394 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



any one kind of which is enough to re- 

 quire all the energies of any heroic and 

 courageous woman. 



How the women in our farm houses 

 manage to get through even a tithe of it 

 all is an impenetrable mystery. It cer- 

 tainly requires quite as much generalship 

 as would suffice for the taking of a city, or 

 th.e administration of government on a 

 grander scale. 



The " men folks' may be off at work 

 in the woods, dragging logs and " chop- 

 ping," it is true; but they know nothing 

 of these multiform and ever multiplying 

 cares and perplexities that are sown, thick 

 as thistle-seeds, around the steps of the 

 farmer's wife every day. Indeed, it is a 

 great daal truer than anybody ever yet 

 stopped to think it was, that if a farmer, 

 naturally capable and thrifty himself, gets 

 a slovenly, behindhand, incompetent wife, 

 nothing under heaven will possibly save 

 his farm from slowly, slowly cankering 

 away under the application of mortgages. 



It is the wife that is the farmer's true 

 support, after all. She makes or unmakes. 

 It is nothing to the question that he man- 

 ages to drive good bargains with his cattle, 

 his horses, his muttons, or his field pro- 

 ducts, unless she who sits at home, and 

 weaves the web of his fortunes about the 

 house, seconds him earnestly in every 

 one of his plans and purposes ; he does 

 but empty the water he draws into seives 

 instead of buckets. Thus the farmer's 

 wife stands first in importance in our agri- 

 cultural affairs; and agriculture, as every 

 one knows who pretends to know any- 

 thing, is the basis and bottom of society. 



Then her influence over the family, the 

 children, and the whole, is almost as auto- 

 cratic, though in a very different way, as 

 ihat of the Czar of Russia over all his 

 subjects. She forms, moulds, colors, and 

 directs everything. The young character 

 is in her hands altogether. She is the 

 head and front of the family, whether by 

 an assumed or a conceded authority. She 

 is the heart of the household always, even 

 if she does not happen to be the head as 

 well. She not only bakes and brews, but 

 she trains boys and girls in those simple, 

 and temperate, almost Spartan habits, that 

 afterwards project themselves with the 

 force of new individual powers upon the 

 destinies of the outside world! 



This is the province of the wife of the 



farmer — no more, and no less. It is not 

 her lot to do nothing but make butter and 

 cheese, or knit stockings and spin wool, 

 away in the country solitudes; but all 

 around her she is every day scattering the 

 seed of a choice grain whose fruits are 

 not for a day, but are immortal. 



If she would but see to it for herself, 

 what a difference would it not work in her 

 lot ! How fresh .would be her resolution, 

 how invigorated would her purposes be- 

 come ! Instead of bewailing her fortune — 

 such dismal and monotonous retirements — 

 she would seem to herself to sit like a 

 queen at the heart of the earth, fashion- 

 ing the forces that are by-and-by certain 

 to control the whole system. 



Drudgery — drudgery ! all the country 

 wives constantly exclaim ; and we hardly 

 wonder at it, either. Yet there is some- 

 thing besides drudgery in it, to one who 

 sets to work to exalt her occupation and 

 ennoble herself. Life, we know, is made 

 up of a good many little things ; but even 

 these may be lifted up by the soul of- love 

 and made glorious. But the husband is as 

 much in fault as any one. He exacts ; he 

 insists ; he lays on the burdens heavily ; 

 he tyrannizes ; he is the dead weight 

 upon the frail shoulders of woman. It is 

 not to be denied or set aside — he shifts off 

 too much of the labor upon her, making 

 her the packhorse of the family establish- 

 ment, the real beast of burden in all his 

 domestic plans. Thence follow, naturally 

 enough, low spirits, an overworked consti- 

 tution, carelessness about the high ends and 

 aims of life, and a gradual and almost total 

 loss of the true spiritual faculty. 



These things should no longer be. They 

 should be mended forthwith. The woman 

 ought to stand everywhere for whatever is 

 pure, noble, and holy, not less in the coun- 

 try than in the city ; nay, more so in those 

 blessed, rural retreats, and amid those 

 sweet and refreshing influences that God 

 sends, like delicious fragrance, to purify 

 the atmosphere in which the soul is 

 obliged for a time to dwell. Especially is 

 it idle to talk disparagingly of the farmer's 

 wife. Her city sister can show her silks 

 and her long list of friends ; but what are 

 they all in the light of that sincere sim- 

 plicity, that serene beauty of life, in which 

 the country wife is privileged to dwell and 

 rejoice all her days. 



