404 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



spondency, and worry, which crushes all life, hope, and en- 

 ergy, and makes home not a home, but a miserable prison- 

 house, whose inmates would be thankful to flee if they could 

 from the jailor to whom they are chained, and who makes 

 their lives almost unendurable and cheerfulness impossible. 

 The other way is to face the inevitable changes quietly 

 and calmly ; to consider the blessings surrounding the new 

 home rather than those left behind in the old ; to take each 

 one of the present difficulties and shortcomings in detail, 

 examine into cause and effect, and use whatever remedies 

 may suggest themselves. If none can be found, why then 

 let it go, and don't fret over it. 



As we have noted in previous chapters, it is upon the 

 women of the household, those who have been heretofore 

 unaccustomed to work, that the difference in their sur- 

 roundings weighs most heavily. Take any city-bred lady, 

 whether of America or Europe, one who has lived all her 

 life with every convenience and comfort so close at hand 

 that they have become as it were component parts of that 

 life, set her down suddenly in any country home, in the 

 midst of farm-work and rough, hungry farm hands, and 

 leave her to perform all the work consequent thereon, and 

 if she does not feel the yoke to be even more galling if 

 borne near her old home, with its bleak climate, than she 

 would in far-away Florida with its genial winters — then 

 are we much mistaken. 



As a rule the wife and daughters of a farmer, be the 

 scene of their labors where it may, live in a chronic state 

 of weariness, and we are fain to say that a great deal of 

 this is their own fault; and before turning finally from 

 this phase of our subject we are going to have a little plain 

 talk with our Florida sisters, both of the present and future, 

 because we have seen again and again, and not alone in 

 Florida, the wearing out and laying away of the wife and 



