1863. 



NEW ENGLAKD FARMER. 



153 



and ability to make original investigations. How 

 this can best be done remains to be seen. Penn- 

 sylvania has got ahead of us. Let us learn from 

 their experience and that of European institutions. 



Mr. Tower, of Lanesboro', said the people 

 must first feel their want of knowledge before 

 they will seek it. The young men of the State 

 are beginning to feel the want of knowledge. 

 He spoke of the magnitude of the agricultural 

 interest of the Commonwealth. We have 30,000 

 farms, which give employment to about 400,000 

 persons ; and about the same number are engaged 

 in manufacturing. Our mechanics stand high ; 

 and by their skill and invention most of our labor 

 is performed by the muscles of animals. Shall 

 the college be independent or connected with 

 some of the institutions in the Commonwealth ? 



Mr. White, Secretary of the Board of Educa- 

 tion, being called on to speak, urged the impor- 

 tance of beginning right. He rejoiced in the 

 hope of the prospect for a professional education 

 in regard to agriculture and the mechanic arts. 

 Let us accept the grant. We don't know yet 

 that we shall get anything. 



Mr. Merria.m, of Tewksbury, thanked the 

 Governor for his speech and believed there is a de- 

 fect in our educational system. A man can learn 

 to be a minister, a doctor or a lawyer, but where 

 can he learn to be a farmer ? He spoke of the 

 Bussy grant which should be used to endow a 

 professorship of agriculture in Harvard College. 

 The college should be located on a large farm of 

 300 or 400 acres. 



FARMERS' "WIVES OVERTAXED—No. 2. 



Brutalities are thoughtlessly sometimes, and 

 sometimes recklessly perpetrated by farmers on 

 their wives as follows : A child or other member 

 of the family is taken sick in the night ; the ne- 

 cessary attention almost invariably falls on the wife, 

 to be extended to a greater part, if not the whole 

 night. Wearied with the previous day's duties, 

 with those solicitudes which always attend sick- 

 ness, with the responsibilities of the occasion and 

 a loss of requisite rest, the wife is many times ex- 

 pected to "see to breakfast" in the morning, as if 

 nothing had happened. The husband goes to his 

 work, soon becomes absorbed in it, and forgets all 

 about the previous night's disturbance ; meets his 

 wife at the dinner-table ; notices not the worn-out 

 expression on her face ; makes no inquiry as to 

 her feelings ; and if anything on or about the 

 table is not just exactly as it ought to be, it is no- 

 ticed with a harshness which would be scarcely 

 excusable if it had been brought about with a de- 

 liberate calculation. 



The same thing occurs multitudes of times dur- 

 ing the nursing periods of mothers. How many 

 nights a mother's rest is broken half a dozen times 

 by a restless, crying, or ailing infant, every mother 

 and observant man knows. In such cases the 

 farmer goes into another room and sleeps soundly 

 until the morning ; and yet, in loo many cases, 

 although this may be, and is repeated several 

 nights in succession, the husband does not hesi- 

 tate to wake his wife up with the information that 

 it is nearly sunrise ; the meaning of which is that 

 he expects her to get up and attend to her duties. 

 No wonder that in many of our lunatic asylums 

 there are more farmer's wives than any other 

 class ; for there is no fact in medical science more 



positively ascertained, than that insufficient sleep 

 is the most speedy and certain road to the mud- 

 house. Let no farmer, tljf n, let no mechanic, let 

 no man, who has any human sympathy still left, 

 allow his wife to be waked up in the morning ex- 

 cept from very urgent causes ; and further, let 

 them give every member of the household to un- 

 derstand that quietude about the premises is to 

 be secured always until the wife leaves her cliam- 

 ber; thus having all the sleep which nature will 

 take, the subsequent energv, cheerfulness and ac- 

 tivity which will follow, will more than compen- 

 sate for the time required to "get her sleep out ;" 

 not only as to her own efficiency, but as to that of 

 every other member of the household ; for let it 

 be remembered that a merry industry is conta- 

 gious. 



There are not a few farmers whose imperious 

 wills will not brook the very slightest dereliction of 

 duty on the part of any hand in their employ, 

 and whose force of character is such that every 

 thing on the farm, outside the house, goes on like 

 clockwork. They look to their wives to have sim- 

 ilar management indoors ; and are so swift, to no- 

 tice even slight shortcomings, that at length their 

 appearance at the family table has become insep- 

 arable from scenes of jarring, fault-finding, sneer- 

 ing, depreciating comparisons, if not of coarse vi- 

 tuperation, of which a savage might well be 

 ashamed ; and all this, simply from the failure to 

 remember that they have done nothing to make 

 the wife's authority in her domain as imperative 

 as their own. They make no account of the pos- 

 sible accidents of green wood to cook with ; of an 

 adverse wind which destroys the draft of the chim- 

 ney ; of the breaking down of the butcher's cart ; 

 or the failure of the baker to come in time ; they 

 never inquire if the grocer has not sent an inferi- 

 or article, or an accident has befallen the stove or 

 some cooking utensil. It is in such ways as these, 

 and millions more like them, that the farmer's wife 

 has her whole existence poisoned by those daily 

 tortures which come from her husband's thought- 

 lessness, his inconsideration, his hard nature, or 

 his downright stupidity. A wife naturally crave<i 

 her husband's approliation. "Thy desire shidl i)e 

 to thy husband," is the language of Scripture j 

 which, whatever may be the specific meaning of 

 the quotation, certainly carries the idea that she 

 looks up to him, with a yearning inexpressil)le, for 

 comfort, for stii)])ort, for smiles and sympathy ; 

 and when she does not get these, the whole world 

 else is a waste of waters, or life a desert ns barren 

 of sustenance as the great Sahara. But this is 

 only half the sorrow ; when, in addition to this 

 want of approljation and symjjuthy, there comes 

 the thoughtless complaint, the remorseless and re- 

 peated fault-finding and the contemptuous gesture, 

 when all was done that was possible under tl;e cir- 

 cumstances — in the light of treatment like this, it 

 is not a wonder that settled sadness and hopeless- 

 ness is impressed on the face of many a farmer's 

 wife, which is considered by the thoughtful |jliysi. 

 cian, as the prelude to that early wasting uw.iy. 

 which is the lot of many a virtuous, and faithful, 

 and conscientious woman. 



The attentive reader will not fail to have ob- 

 served, that the derelictions adverted to on the 

 part of farmer husbands, are not regarded ncces- 

 sarilv as the result of a perverse nature ; hut rath- 

 er in the main, from inconsideration or ignorance ; 



