JULY 30 
THE RURAL WEW-YORJCER. 
HVman’s Work. 
CONDUCTED BY EMILY LOUISE TAPLIN. 
THE BLESSINGS. 
An angel Came from the courts above. 
To boar a message of peace and love: 
With blessings many, to crown the one 
Whose work of life was the noblest done. 
He came to a rich man's glided door; 
A beautiful lady stood be Tore 
His vision, fair as the saints are fair, 
With smile as sweet as the angels wear. 
He needed not to be told her life— 
The pure young mother, the tender wife; 
He needed not to be told that she, 
In homes of sorrow and poverty, 
Was giving wealth with a lavish hand; 
He thought her worthy in heaven to stand. 
“No! "no!” a voice to the angel heart 
Spoke low; “seek Oil lit the busy mart.” 
He found a door that was worn ami old; 
The night was damp and the wind was cold, 
A pale-faced girl at her sewing bent; 
The midnight lamp to her features lent 
A paler hue, as she tolled the while, 
But yet the mouth had a restful smile. 
^ Doing her duty with honest pride; 
Breasting temptation on every side. 
"For her the blessings,” the angel said, 
And touched with pity the girlish head. 
"No time nor money for alms lias she, 
But duty is higher than charity.” 
—barah K. Hutton in Travelers Record. 
OF INTEREST TO WOMEN. 
A novelty is the use of bed-ticking as a 
material for making French corsets. They 
are beautifully cut, so that the stripes fit into 
the shape, and are elaborately trimmed with 
lace aud ribbon. 
Dellana Mifllin, writing in the Philadelphia 
Press, suggests a mending school as being as 
much to be desired as a cooking school. It is 
certainly a good idea, for a good many of us 
are wofully deficient in this respect. And the 
establishment of mending bureaus and profes¬ 
sional menders suggests that, there is a good 
deal of missionary work to be done iu this di¬ 
rection. 
Miss Florence Nightingale is making an 
effort to thoroughly organize the Women’s 
Protective anti Provident League in England. 
The puffed sfeeves and loose bodices which 
have been worn abroad for the past two or 
three years seem to be obtaining a good deal 
of favor here. They are piquant and becom¬ 
ing to small figures, but they are certainly out 
of place for street wear. 
Miss Florence Marryatt, giving her im¬ 
pressions of America, says: ‘‘I had often 
heard that there is no gentleman like an 
American gentleman, but I thiuk it is too 
little to say of them, and that it is more true 
that there is no gentleman like an American 
man It is the same with rich aud poor. 
However hurried a man may be, he doesn’t 
shove a woman into the gutter to make room 
for himself, nor does he stare rudely in her 
face us she passes him, nor make remarks on 
her appearance or her dress. There is no such 
boor iu the world as the middle-class English¬ 
man, and some of the so-called ‘upper class’ 
are not free from this species of insolence. 
American gentlemen are much more courteous 
in their bearing toward women tliau wo are; 
it made me mad to see my countrymen, men 
of good family, too, standing in the corridors 
of the hotels talking to ladies, with their hats 
on, while every American head was uncov¬ 
ered.” 
SOCIAL GRACES. 
How often we read of the shy country girl 
who visits her fashionable relatives, to be 
abashed aud rendered miserable on every side 
by her want of social ease. Yet the princi¬ 
ples of good breeding are the same all the 
world over, and a gentlewoman is the same, 
whether princess or peasant. 
If we could only be so exulted iu mind as to 
be unmindful of surroundings, either of place 
or persons. It is such a constitution of mind 
which enables the country cavalier to sing 
that 
" Stone wal's do not a prison make, 
Nor Iron burs a cage. 
Minds Innocent and quiet take 
These for an hermitage." 
Really there is no earthly reason why Phyl¬ 
lis visiting her city cousius should bo less 
natural than Phyllis in her home circle. If 
she has been taught to regard herself as a par¬ 
agon of beauty and accomplishments in a 
small community, she may, perhaps, find the 
limited nature of her acquirements when 
brought among those of wider culture. But 
if she has been taught to speak her mother 
tougue accurately, to modulate her voice, to 
dress with taste, though with simplicity, and 
to display the good breeding which is simply 
a crystallization of the Golden Rule, she will 
wiu the friends worth having, and for the 
rest, what does it matter? 
Bashfulness proceeds as much from vanity 
as from any other cause. We think what 
effect we are producing on those around us, 
and this robs us of our ease. We do not stop 
to thiuk of the impression in our own little 
community, and the result is perfect ease. 
The best tliiug for the shy country girl, who 
hopes some day to shine In wider circles, is to 
practice and perfect her “company manners” 
at home. Let- her not only offer filial love to 
her parents, hut also the courtesy she would 
display to her hosts. And oue thing is cer¬ 
tain, etiquette and social ceremony are really 
nothing more than the outward expression of 
kindness, gentleness, unselfishness and the 
like. One may have only the form without 
the reality, but the form was first dictated by 
such graces. .So, if we cultivate our hearts 
aright, we may be sure that the expression of 
our feelings will result hi the highest form of 
good breeding. 
But even when really well bred, a country 
girl often complains that she feels narrow aud 
provincial when brought into contact with 
those of wider experience. 
My dear girls, there is no reason in the 
world why 3 am should be narrow or provin¬ 
cial. Everyone who can read has the oppor¬ 
tunity of associating with the uoblest minds 
aud fiuest characters—the best cure in the 
world for narrowness and smallness of view, 
So take courage, rural maidens, though your 
surroundings be simple and your means mea¬ 
gre. you have always the possibility of the 
highest womanhood, and it depends on you 
alone. 
TELEGRAPHY FOR. WOMEN. 
A. G. 
This is one of the most difficult professions 
in which a woman can engage. A very false 
idea is given of it by advertisements like the 
following which may be seen in any daily 
newspaper; 
WAN l ED—THREE YOUNG LADIES 
immediately to learn telegraphing, aud 
qualify for permanent positions paying $60 to 
$125 monthly. Apply Superintendent’s Office, 
-W est-St. 
There are 600 operators in the Western 
Union Telegraph Ollice iu New' York, aud not 
oue gets a salary of $125 per month. The 
average salary for a first-class male operator 
is $75. The operators who draw higher sala¬ 
ries are all men of great, reputation und speed, 
and ure only to be found in newspaper offices 
and press associat ions. For Indies the average 
salary is $60 a month. A correspondent of 
the N. Y. Sun says that he only knows of 
three first class lady operators, one at Denver, 
another at Rochester, and the third at Bridge¬ 
port- The two latter are in the employ of 
press associations, whose wires are worked at 
a killing rate and even they do not receive 
such salaries as arc advertised. 
I know a number of young ladies in the 
various offices in Sun Francisco, who are only 
receiving$30 a month, and the hours are long 
and the work hard. 
All the heavy circuits are maimed by men. 
Women cannot stand the strain on the nerv¬ 
ous system, of the work on a rjundruplex or 
fast wire. They do good work on the lighter 
circuits, and in small country stations, but 
there they do not- receive large puy. As a 
general thing, too, these so-called “telegraph 
schools” are run by inefficient operators who 
are not sufficiently well posted m their pro¬ 
fession to earn a living by it, and naturally a 
graduate from such an establishment finds 
that she has learned nothing practical, has 
been wheedled out of her money, aud not be¬ 
ing qualified, Can expect no position. It is 
just the same with advertisements purporting 
to turn you out a first-class stenographer in 
three months. It is impossible to learn auy 
of the old systems iu that time. Even with 
the light-line shorthand, which is the simplest, 
you cannot acquire a greater speed than 75 to 
SI) words a minute in three mouths, and that 
you will not do by simply taking two lessons a 
week for that time. You will need to study 
many hours a day. 1 have known one or two 
instances where a student of light-line short¬ 
hand has been able to write 120 words a min¬ 
ute iu two months, but they were exception¬ 
ally bright geniuses, in fact, and studied all 
day long There is no royal road to learning, 
and first-class salaries are only paid to first- 
class workmen. 
MANNERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
SELMA CLAHK. 
Those who sigh for a return of the days of 
chivalry should read history closer. As a 
rule ladies were not admitted to the festal 
dinners aud suppers of Feudal Euglaud, und 
the entertainer of that day, when his party 
consisted of both sexes, unless the rank of the 
ladies demanded exceptional courtesy, seated 
them, or allowed them to seat themselves 
wherever they could find room. Generally 
they were placed at a separate table, or below 
the “salt,” which was the line of honor. Thus 
women of gentle birth would find themselves 
sitting with the inferior guests, whilst men of 
the same rank and worse manners enjoyed 
the more desirable place aud better fare above 
tho “salt.” Later, in the reign of Elizabeth, 
when it. became the custom to place the joints 
of meat on the tabic and to carve them there, 
the ladies were advanced from the foot to the 
head of the table. This, however, was not. 
done with any ehivalrie notion of honoring 
thereby, but merely that they might perform 
the duties of a carver, aud wait on their lords. 
“It may cost, the reader a struggle,” says the 
historian, “to admit that our ancestors had 
uo more gallant purpose in view when they 
promoted woman to her proper place at the 
board, but there is no doubt, as to the fact. 
The new ordering of places was the result of 
masculine selfishness and indolence.” 
That she very soou made this duty a point 
of honor, and presided over the company from 
her carver’s stool as from a throne of state, 
was due to her own cleverness. John North, 
when a young divine, (afterward Master of 
Trinity College, Cambridge), used to make 
mirth at the suppers and dinners 6 f the best 
houses of Charles the Second’s time, by de¬ 
manding that “the ladies at. the upper end of 
the table” should haudle their carving knives 
briskly, or else with fit humility “come down 
to their proper place at the lower end.” ne 
was very fond of saying “that of all the beasts 
of the field, God Almighty thought woman 
the fittest companion for man.” 
These and many other things show that 
“chivalry" was not all t-hat romantic girls are 
apt to picture it. 
The manners of a lovely woman in the mid¬ 
dle of the 17th century were not exactly up to 
the requirements of society of the present day 
if we are to credit a work by Lady Rich, 
called the “Ingenious Gentlewoman’s Delight¬ 
ful Companion.” “In carving,” says ibe 
author, “it will appear very comely and de¬ 
cent to use a fork.” Forks, by the way, were 
only just becoming popular. She was told not 
to smack like a pig whilst eating, or to swallow 
“spoon-meat" so hot as to bring tears into her 
eyes, not to driuk herself out of breath so that 
she would have to “blow strougly ” to recover 
herself! She was warned that unless she re¬ 
frained from such actions she would be "taken 
for au underbred person, even though she 
were au earl’s daughter.” 
In the manufacture of lozenges aud sugar 
toys, the confectioners of olden times ex¬ 
pended much more ingenuity than delicacy, 
and the most forward “girl of the'period” 
would consider herself outraged were she 
offered such sweetmeats as gallant knights in 
the palmiest days of chivalry used to press 
upon their ladies. The mottoes of our bon¬ 
bons of the present day—a relic of t his custom 
—possess uo greater demerit than that of silli¬ 
ness. 
Altogether, i am willing to concede better 
manners and morals to our best youug men 
and maidens of to-day, than to the stateliest 
dame aud most gallant knight of the days of 
old. 
♦ » » — 
ROOM FOB A NEW SOCIETY. 
Accept the thanks of an appreciative 
reader for the cartoon on the first puge of the 
Rural of June 25. It is very suggestive of a 
much needed heart reform among women. 
The cruel slaughtering of oar sweet songsters 
is a disgrace to our Christian civilization. 
Were we the heathens of Africa, nothing bet¬ 
ter could lie expected of us. But truly, the 
ladies of Christianized America should be 
slightly ahead of untaught barbarians, I 
want to hear nothing of any woman’s tender, 
heartedness who wears the dead form of a 
bird on her hat, that has been killed by the 
crudest of all cruel ways, having its vitals 
toru from it while yet alive, that the plumage 
might, retain its lustre. I was quite impressed 
by your cartoon, and I suggest, that through 
the agency of its inti nonce, lot there be origi¬ 
nated among the lady readers of t.be Rural 
New-Yorker, an Anti-feather Association, to 
abolish the use of birds uud wings from their 
millinery. Let them use their influence 
among their neighbors, and teach the princi¬ 
ples of true mercy in their own homes. May 
humanity overcome this diabolical fashion. 
What say you, lady readers ? 
NELLIE BURNS. 
■ ■ ■ « « » 
GOLDEN GRAINS. 
God will only punish men for wickedness 
and not for holding opinions. That is tho 
truth which cuts into the knot of sophistry 
and ends that greut error, that error itself is 
guilt... 
All we have to do is to do justly, love 
mercy, aud walk humbly; give labor its 
wages, give loafers uo quarter, give the erring 
one a helping hand and the mendicant work, 
and give to all men freedom of land, of prop¬ 
erty, of right., and recoguize the fatherhood 
of God and the brotherhood of man. 
There is this difference between happiness 
and wisdom; he that thinks himself the hap¬ 
piest man really is so; but he who thinks 
himself the wisest is generally the greatest 
fool. 
Truth— the open, honest truth—is always 
the wisest, always the safest, for everyone in 
any and all circumstances. 
Great is the art of beginning, but greater 
is the art of ending. Many a poem is marred 
by a superfluous verse... . 
To one who is living aright, no death can be 
sudden aud no place unfavorable. One step 
anti all roads meet. 
Don’t mope. Be young as long as you live. 
Laugh a good deal. Frolic every day. Alow 
tone of mind is unhealthy .. . 
Humor usually tends toward good nature, 
and everything that tends toward good nature 
teuds toward good grace. 
If laughing’s a sin, 1 don’t see what the 
Lord let so many funny things happen for— 
The reason whv many people neglect the 
duty that lies nearest them is because they 
look too far for it. It is not away at the hori¬ 
zon, or even over the hedge into the next 
field; it is here at our gates. 
Domestic Ccoiiomi) 
CONDUCTED BY MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
CONCERNING THE HOMESTEAD. 
MARY WAGER-FISHER. 
I doubt, after all, if there is any happiness 
so genuine aud so unalloyed with what is not 
happiness as the adornment of one s home— 
the planting of trees and shrubs, aud the gen¬ 
eral disposition of the ground immediately 
surrounding tho spot where Iho homestead 
hus been reared. I cannot remember the 
time when 1 did not feel this to be true in 
very much the sumo sense aud with the same 
enthusiasm that I do now, and one of the 
things most enjoyed aftora prolonged absence 
from home is expressed iu the exclamation, 
“See how the trees have grown!” Oue might 
take almost as much pleasure in his human as 
in his vegetable friends if he could lop off 
their inharmonious characteristics with the 
same freedom and ease with which he prunes 
his peaches and his pear trees, aud could trust 
in their stability and faithfulness as he can 
trust iu the staunch fidelity of his white piue. 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says t hat so far 
as one is of the poetical temperament, he is 
likely to be a tree lover, aud instances a visit he 
paid to Tennyson, “whom,” he says, “1 saw 
under his own trees aud walking over his own 
domain.” He took delight in pointing out to 
me the finest and the rarest of his trees—and 
there were many beauties among them, I 
recalled my morning’s visit to Whittier at 
Oak Knoll ill Danvers, when he led me to oue 
of his favorites, an aspiring evergreen which 
shot up like n flame. I thought of the grace¬ 
ful American elms in front of Longfellow’s 
house, and the sturdy English elms that stand 
iu trout of Lowell’s, and much more of like 
ilk. 
Now I take it that most people are of the 
“poetical temperament” iu a greater or loss 
degree--anil that does not necessarily imply 
the writing of verse, but it does imply sensi¬ 
bility to beauty in Nature, and tho ability to 
see it at least after it has been poiuted out! 
Where the poetical temperament is allied to 
taste, and the being is uot afflicted with 
inertia, the outcome is likely to be a dooryard, 
or luwu of well-grouped trees and shrubs. 
And there is this always to be said of grounds 
so planted, they give ai^air of respectability, 
and even elegance, to the meanest house; 
while tho finest house without them lias the 
appearance of an upstart of newly-acquired 
wealth, an air of the parvenuc. 
Au almost, universal mistake that amateur 
tree-planters make, is in planting trees too 
near the house, or the house building-site. 
The dwelling for human beiugs should be 
open to tho sun, so while the shade should bo 
accessible, and is indeed at times most grate- 
When Baby was sick, we gave her Castorla 
When she was a Child, she crleil for Castorla, 
When she became Miss, she clung to Custorla, 
When she had Children, she gave them Castorla. 
