56 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



at harvest time. In France they take care of the vines. In 

 Germany they join with men in most of the labor that is done. 

 And everywhere they' find time to cultivate the most beautiful 

 gardens filled with the choicest varieties of fruit and flowers. 

 I certainly do not desire to see the women of our own land, the 

 young women, become such beasts of burden as are their sisters 

 of the Old World. There is no necessity for it. But I should 

 rejoice to see the women, the young women, taking more inter- 

 est in and sharing more abundantly in out of door pursuits. It 

 is not necessary for the farmer's wife or daughter to hold the 

 plough or dig the ditches ; but there is a great deal of work 

 that women can do and ought to do, and which would make 

 them happier and healthier to do. Happier, for it would give 

 an abundant and inspiring occupation. Healthier, for it would 

 drive them out of doors, out of the hot, poisonous air of the 

 house, out into the free, fresh, health-quickening, out-of-door 

 air. I speak not of farmers' wives and daughters alone. I 

 speak of women of all classes, the richest and the poorest. 

 They can and ought to cultivate all the smaller fruits, like 

 strawberries and raspberries and the like, a healthy and refining 

 food which ought to be abundant on every table, till it expels 

 the salt pork and other like abominations, — food which would 

 be sweeter to all tastes if raised by the fair hands of wives and 

 daughters. 



The same is true of the culture of the grape. It should not 

 be a luxury on a few tables, but cheap and abundant enough to 

 be on all tables, and watched over, and studied, and understood, 

 and cultivated by the women. And so of the vegetable garden. 

 The men ought to be driven out of it as valiantly as the chickens 

 or the pigs. Do you say that our women do work in the gar- 

 den ? Yes ; I know how bravely they start out in the spring, 

 trowel in hand, and after the ground has been prepared for 

 them, they manage to plant a few China asters, and marigolds, 

 and dahlias, and their work is all over. Our women love 

 flowers, but they love them as results, as bouquets upon their 

 tables. It does not compare with the love they would have for 

 them if they had watched their growth from the seed, and had 

 cultivated a life-long and intimate acquaintance with them. 

 They would thus find the cxc^ui^ite bloom of health on their 



