248 HISTORY OF THE WHEEL AND ALLIANCE. 



being can exist without a certain amount of recreation 

 and change. If these be denied, the whole mental and 

 moral nature must suffer. To change this indifference of 

 the farmer to social pleasure and relaxation is one of the 

 grand objects of the Order. But, however oppressive 

 this isolated condition may be to -the farmer and his 

 sons, it is - immeasurably more so to his wife and 

 daughter. Women are much more dependent upon soci- 

 ety than men. Monotony affects them more quickly and 

 more powerfully, and they need more relaxation and amuse- 

 ment than men. Yet how dreary is the lot of the 

 farmer's wife and daughter. Theirs is a life of constant 

 toil the same routine day after day, week after week 

 with scarcely a break in it. A funeral, or a wedding, or a 

 county fair, are great events in their existence, as they 

 bring them together with their neighbors and afford them 

 some little society. But, as a rule, the loneliness of their 

 lives is unbroken. They are, for the most part, confined 

 to the limits of the farm. It is not because the farmer and 

 his family are not calculated to enjoy themselves in each 

 other's society, as well as other people. Who that has 

 attended a county fair, picnic, or other public gathering, 

 where amusement was the object, has failed to mark the 

 noisy and, what city folk would term unnecessary mirth of 

 the farmers' wives and daughters? These outbursts 

 of mirth and loud peals of laughter may, to some, seem 

 ridiculous; but they are natural. They are the assertion 

 of the protest of nature against the long and dreary 

 restraint that has been put upon them, and the mirth 

 of these women is as natural and irresistible as the song of 

 the long imprisoned bird escaping from its cage. They 

 laugh and enjoy themselves because they have been silent 

 and care-burdened so long. Such occasions, such oppor- 

 tunities for enjoyment come rarely to them, and they are 

 quick to take advantage of them. Their time for pleasure 



