276 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



he there shall find is gospel, to be swallowed and followed, even though it may 

 load his country wiih debt and dishonor. We speak, of course, of no particu- 

 lar party. Well, good lady, let him take his Jiebdomadal dose of politics — 

 which habit has made as necessary as his tobacco—while you, in your habit- 

 ual and appropriate deference to his better judgment in such things, ask for 

 The Farmers' Library and Monthly Journal ; and after reading, as you find 

 it worthy, call to your own department the attention of your dear daughters, 

 single or married. We can promise you, at least, that you shall meet with 

 nothing there that does not inculcate the practice of all the womanly domes- 

 tic and Christian virtues — industry, economy, and attention to cleanliness and 

 cultivation of body and of mind — such virtues, in a word, as have made illustri- 

 ous the names of a Comtesse de la Fayette and a Madame Roland, a Mrs. Gen- 

 eral Greene or a Mrs. Hill.* 



For this month we take, with other items, what we find at hand in the 

 " Quarterly Journal of Agriculture and Science,^'' being a familiar story of 

 " Mr. Duropus and Family." The melancholy fate of poor Duropus is a very 

 natural representation of that of many honest farmers who are brought to ruin 

 by the improvidence of their wives and families ; while, truth to tell, a yet 

 greater number are broken up by their own laziness and contaminating associa- 

 tions. It may safely be affirmed that the extravagance of wives is not unfre- 

 quently cccasioned by want of confidence and candor on the part of the husband 

 — as if the blood of Portia were extinct, and as if American might not, as well 

 as Grecian and Roman matrons, be trusted, even unto death. Alas ! have not too 

 many of them, as well in the time of our Revolution as since, had occasion to 

 say and to realize the sad presentiment of Andromache : 



" Be careful, Hector ! fgjMvith thee my all — 

 My father, mother, brOTfier, husband fall I "' 



From a false, though it be an amiable pride, and unwillingness to deny their 

 family every gratification, husbands would conceal their inability and embarrass- 

 ments, until too late to retrieve their afiairs ; and only when on the very verge 

 of inevitable ruin, is the dreadful disclosure made — accompanied, perhaps, with 

 lamenting extravagances which an earlier and better knowledge of his condition 

 would have prompted the wife to avoid at every sacrifice ; for who is she, worthy 

 of the sacred office of wife and mother, who is not ready to unite with her 

 husband in every struggle and self-denial, to preserve for him and her family 

 that greatest of all earthly blessings, independence ! however humble the con- 

 dition and the sphere of its enjoyment ? 



* In no spirit of invidious preference do we venture to add the name of this native lady of our 

 own Slate, whom wo remember as a little schoolgirl. Reared with tenderness, in tiie enjoy- 

 ment of all that easy fortune and parental fondness could supply — married young, and widowed 

 in early life, she was left with a family of sons to rear and educate, and a large estate and com- 

 plicated affairs to manage. With a fortitude and perseverance which has characterized so many 

 of her countrywomen, she brought up her boys in a high sense of honor and obligation to pre- 

 serve the purity of their name, and handed them over their estates unembarrassed and improved. 

 Have we not a right to draw the names of such women from retirement and in this department 

 proclaim their examples for the emulation of their sex ? Nay more : is it not a scandal to our 

 country that some man duly accomplished and imbued with the true s])irit for the task, has not 

 sketched for American Biography Uie lives of American women, of whom our Revolutionary 

 and other times could boast so many conspicuous models of conjugal devotion, of enlarged phi- 

 lanthropy and heroic resolution under the most trying exigencies of fortune? It shall be our 

 pleasing duty to preserve such sketches in the Housewife's Department of The Farmers' Li- 

 brary, when offered. Where the raateriala are so abundant, shall the chivalry be wanting to 

 supply them ? 

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