626 
sartin sure. But I must be agoin’, the cow s is 
to be fed and watered and cleaned off agin 
milking. Never you fret about Mrs. Merritt, 
It’ll all come out right with her boy, never 
fear. I’m dead sure on’t. 
And Jahcz strode off muttering to h imself, 
I’d like to tell the poor girl, but what’s the use. 
It’d he a a bad one w ay as the other. She 
don’t say nuthin’ about herself, but she feels 
kinder bad—that’s a fact. Poor Barley; its a 
hard thing on him any how ami I’m sorry for 
him,” Patience was but little comforted by 
the opinion of Jahez. Love is jealous and the 
neglect of a lover is unpardonable, She 
feared more than she dared to think; why 
had Barley not written to his mother for 
months ? why had he disappeared so suddenly 
without leaving a trace hehind ? It might 
not be so bad as gossip bad made it, but ab¬ 
sence had perhaps led to neglect and forgetful¬ 
ness. Such thoughts passrl through her 
mind as she went sadly about her duties and 
the more she thought, the more her mind be¬ 
gan to misgive her:and despair took the place 
of her former confidence. 
The same evening Jonas Pratt paid her a 
visit and although his former diffidence was 
such as to cause him to believe himself a poor 
sortof a suitor, yet on this occasion he made 
a fair approach to an earnest and passionate 
wooer. 
“1 know I’m not good enough fer you, Miss 
Patience; you are book Iarned and eddicated 
and I’m only a rough and ignorant man, be¬ 
cause 1 never hed a chance. When I was a 
youngster the schools was poor and the 
teachers poorer and we boys were a bad lot 
surely; but no one told us any better and the 
teacher spent more time in wearin’ up hickory 
gad3 on our backs than in puttin’ anythin’ in¬ 
ter our heads. So we got mighty little 
lamin’ at school anyhow. But I mean well 
Miss Patience. I’ve got a good home, an a 
good farm and my old mother she’s old, but 
she wasa neighbor of your mother’s,and thinks 
a world of you. But she don’t think anythin’ 
like as much of ye as I do, that’s a fact. I 
don’t like to say anythin’ about yer father, 
Miss Patience, bekase you’re old enough to 
please yerself, but he’s powerful sot on if. 
You know that without my rellin’ it." 
Patience sat and listened with averted head 
and a tear dropped on the muslin she w f as 
sewing, and by and by another, and half the 
time her thoughts wamlend back to the time 
when her mother, a sensitive, cultured woman, 
the wife of a rough, rude, selfish, overbearing, 
self-willed aud obstinate man, fretted away 
her life, as a poor bird might beat itself to 
death against the bars of a cage. Patience 
was too young at the time of her mother’s 
death to understand and appreciate her moth¬ 
er’s troubles; but since then, her loneliness 
and isolation and her household cares, falling 
on one so young but so intelligent and thought¬ 
ful, as well as her father’s selfish and over¬ 
bearing disposition, had all come home to her 
and her quickly developed experience had 
made of her an old woman in thought and 
manuer while still a girl of eighteen. With 
the experience she had passed through and 
with the strong inbred deference to parental 
authority, and her fear of her father's dis¬ 
pleasure, she had been brought to entertain 
the thought that her lot might even be easier 
as the companion of Jonas Pratt than as the 
daughter and solo companion of her father. 
Sometimes, indeed, are we thus greatly 
tempted to “ leave the ills we have and fly to 
those we know uot of” in a sort of desperation, 
and inthe chauce of finding these less irksome 
than those have been. 
But then came the thought, revolting to this 
refined girl, that while it might be possible to 
become a companion to such a man, to become 
his wife would be utterly impossible; without 
love; without even respect; with repugnance 
to the person of the man, and a sense of his 
utter inferiority in every respect to herself. 
When these thoughts -came to her mind she 
shuddered aud threw down her needle, her 
book or her pen, with which she might have 
been occupying herself, and fled away to an¬ 
other room—her mother’s, most frequently— 
or to the garden or the pasture, or the barn 
and fuiind companionship amoug the cows 
which crowded around her to lick her hand, 
and be petted and fondled. Then her father 
came to the attack and urged her with bitter 
words, and even threats, to do bis bidding in 
this matter. On one occasion, infuriated by 
her emphatic protests against his authority in 
this nutter, he forcibly thrust her out of 
doors and declared with oaths that she should 
never again enter his doors until she acknowl¬ 
edged her duty to him. “ Children, obey your 
parents in nil things," exclaimed this man—a 
fanatic in his religion—and who, bad he lived 
many years before, would have stoned a “ re¬ 
bellious" child, as they burned and drowned 
witches, and thought they did God service. 
Aud he thrust this tender woman out of doors 
when the rain beat in torrents against the 
house and bubbled in under the sash, as it was 
forced through the crevices by the stormy 
w ind. There Patience crouched and sobbed ; 
THE RURAL MEW-YORKER. 
the rain penetrating through her clothing, 
while her headstrong father sat by the stove 
and mechanically smoked his pipe although 
its fire had gone out, and nursed bis wrath 
and made himself believe how ill he was 
treated by bis wilful daughter. “I’m sot on 
this thing, be thought to hi • self, dead sot 
outer it: jest because I’m sot; and the gal 
shall mind me or I’ll-." Ho wouldn’t finish 
the threat, sinmly because he could not con¬ 
ceive of any ordinary punishment severe 
enough for such misbehavior. 
“Let me in, father," cried Patience; “let 
me in: I shall die here if you don’t.” 
“ Will you promise to mind me, then?” said 
her father. 
“Oh, don’t ask me father, don’t; I’ll think 
of it. Give me time to think about it.” 
“ Well, come in, then, and get off to bed or 
you'll never be able to do anythi g to-mor¬ 
row, and there’s nobody can milk the brindled 
cow but you. Get off to bed with yon." 
Wbat a thoughtless creature is a man to be 
entrusted with the care of a weak woman, 
physically so wonderfully made and endowed, 
but often so thoughtlessly, ignorantly and 
selfishly used. Very few of the be°t of men 
understand a woman. They never realize how 
near to slavery is the dependence of a woman 
upon a man. Chained by the ties of a family, 
by the utter hopelessness of a separate life, 
once she has become a wife and mother the 
woman is bouud fast to her circumstances 
whatever they may be. Hers is too often a 
life of labor and worry and suffering at the 
best; and on the farm it is a life of endless 
work and self-denial, as well as of suffering 
and submission; rarely alleviated by adequate 
thoughtfulness, care and attention on the part 
of her husband. Not that be is at fault wil¬ 
fully and perversely. The trouble is, he rarely 
knows what is demanded of him and what are 
the rights and wrongs of the case. It is a de¬ 
fect in our education which can only be rem¬ 
edied by that highest of all teachers—the 
preacher. How many social questions need 
discussion w’hich are ignored for dead and dry 
and useless topicso.' creeds and beliefs; where 
religion consists of what we do or didn’t do, 
and not of what beliefs or disbeliefs we may 
hold. Religion is a practical thing, and a 
vast amount of it may grow out of the social 
relations of the family and of the measure of 
justice awarded by husbands to wives and by 
parents to their children; as well as of love 
and duty from these to those.—[To be contin¬ 
ued.] 
-» 4 - 
MR. BARNUM AND JENNY LIND. 
The London correspondent of the New 
York Times tells the following anecdote about 
Mr. P. T. Barnum and the great singer Jenny 
Lind: 
Sitting by Mr. Frith, the Royal Academi¬ 
cian, at the recent Irving banquet, the painter 
thus addressed me; “Talking of Mr. Bar¬ 
num, an incident in his career wasmentioned 
to me the other night which ought to be pub¬ 
licly known.” “ Give me the opportunity to 
cany out your earnest wish," I said. “Well,” 
said Mr. Frith, “ The other night I took down 
to dinner at a friend’s house, Mme. Gold¬ 
schmidt, (Jenny Lind) when the name of Bar¬ 
num was mentioned, and she spoke of him 
in eulogistic terms. “ When he employed me 
to go to America,” she said, ( I signed an 
agreement in which, as it turned out, he 
had by far the best of the bargain. I did not 
fully understand this while I was in the Uni¬ 
ted States. I determined to speak to him on 
the subject I said to him: “Mr. Barnum, 
I am not satisfied with this agreement. I find 
I have wholly underestimated my popularity 
and the money value of my voice; you are 
getting far too large a share of the results of 
my work.” He replied: Madame, I quite 
agree with you,’ and thereupon tearing the 
agreement into shrettds, he said: “ Mme. 
Lind, write out your own agreement aud I 
will sign it without reading it.” A great 
man and generous, aud I am very much in¬ 
terested in him.’” I do not know if this 
story has ever been told; it is new to me, and 
if it is old to New York it is worth repeating 
under the circumstances. 
HOUSEHOLD PROVERBS. 
There are some old proverbial comparisons 
which aie quite unexplainable. Take, forex- 
ample, “as queer as Dick’s hat-band.” Who 
will tell us where this came from? Who wa9 
Dick, and what was the matter with his bat- 
band? The phrase is very old, and has been 
in use for generations, and the mystery of its 
origin and of its supposed recondite signifi¬ 
cance has from time tc time been the subject 
of preserving investigation by curious per¬ 
sons. But nothing very satisfactory has yet 
been discovered. There was a custom prevail¬ 
ing in England at the beginning of this cen¬ 
tury, though it is nearly obsolete now, of hir¬ 
ing farm servants at certain periodical 
gatherings, called “mops.” The laborers who 
came to be hired used to intimate their calling 
by wearing certain insignia round their hats 
—a wisp of hay denoting a carter, a wisp of 
straw a tbateber, a plait of horse-hair a 
plowman, and so on; now, if the Dick of the 
queer hat-band was a candidate for service on 
any such cccasioD.the circumstances that gave 
rise to his renown may be ea*ily imagined. 
“As mad as a hatter” is another mysterious 
comparison, which even people with educa¬ 
tion do not disdain to use, although no one is 
kind enough to vouchsafe an explanation of 
it. If it must be assumed, as a friend sug¬ 
gests, that hatters must be mad to go on, from 
year to year, perpetrating the frightful cylin¬ 
ders that gentlemen wear on their heads, we 
feel bound to rebut, in their behalf, the charge 
of insanity, and to transfer it to the wearers 
of tbesaiti abominations instead of tbe makers 
who only exercise their industry in satisfying 
the demands of the public. 
Let no one suppose that by acting a good 
part through life he will escape scandal. There 
will be those even who hate him for the very 
qualities that ought to procure esteem. There 
are some folks in this world who are not will¬ 
ing that others should be better than them¬ 
selves. 
Reading and Thinking* —Always have a 
book within your reach, which you may 
catch up at your odd minutes. Resolve to 
edge in a little reading every day, if it is but 
a single sentence. If you can give fifteen 
minutes a day, it ill be felt at the end of a 
year. Thoughts take up no room. When 
they are right they afford a portable pleasure, 
which one may travel or labor with, without 
any trouble or incumbrance. 
Electricity is a wonderful thing. There 
is an electric hair brush, warranted to make 
the hair grow and cure headache, and an 
electric flesh brush that will cure several 
other ills that the flesh is heir to; and now, if 
some fellow will bring out an electric cloth 
brush that will make an old suit of clothes 
look and wear like new, he can sell thousands 
at a dollar a piece, or three for two dollars. 
A Wipe's Education. —George Eliot says: 
“It is better to know how to make home hap¬ 
py to your husband than to read Greek to 
him; aud that even music and singing—al¬ 
though very attractive to family visitors— 
cease to be a substitute for the commoner vir¬ 
tues after a time. Good cookery is a most 
valuable accomplishment in a wife’s education 
after the first delusion of the honeymoon is 
over.” 
for Women. 
CONDUCTED BY MISS KAY CLARK. 
WOMAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE. 
A century of experiments—the fruit of 
which, “forbetter for worse” for “ weal or 
woe” will be handed down to posterity, mark¬ 
ing “ this a wise and understanding people”— 
ora people who “having eyes saw not, and 
having ears heard not”—is this we are now 
living in. Amiddhis heterogeneous offspring 
of the nineteenth century, we find one of a 
far distant era. The great question of •’ Wo¬ 
man’s rights” not being a new one by any 
means, for as early as 441 (B. C.) Aristophanes 
the only Greek comedian of whose works any 
complete copies are extant, catered to the 
taste of the luxuriant Athenians by discuss¬ 
ing in not over / ast idiousiy-delicate strains 
the rights of woman, as a public character; 
and that people, whose brilliaut social and 
political experience is unprecedented were 
in no wise ignorant of the great theme, 
that has siucethe year 1851 been agitating the 
English and American people. 
It appears almost impossible that a subject 
so long discussed as woman’s rights, should 
not ere this have been exhausted; yet so many 
have been the changes, eaused by varied 
modes of life—difference in race—degrees of 
civilization etc., since the time when the 
Creator placed the man and woman in the 
garden of Eden and subsequently upon “ the 
fall” declared to the man “ by the sweat of 
thy face thou shall eat bread” and of the 
woman that she should “ be an help meet for 
him,” giving to her the title of “ mother;” 
that the social position of woman is modified 
and tbe relations of the sexes have been nat¬ 
urally influenced and a reciprocity estab 
lisbed; yet while the colors and shades of the 
picture have thus varied, the outlines remain 
unaltered, answering in the human race, to 
the ruder and less conspicuous relations, no¬ 
ticeable throughout all animated nature. We 
may first notice then, that the two sexes are 
necessar y to each other—and it appears rather 
amusing if not astounding that our “lord 
of creation,” proverbial for his good opin¬ 
ion of himself, would if obliged to live alone, 
be a most pitiable creature—indeed would 
soon become a mere nonentity. From tbe very 
SEPT 0 
begining ready to blame the woman given to 
him because the Creator almost simultaneous¬ 
ly with his being, saw. “ it was not good that 
man should be alone,” and made him an 
help meet ..” This fine fellow continues to 
follow his first parent’s example, ever ready 
to insist, “ The woman whom thou gavest to 
be with me she”—did this, or that wrong t hing. 
Now it appears to us on the outset, to be a 
clear fact, that taking this question of 
“ rights” no farther than the domestic circle 
of one home—the woman receives an over 
abundance of blame for the short comings of 
her entire family, aud no credit for the work 
that has fallen legitimately to her share; and 
which has, in the majority of cases, been 
conscientiously and faithfully performed. 
In an article as brief as we are obliged to 
make the present it is not possible to enter 
upon the first great division of this important 
subject, tbe “Political rights of Woman,” and 
the second can only receive a few passing re¬ 
marks, in view, of our artist’s happy effort to 
show the Aesthetically humble phase of the 
question by personifying (?) the old couplet:— 
Man’s work Is done at set of sun, 
A womans' work is never done. 
In 1851 an article in the Westminster Review 
on the (then) novel subject of the enfranchise¬ 
ment of women, attracted the attention not 
only of the English nation but of the world at 
large, especially in America, where it soon 
assumed the magnitude and importance, of a 
political question. 
The Industrial Rights of women, embrace 
their admission to all offices, occupations and 
professions including admission into certain 
chosen few of our higher seats of learning. 
Our special educational advantages for women 
however, are of the highest order, and fit 
them for any line of business whether pro¬ 
fessional or other. 
This calls up the question of the proper 
sphere for women. The loud voice of tbe 
multitude cry out “viva voce,” “Marriage 
should be woman’s proper—if not sole—e 
and aim; but where the census rigidly points 
to the disheartening fact that man is largely 
in the minority, what are the poor women 
left behind to do? 
But even supposing every woman in the 
land could secure that one great boon, a 
husband, if she desired, (which we must at 
least admit is often questionable) wbat then? 
Will she at once be allowed to fill the niche 
prepared for her? Will she be tbe “help¬ 
“ Woman’sWork isNever Done.”—Fig. 297. 
meet,” the Creator distinctly said, the man 
needed? Will the man, “comfort her, honor, 
and keep her in sickness or in health and for¬ 
saking all others, keep only unto her, so long 
as they both shall live!” Will he “taking her 
as his wedded wife ” to have and to hold, from 
that day forward for better, for worse, for 
richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, 
to love and to cherish till death them does 
part, and aB be holds the simple but binding 
circlet upon her finger, saying, “With this 
ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly 
goods I thee endow, in the name of the Fathe r 
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost:” does 
he think you, really understand, and mean 
what he promises? I trow not! If so why 
does the skeleton in solmany households appear 
in the shape of the tyranieal husband? Why 
is it that so soon after the honey-moon, the 
look of care begins to shadow the hitherto 
placid face? 
Now it seems to me that the first and para¬ 
mount trouble with women is this, that the 
average husband never gives his wife credit 
for what she does, and constantly finds fault, 
because she does or leaves uodone, the multi¬ 
tudinous duties to which he considers she 
should promptly attend. 
We know of several husbands with whose 
families we have constant intercourse, and it 
often appears amusing to notice how similar 
are their habits—when at home. The wives 
are each allowed to be a sort of ministering 
