208 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
WOMAN AND THE GAEDEN, 
BY PROF. J. A. NASH. 
Farmers should give more attention than 
is usual to the garden and orchard. Their 
wives and daughters should have a finger in 
this pie. Let them direct the whole busi¬ 
ness, and do a part of it with their own hands. 
What signifies this having so many pale, 
sickly women ? It is the bane of American 
women—worst of all in the rural districts— 
that they are always shut up. In cities and 
large villages, they shop and spin street- 
yarn ; see, and are seen of, men; and seem 
to have an existence, to be a part and parcel 
of mankind ; but not so in our rural districts. 
As they say out west, it used to teas, that 
if a citizen wanted a good, substantial, sen¬ 
sible wife, he must look to the country. 
But the tables are turning. It is fast coming 
about, that if a farmer’s son should take a 
fancy to double the team, as the Wild-cats, 
Iloosiers and Suckers tell of doing, he will 
have to look to the city. We congratulate 
the city misses ; but alas, for the country 
girls! “ Who’ll be coming 1” The trouble 
is, our women are prisoners, self-made, per¬ 
haps, but none the less pale for that. A man 
might ride all day in our rural districts, and 
feel at the end of his journey as if he would 
give more to see a woman than to see any 
of Barnum’s rarities, unless perchance he 
had passed from Hartford to Ncw-Haven, on 
the. old stage route. Shame on the false 
notions, the downright wrongs (self inflicted 1) 
on women! Where are the woman’s rights 
folks l 
We must not be enticed too long from our 
subject, the garden. But we want to say two 
things which will be worth reading; and if 
our readers will think a little, they will be 
willing to carry them into practice. 
One is, that if men, especially in our rural 
districts, would consent to know a little more 
about indoor work, to do a little more as oc¬ 
casion requires, to learn by actual experience 
that the being perpetually shut up to it is not 
all child’s play, to see, with their own eyes, 
and feel, through all their bones, the want of 
a few simple, inexpensive fixtures and im¬ 
plements to facilitate woman’s labors, and 
shorten her confinement, it would open the 
way to important domestic improvements. 
The other is, that if the women in our ru¬ 
ral districts would consent to be a little in¬ 
formed about the interests and labors of their 
husbands, and brothers, and if they would 
occasionally go into the field (not to labor 
all day and get sunburnt; that is not what 
we mean; we do not desire the same state 
of things that exists in the mother countries, 
where you cannot distinguish a woman from 
a man by looking into the face or at the feet, 
hut only by the intervening vestiture), say to 
carry out the lunch, to sit under the cool 
shade and help eat it, to take hold of the 
plow or scythe just long enough to see what 
a woman can, or can not do, to breathe the 
pure air, to see how different from the odor 
of the sink-room is that of the newly turned 
soil, and the freshly made hay, to expand the 
chest, to drink in the joyousness of nature, 
to laugh instead of sighing and to bloom in 
place of fading, it would be a wonderful im¬ 
provement. 
This arbitrary division—we will not say of 
labor—for we do not wish the distinction of 
heavier, rougher work for men, and of light¬ 
er, cleanlier work for woman to be broken 
in upon—but of a knowledge of the works in 
different parts of the same establishment, a 
division more rigidly observed among us than 
among any other people, so that we know 
little more of our wives’ cares than a goat 
does of the fine arts, and they hardly as 
much of ours as one of the small footed ce¬ 
lestials does of farming on a western prairie, 
is a wretched hindrance to the pleasures of 
domestic life. Away with it! 
We have now gone another step towards 
solving an important problem, proposed some 
time since ;—why our women are the frail¬ 
est physically of all Eve’s daughter 1 A mis¬ 
erable low estimate of rural employments, 
conventional usages, and above all a false 
taste, as if it were indelicate for them to know 
much, and absolutely degrading to care any 
thing for such vulgar matters as the garden, 
the field, and the farm stock, hare kept them 
ignorant of many things they ought to know, 
taken away their rational liberties, abridged 
the excitement essential to health, impris¬ 
oned them, blanched them, unnerved them, 
unmuscled them (to make a word,) made 
what they must not be, if the race is worth 
preserving. 
The everlasting scrubbingof floors, sweep¬ 
ing carpets, washing dishes, sewing up rips, 
tending responsibilities, getting breakfast, 
dinner, supper, going to bed, getting up—this 
is woman’s sphere is it 1 Very good. But 
it should be enlarged a little. There must 
be more variety, more excitement, more out¬ 
door inspiration. Riding out now and then 
amounts to nothing, unless it be on horse 
back ; and how many of our farmer’s wives 
and daughters were ever on top of grand¬ 
mothers side saddle 1 We doubt whether 
they would dare mount it, unless it were 
placed on a box in the garret. There is a 
want among us of out-door exhilarating, 
inspirating, muscle making exercise for 
women. We are not anxious to build a throne 
and put a woman on it, as they do in Eng¬ 
land. Nor would we make woman hoe the 
broad turnip fields, and weed the Avheat, and 
shake the hay, as they do. It is not neces¬ 
sary that woman be made a sovereign or a 
drudge, but her sphere should extend some¬ 
what outside of lath and plaster. Mothers, go 
out; take your daughters along with you ; 
visit the garden ; explore the terra incogni¬ 
ta of the whole farm ; take an interest in all 
its improvements. The garden is especially 
within your province. A part of it, and not 
a stingy part, should be cultivated with a 
succession of flowers, blooming from April 
to November, If your husbands will not 
give you a beautiful plot for this purpose, 
let us know it, and we will write a Phillip- 
pic at them. Guano, dissolved at the rate 
of one pound to a barrel of water, makes the 
richest of flowers. If your worse half will 
not give you this, you may find enough else 
near home that will do about as well. If he 
tells you that flowers are useless, you may 
box his ears, softly, we mean. Make him 
give you a beautiful patch, of the size of your 
parlor at least, and from that up to the ground 
plot of a large dwelling house. He should 
manure it well, and spade it up for you to 
begin with ; and then the women folks should 
do the rest, and it should be a little Eden all 
summer, where much is to be learned and 
much enjoyed. The work may be done be¬ 
fore breakfast and on cloudy days, if you 
fear the sun. 
But your walks need not be limited to the 
flower garden. The kitchen garden should 
be enlarged. What a little, penurious apolo¬ 
gy for a garden we see around too many of 
our farm houses, as if what is taken for a 
garden was lost to the farm, and as if the 
work done on it was so much thrown away, 
instead of being, as it really is, the most 
profitable on the place. Let the kitchen 
garden produce a surplus of every vegetable 
desired for the table. No matter how great 
the surplus ; for, besides the desirableness 
of having something to give away, nearly 
every product of the garden is worth more 
for stock than it costs ; as onions, cut into 
fine pieces, for hens ; sun-flower seeds for 
the poultry at large ; beets, parsnips, tur¬ 
nips, for the cows; carrots for either cows 
or horses; cabbages and corn-stalks for 
soiling purposes ; and weeds, if unfortunate¬ 
ly there should be a surplus, for the pigs. 
But if you have a good husband, and man¬ 
age him well, we mean if you take as much 
interest in the garden yourself as is for your 
health and happiness, there will not be a 
large growth of weeds. 
Neither is it necessary for you to confine 
your walks to the kitchen garden. What a 
miserable idea is it, that there is any thing 
vulgar, indelicate, or improper in a woman’s 
being, in theory, or even in practice, if need be, 
at least in direction, a good farmer. Life is 
uncertain. Why should not the farmer’s 
wife learn how she may live independently 
if left with no other support for her family 
than the farm. In England we believe it 
often happens that the farmer’s wife carries 
out the lease most successfully in case of 
the husband’s decease. We recollect dis¬ 
tinctly, when sitting at the table of a farmer 
in that country, whose family consisted of 
himself, wife, two daughters and a little son, 
to have made this reflection; we said with¬ 
in, what a sturdy pair of farmers are here, 
and how sensible and intelligent both ; and 
the thought occurred to us, that if either 
should be taken away, the other would car¬ 
ry out the ten years lease of the 500 acres 
on which they lived, manfully, or womanly 
as the case might be, but in either emergen¬ 
cy well. And yet we never witnessed more 
manifest propriety, more perfect freedom 
from all unpleasant assumption, or more in¬ 
telligence without affectation, than in that 
great strapping woman, if measured by the 
eye, but accomplished lady, if measured by 
the true standard—the mind. We fancied 
that our great-great-grandmothers, nine gen¬ 
erations ago were like her. English women 
are not ashamed to know something about 
agriculture, nor to do something about it, if 
emergencies require. Why should the 
American women be 1 
