HOUSEWIFE S DEPARTMENT. 275 



THE HOUSEWIFE'S DEPARTMENT. 



We are resolved that, for the future, this department of The Farmers' Libra- 

 ry shall be punctually kept up. Every farmer may be supposed to have a wife, 

 and, if not, the sooner he gets one the better for him, if he w^ould thrive and do 

 well — provided she is at once docile and spirited, cheerful and resolute, neat, 

 industrious and economical. Without meaning to flatter, and with no inconsid- 

 erable opportunities when younger to learn how rural life is conducted in this our 

 republican country, where every man gives his time to party politics we have 

 often had occasion to observe that happiness and success depend quite as much 

 on the wife as the husband — and even more, in so far as they are connected 

 with the care and the manners of children, and all the nameless but important 

 details of in-door management generally. 



Have we not in our youthful days — days of alternate smiles and tears — of 

 holidays and school-days — been scolded and coaxed into giving our aid and 

 comfort to the women-folks, in a thousand ways — helping now to wind the yarn, 

 and next to " pick" the cotton? to drive up and count the geese and the turkeys? 

 to smoke* and to feed the chickens ? Have we not been forced, on Saturdays, 

 with a heart full of sadness, and the sense of its unfairness, to forego squirrel- 

 shooting and rabbit-hunting, to carry the " fiUing-in" to the weaver, and the 

 leather to the shoemaker ? Have we not lent a hand in drying peaches, and even 

 in dipping candles ? and, if the truth Htust be told, have we not stolen the water- 

 melon from the patch, and the milky roasting car from the corn-field — and even 

 the rising cream as it floated, in all its delicious freshness, on "four-and- twenty" 

 milk-pans " all in a row ?" Not so much, be it confessed, because some of them 

 might not have been easier come at in an honest way ; but, then, ice thought they 

 all tasted so much sweeter ! — for be it known that, in all these boyish pecca- 

 dilloes, we had our confederates, both white and black — (blessed be their names ! 

 for most of them have gone beyond that bourne " whence no traveler returns.") 

 And is it not wonderful how company does embolden us in wrong-doing ? Even 

 whole nations, feeling might and forgetting right, have been known sometimes 

 to perpetrate robbery and murder, for which any individual among them would 

 be quickly swung up by the neck ? But we are becoming grave when we only 

 meant a jocose reference to youthful pastimes and occupations, to show that 

 personal experience gives us a right to pretend to some knowledge of rural life 

 and its affairs ; and the more so, since there are some who would fain look on 

 us as interlopers in the very field of inquiry and observation to which we have 

 chosen to fly all our lives, for occupation and amusement, whenever we could 

 break or slip the bridle, and escape from school or from the labors of office, 

 and the more artificial scenes and circles of the town. 



We shall not, however, ask the judgment of 7nen upon what we shall every 

 month supply for the entertainment and welfare of the thrifty housewife and 

 the anxious mother. When the boy returns from the neighboring Post-Oflice, 

 the chance is that the gentleman of the house will take the post-bag, and, first 

 of all, cull from it his party paper, with a foregone conclusion that whatever 



* Ab effectual procees for curing ihe " gapes." 

 (563; 



