74 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
IAN. 24 
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. 
John Caldwell Calhoun, the eminent Southern politi¬ 
cian, and former owner of Fort Hill, the subject of the 
recent and present illustrations in the series of articles on 
slave labor in the South, was the grandson of James Cal¬ 
houn, an immigrant from County Donegal, Ireland, who 
arrived in this country in 1733, and in 1756 founded the 
“Calhoun Settlement,” in the upper part of South Caro¬ 
lina, near the Savannah River, in what is now known as 
Abbeville County. It was there that John C. Calhoun 
was born, in 1782. In 17% his father, Patrick Calhoun, 
died, leaving his family in moderate circumstances, and 
for the next four years young Calhoun assisted his wid¬ 
owed mother in the management of the farm. At the age 
of 18, however, he commenced to study for the bar. He 
graduated with the highest honors at Yale College in 1804, 
and next studied for 18 months at Litchfield, then the only 
law school in the country. He then returned to practice 
law in his native district of Abbeville. At that time this 
country was greatly agitated at the aggressions of Eng¬ 
land and France on neutral commerce in their desperate 
struggle against each other, and the outrage committed by 
England, in 1807, on the American frigate Chesapeake, 
called forth a universal burst of indignation. Calhoun, 
then 25 years old, drew up, for a public meeting, a fiery 
resolution stigmatizing the action of Great Britain, and 
supported it by a speech of such power that he was soon 
afterwards elected member of the State legislature, and in 
1811 became member of Congress, where he continued to 
be an enthusiastic adherent of the war party. 
In 1811 he married his cousin, Floride Calhoun, with 
whom he received considerable property, including Fort 
Hill, and shortly afterwards removed from the old home¬ 
stead to his new acquisition, a few miles distant. Shortly 
after he had taken his seat in Congress he received a 
prominent place on the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
and on the retirement of the Chairman of the Committee, 
Calhoun became its head and was a prominent factor in 
causing and sustaining the war against Great Britain 
from 1812 to 1814. Commencing with 1817, he acted with 
great credit as Secretary of War, under Monroe, and in 
1825 was elected Vice-President under John Quincy Adams, 
and in 1829 was reelected under General Jackson. He now 
became a prominent aspirant for the Presidency and be¬ 
gan to be looked upon as the champion of the South, and 
though he supported the protective tariff in 1816, he became 
an eager advocate of free trade—the policy then thought 
peculiarly advantageous to the cotton States. He is best 
known, however, as a strenuous defender of slavery, and 
the author of the doctrine to which the Civil War may be 
traced—the doctrine of “ nullification.” according to which 
each State has the right to reject and prevent the enforce¬ 
ment within its own borders, of any act of Congress which 
it may consider unconstitutional. This view was adopted 
by his native State in 1829, and drawn up in a document, 
mainly prepared by Calhoun, which was known as the 
“South Carolina Exposition,” which was approved by 
Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. In 1832, South Carolina 
attempted to carry the theory into practice by passing 
laws nullifying the obnoxious tariff of that year, but the 
opposition was promptly crushed by the firmness of Presi¬ 
dent Jackson. 
The most Important of the other political acts of Calhoun 
are his defence of the right of the Presidential veto, his 
advocacy of the annexation of Texas, and his maintain- 
ance of the cause of peace when, in 1848, war with Great 
Britain was threatened during the controversy about 
Oregon and the boundary embroglio. Indeed, there was 
hardly an important question before Congress during his 
entire public career in which he did not take a prominent 
part. The last measure he introduced and supported pro¬ 
vided for the election of two Presidents, one from the free 
and the other from the slave States, each to approve of all 
the acts of Congress before they could become laws. It 
was while supporting this measure on March 13, 1850, that 
Calhoun fell back exhausted in his seat in the Senate and 
was taken to his lodgings where he died on March 31. 
Calhoun’s speeches were always clear, forcible and di¬ 
rectly to the point, while he seldom indulged in imagina¬ 
tive or purely rhetorical display. Though his political 
doctrines have met with the bitterest reprobation, the in¬ 
tegrity and worth of his character have been spoken of in 
the highest terms even by his opponents. 
CAMP LIFE IN A FARM HOUSE. 
MARY WAGER-FISHER. 
VI. 
The uneventfulness of our daily existence naturally led 
us to make the most of what did happen, and certain regu¬ 
lar occurrences soon came to be a part of each day. At 
5.30 each morning we heard Carl, Jones and the children, 
with their milk cart, rattling up the drive that led to the 
barn, and which passed close to one side of the house. We 
were often impressed with the gayety of these people, and 
their adaptiveness to their condition. Carl and his father 
attended to their own house-work. The children were 
rarely early in bed, and yet always up early, alert and 
bright-eyed. Hattie proved to be a pleasing little house¬ 
wife, not sweeping and dusting so well as her mother, but 
quick and intelligent, and greatly pleased to earn a little 
money for herself. 
Another regular occurrence was what we called the pro¬ 
cession of the ducks, of which the farmers had a great 
many. They were of various ages and came in long 
droves, twice a day, in search of food about the house, 
seeming to know by instinct that they had a reason for 
finding some. As there was nothing they could harm, and 
their coming and going were always marked by the same 
smiling, complacent orderliness, we responded to their ex¬ 
pectations by placing in one certain locality, where we 
could watch them from the piazza, the daily accumulations 
of what would otherwise have gone to the farmers’ pigs. 
Every one was white, and we often wondered if we could 
detect any differences in them. But their variances, if 
any, were extremely slight; they seemed to have exactly 
the same outline in length of neck, bulge of crop, curva¬ 
ture of back and breast, and forever the same smiling 
countenances that no condition or circumstance seemed to 
affect, an expression of the most serene optimism. They 
were sometimes badly injured in the creek by snapping 
turtles, which caught them by the legs, and between the 
opposing forces the legs would be broken, or disjointed. 
Late one afternoon Anaximander and Wilfrid came in 
with a pathetic tale of how one duck which had been dis¬ 
abled by a “snapper,” and unable to leave the water and 
come home for the night, was attended by another duck, 
which evidently remained with its companion out of sym¬ 
pathy, which we all thought very nice for a duck to do. 
But when the boys went to bring home the lame duck, 
they found that its sympathetic companion which had re¬ 
mained with it, had a broken leg too! 
Squirrels also abounded and gave us much entertain¬ 
ment with their pranks, pert, vivacious, and mischievous, 
and as the house was open at every entrance, they often 
entered and helped themselves to vegetables and fruits. 
One morning we were rather disconcerted at finding there 
was no bread for breakfast. Upon inquiry Anaximander 
said that he had fed a tramp the night before—he supposed 
there was more than that one loaf 1 As Wilfrid and I 
were so much alone, we hinted to Anaximander that we 
had too much discretion to encourage visits from tramps 
by giving them food 1 
One Sunday morning just as we had finished our break¬ 
fast on the piazza, we were startled at the appearance of a 
man with a frightful countenance either from fear or 
crime. He began with difficulty to talk in “ broken Eng¬ 
lish,” but when Anaximander spoke to him in German, 
his tongue was loosed and he began to relate what seemed 
to him a dismal tale of woe. He and his wife, who were 
newly arrived immigrants, had been hired for the summer 
by a farmer in the neighborhood, whose wife, after they 
had been with them a month, took five or six city 
boarders, making the work too heavy for his frau who 
had not hired to cook for so many, and he had informed 
the farmer that he would leave him at the end of the next 
month, which would be in a day or two, and the farmer 
had told him that he could not then pay him his wages 
and that he was bound to stay until the end of summer 1 
The suffering of the German over the situation was ap¬ 
parently intense, for he looked crazed with anxiety. 
Some one had told him that Anaximander was a lawyer 
and to go to him for advice. He was advised to remain 
for a week or two longer, until his employer could get 
money to pay his wages, and to give the farmer’s wife a 
chance to find another cook and that in all probability he 
would lose nothing by so doing. The man left, evidently 
somewhat relieved in mind. We learned afterwards that 
he followed the advice given him, got his pay, and left 
with his frau for other quarters where the folks did not 
take city boarders. 
The city boarders who seemed to abound in the neighbor¬ 
hood in August, came to be a source of considerable 
annoyance to us. Our grounds with the trees and creek, 
had a great attraction for them, and they proceeded to 
make free use of them, breaking down the fence to get 
within, and when once within, destroying the privacy of 
our out door life. Finally, we put up a legend, written in 
big letters on a starched linen cuff of Anaximander’s, 
which we trimmed to look like a sign board. “ Strictly 
private ground ' All trespassing forbidden ,” and, won¬ 
derful to tell, that one cuff put an end to the nuisance. 
The day of the freshet was one of the notable days, it 
being so dark at 3.30 that we could not see to read; and it 
was evident that Nature had something extraordinary on 
hand. When the floods began to descend, and thunder 
and lightning played about the house in terrifying 
measure, Wilfrid and I withdrew to our indoor sitting- 
room and sat down in the middle of it. For about one 
hour the storm prevailed, and we talked on gaily ’mid the 
flashes of lightning, the roar of thunder, the sounds of 
riven trees nearby as it seemed—our way of whistling to 
keep up courage 1 It was a trying hour, even for us who 
are not timid, and when at length the sky seemed to break, 
and we dared go to a window in an interval between the 
lightning flashes, it was to see the creek expanded into a 
lake, a river across the road, the water at a level with the 
farmer’s house and Carl and Jones thigh-deep in water 
evidently trying to save the contents of the spring-house 
from floating away. As soon as Wilfrid was allowed to 
go out, he stripped off his stockings, put on his rubber 
boots that reached to his thighs, and darted away with a 
wild cry of delight to help rescue the endangered property 
and watch the moving, timber-laden flood. How Anaxi¬ 
mander was ever to reach home dry-shod we could not see. 
It was finally decided to despatch one of the farmer’s boys 
on horseback to the station—the bare-legged boy could 
wade the stream that made a river across the road, and 
Anaximander could ride the horse ! The far end of the 
lawn, which I had thought of as a future flower garden, 
was now but a sea of water, and this great and sudden 
rise In the creek modified various plans we had talked of 
in regard to “ creek improvements.” In more ways than 
one we learned that it was wise to fully make the ac¬ 
quaintance of a new place before proceeding upon innova¬ 
tions. 
“ When we find a paper that has hack-hone 
enough to tell the truth, let us have hack- 
hone enough to help it along” —l. w. lightly. 
IVomans Work. 
LISTEN, HOUSEWIVES! 
$10 CASH! 
For information which you can give. The Cnief Cook 
wants to know, 
HOW YOU ECONOMIZE: 
IN TIME: IN STEPS; IN FRICTION; 
IN MATERIALS OR MONEY; 
And so do the other Housewives. 
The Chief Cook is so anxious to know all about this, 
that The R. N.-Y. will pay for the information. To the 
housewife who will best describe her economies in an 
article of 800 words or less, we will give a prize of 85. 
To the second best article, a prize of 83. 
To the third best article, a prize of 82. 
Ideas will count first; but if the ideas in two articles 
are of equal value, grammatical excellence, neatness, etc., 
will aid in determining the winner. Somebody will win ; 
shall it be you 7 No article will be returned; we shall 
publish the best of them, but will give no names but those 
of the winners, if so desired. 
We will allow you about a month in which to get your 
ideas together and on paper. Competition will close 
February 15, 1891, and is limited to subscribers and their 
families only. Articles of more than 800 words will not 
be considered as competing. Letters should be marked 
“ PRIZE COMPETITION,” and addressed to “ Woman’s 
Work.” 
A WORD TO AWAKEN OUR GIRLS.—II. 
HE other farmer’s daughter whose story we promised 
to outline, was one of a family of girls only; and 
what that means on a farm only those who have had ex¬ 
perience can realize. The father died during her early 
girlhood, and the family of women struggled along as 
they were able, beset with difficulties with hired help, and 
with the many trials that only a man can successfully 
cope with. If the hired man “ struck,” the girls were 
often obliged to take up the burden where he threw it 
down, for help was scarce, and difficult to secure; so that 
picking apples and husking corn and even drawing grain, 
and marketing all produce, became a part of their educa¬ 
tion in enduring hardships. Added to this", there was sick¬ 
ness in the family. 
At the age of 15, our girl was the main prop of the house¬ 
hold, taking most of the care of the sick one, doing the 
washing and the dressmaking for the whole family, and 
studying between times while sitting up nights with the 
invalid. When her services as nurse were no longer re¬ 
quired, she taught school during the summers, and earned 
the money to pay the expenses of a higher education as 
soon as she could be spared from home. But, like many an¬ 
other, her ambition was stronger than her constitution ; 
her health became broken under the strain, and back to 
the farm she went to try to regain her lost strength. 
Open-air work soon increased her capacity for work, but 
being able to do but little, she learned to say to her¬ 
self: “If you can do but little, do what you can; that 
much at least will be saved,” even when some task that 
would be heavy for a strong man lay before her. Going 
on from this, she finally took for her motto: “ Do what 
you can, and waste no time in idle complainings.” 
Through what seemed an accidental circumstance, she 
at length began writing about the things she was familiar 
with for the Grange meetings, and for some of the cheaper 
respectable papers. Whenever she could not do what she 
desired to do, she did what she could, “the next thynge,” 
and so she worked upward, slowly and gradually, until 
now her work finds pLce in first-class publications almost 
entirely, and other papers copy it and speak of her as 
“that able and entertaining writer,” etc. 
These true stories of rural daughters who are now living 
and working, though they both refer to women who write, 
have not been told especially to stimulate our girls to try 
this field of labor, but to show them that they can accom¬ 
plish pretty much whatever they fix their determination 
upon, if they will but do the little that seems possible to 
them now. The quality known familiarly among us as 
“grit,” aided by conscientious work, can accomplish the 
seemingly impossible. 
Thus we say again to the girls who would fain do some¬ 
thing with their lives, but in whose way circumstances 
seem to have built a wall great and high: “ Do the little 
that you can, and some day the way will surely open for 
you to go forward and do more.” 
In writing to advertisers, please mention The R. N.-Y. 
Packer’s Tar Soap 
The Standard for Skin Diseases. Cures dan¬ 
druff and prevents premature baldness; 
makes the skin smooth, soft and healthy; 
prevents chapping, chafing, &c. Invaluable 
to the nursery, and the favorite antiseptic 
and deodorant toilet soap. 
25 cents per cake. All Druggists, or 
The PACKER MFG. CO., 100 Fulton St., N. Y. 
