putrifaction, provided human 

 time could not be more profitably employed than 

 in making a better article into one Avhich is Avorse, 

 and provided the wants of society everyAvhere, 

 physical, social, intellectual and moral, Avere Avell 



