236 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



family made its own butter and its own cheese and 

 the rivalry was worth the while I assure you. Girls 

 were not ashamed to call the cows and then to draw 

 the milk from the udder with freshly washed hands. 

 They were proud of the great white loaves of bread 

 that they could pile on the shelves and the rolls of 

 golden butter that mated them. We never then 

 heard of foul milk that must be sterilized before us- 

 ing; that did not come in until the hayfield and the 

 barn and the kitchen were given over to " help " 

 unclean, uncouth, and untrained a generation that 

 knew not the art of the milkmaid. 



Such was the life of our fathers and mothers, not 

 at all the hard unpoetic life that has often been pic- 

 tured, for a sweeter and more wholesome life than 

 that which was lived by those who pioneered out of 

 New England across the continent, planting States 

 and creating everywhere country homes, never ex- 

 isted. Then came steam power and, we did not 

 understand why, but one after another of these home 

 arts went away from us ; carding, spinning, shoemak- 

 ing, furniture making, and at last even sewing and 

 knitting; all of these went out of home life into huge 

 factories, around which clustered the dull sleeping 

 and eating places that were called homes. The spin- 

 ning wheel went to the attic and the soap barrel to 

 kindling wood. Our mothers no longer knitted as 

 they walked through the streets to make a friendly 

 call. They no longer swapped pinks and hollyhocks 

 and boiled down syrup over the kitchen fire. 



