470 
THf BUBAL HEW-YOBKEB. 
ilABSH 40 
in regard to pie-eating, every one lias a right 
to be a law unto himself, but I would like to 
shake hands publicly with Mrs. Fisher on her 
paragraph in the Rural of February 11, re¬ 
lating to ministers, and recommending that 
they be treated in society, not as saints, but 
as what Miss Anthony calls “mere male men.” 
As a child my religious convictions were 
nearly unsettled by certain scandals that 
occurred in my native town, and the famil¬ 
iarity displayed by different ministers in 
kissing sisters. This and that were revolting to 
me. A woman has no more right to kiss her 
spiritual director than she has her lawyer, 
doctor, shoe-maker or coachman. It is a 
mark of disgrace and disrespect to which no 
true woman will submit. 
I am really sorry for girls when I consider 
the immense amount of advice that is hurled 
at them through the. medium of the House¬ 
hold or “Woman’s Columns” in the various 
papers throughout the length and breadth of 
this land. The “Timely Talks to Girls,” of 
all the syndicate writers, and the “Sug¬ 
gestions to Young W ives and Mothers” should, 
if followed, be sufficient to precipitate a mil¬ 
lennium. Really, the most of this vast amount 
of matter may be sifted down to three words: 
“Learn to Cook.” 
A valuable aud necessary lesson, my sisters, 
and we must all admire the gifted poetess who, 
Laving bravely learned to cook in order to be 
independent of her servants, declares that she 
would not part with the knowledge she has 
thus acquired for the wealth of a Gould; but 
Americans are very apt to ride a hobby to 
death, and we must be careful lest in some 
future generation we find that we have degen¬ 
erated, or risen, if you so will it, into a race 
of cooks. Let us learn to cook, by all means, 
but let us do it quietly, with little blowing of 
trumpets. Don’t impress it too strongly upon 
the male mind that man cannot be happy unless 
his wife’s first and best quality is an ability 
to minister to his gastronomical tastes. Men 
are ready enough, as a general thing, to fight 
for their rights in this respect. 
I quite admired the spirit of the lad who was 
taking—rather unwillingly, it must be con¬ 
fessed—some advice from his mother relative to 
his future wife. “Be sure,’’said the lady,“that 
the woman you marry can cook a dinner.” 
“I shall be sure of no such thing,” retorted he; 
“eating is a disgusting necessity, and intelli¬ 
gent people make entirely too much fuss over 
it. Cooking is the last accomplishment I shall 
look for in a wife.” To be sure he was very 
young—only IS). Doubtless his views will be 
modified with age and dyspepsia. 
So far the cooking schools are in danger of 
benefiting only two classes—the servants, who 
are sent and paid for by their mistresses, and 
the fine ladies who have plenty of money to 
spend in learning to make merinyues and 
salmis. The middle class, who can ill afford 
to take a course of lessons, are still unreached. 
The New York public schools, I understand, 
have taken steps to have cooking taught as 
part of the regular course of study. This is 
as it should be. It should be drilled into a 
girl along with her conjugations and frac¬ 
tions. I do not agree with Mrs. Wilcox that 
two months in a kitchen will enable a girl to 
understand the art of cooking. Much can be 
learned in that time, doubtless, but it takas 
more than one attempt to acquire the art of 
making a perfect loaf of bread or a “sym¬ 
phony in Irish stew.” A. G. 
LIVING IN THE WEST. . 
GRANDMOTHER. 
You wonder why I advise you not to pull 
up stakes and leave your comfortable home? 
Well, I will tell you why. It is an old pro¬ 
verb to “let well enough alone,” and you are 
well enough where you are. Everything is 
nice and comfortable in your house; you have 
been years back at work to get things ar¬ 
ranged to suit your taste and convenience. If 
you give them up now aud go into a new 
country, my word for it, you will regret it all 
your life. Suppose the times are hard—we 
know they are, but they are harder West by a 
grand sight—and all your lifelong habits will 
be broken up. Take up a homestead! Yes, I 
I know what they say about it. Let me tell 
you how ydh will be fixed, if you get one. 
First, start a house. There is no timber; you 
have got to shift to get a place to stay in till 
you are able to build a house. Vou can have 
a dug-out or a sod house, whichever you prefer; 
the dug-out is the warmest, they say. They 
dig a hole in the ground 10 or 15 feet square, 
according to the size of the family, then level 
off the bottom of it for a floor; they get brush 
aud bushes for a covering, lay it as best they 
can, then cover it over with sods, leaving a 
hole for the stove-pipe to run through. You 
put your bed in one corner of the room, stick 
up shelves where you can for dishes and other 
necessaries. You are not expected to have 
much furniture. I hope you will have an easy- 
chair; your trunks and boxes will have to an¬ 
swer for tables, closets and chairs, then you 
move in and commence life on the frontier. 
You are a mile or two from your nearest 
neighbor, 15 to 30 from a physician, about as 
far from a store or post-office, and if you do 
not appreciate the beauty of a life on the prai¬ 
rie, wait till a cyclone or blizzard comes roar¬ 
ing around you and,believe me, you will have 
some delightful memories of the home you left 
behind you to go West to get rich. Perhaps 
you will have a sod house put up; that is a 
little more convenient, and you can have a 
separate apartment or two from the kitchen, 
and you can have the sunshine occasionally. 
You can whitewash the walls; use your car¬ 
pets for partitions to the rooms, and think 
you are pretty comfortable, but, then, oh 
dear! Those snakes! You have got to watch 
by night and day, and then you will find them 
curled up in some corner or stretched out on 
the shelf. Another thing that will bring the 
old home to mind: Baby is sick; you do every¬ 
thing you can for him, but he grows worse, 
and your husband has to go for a doctor. 
Well, you may fancy the rest. A little grave 
is out in the garden, lovely flowers are all 
around it, but what are they to give comfort! 
That little human flower did not bear trans¬ 
planting, and you shed the saddest tears that 
ever scalded your cheeks. Oh, I tell you it is 
no light thing to be a pioneer. The girls of 
the present day are not fitted for it. All their 
habits are formed and it is a hardship they 
cannot endure. Perhaps one in fifty lives 
through it, and you can hardly expect you 
will have the chance of being that one. I will 
tell you more about it some time. 
DOMESTIC FINANCE. 
MAC. 
In the Rural of January 21,1 read an arti¬ 
cle written by Mary Wager-Fisher on “the 
dark side of farm life.” I think Mary is about 
right. There is a dark side to farm life, but 
not necessarily so. On the contrary, I think 
there is no other employment where the lover 
of nature, male or female, can eDjoy the good 
things of this world so well as on a farm. But 
to attain this ideal life the golden rule must 
hold sway, indoors and out. I am not a far¬ 
mer, but was “raised thar,” aud it has been a 
source of life-long regret with me that 1 did 
not stick to it. As for the humiliating specta¬ 
cle of a woman asking her husband for every 
dime she wants, I can hardly think of any¬ 
thing bad enough to say in regard to it. Let 
me tell you ho w we arrange such matters at 
our house. For a safe we use an empty cigar 
box—and I didn’t smoke the cigars that were 
in it either. What cash we have goes in that 
box, and it is as free to my wife as it is to me. 
I adopted this method at the commencement 
of our married life and have had no reason to 
regret it. But some might object that women 
are extravagant. I admit that many of them 
are, 4out you should not marry that kind. 
There are plenty of good, sensible women 
who are not extravagant. Of course, if a man 
spends 25 or 50 cents a week for tobacco it 
would hardly come under the head of extrava¬ 
gance though his family might need the 
money, but if a woman should do it I guess it 
would. Mr. Editor, I believe ; n equal rights 
for all, and if I were a woman I would not 
. marry a man unless he was willing to treat 
me as an equal, aud I could not promise to 
obey him either. 
GOLDEN GRAINS. ■ 
fully to select and cultivate his strongest aud 
most nutritive thoughts, and when they are 
ripe to dress them wholesomely, and so that 
theymaybavea relish.. 
Plenty of time is given us in life to do all 
that God intended we should do.. 
Robertson says we cannot skip the seasons 
of our education. We cannot'basten the ripe¬ 
ness and the sweetness by a single day, nor 
dispense with one night’s nipping frost, nor 
one week’s blighting east wind. 
Domestic dr commit} 
CONDUCTED BY MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
SUNSHINE. 
Fuller says we need to learn the lesson 
;hat this life is given us only that we may at 
;ain to eternal life. For lack of remember 
ng this, we fix our affections on things of this 
leeting world, and when the time comes that 
ve must quit it we are aghast and terrified... 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
—Wordsxvorth. 
What mortals think they know of God, 
A thousand tomes rehearse; 
What mortals do not know of God, 
Fills all the universe .—Henry rtterson. 
It was Thomas it Kempis who said that 
laily ought we to renew our purposes, and to 
stir up ourselves to greater fervor, and to say, 
Help me, my God, in this my good purpose, 
and in Thy holy service, and grant that I may 
now this day begin perfectly.”.. 
Tantalized by misapprehension and stu 
pidity, find repose in your motive. Do what 
you know is right, and your inspiration will 
bring you peace. 
Energy will do anything that can be done 
in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, 
no opportunities will make a man without it. 
Coleridge says advice is like snow—the 
softer it falls the longer it dwells upon, and the 
deeper it sinks into the mind. 
Hare describes the ablest writer as a gar¬ 
dener first, aud then a cook, His tasks are care- 
Let me say, first of all, that I do not con¬ 
sider myself a writer. This statement, how¬ 
ever, may be superfluous, for no doubt you, 
my req^ers, will find it out long before you fin¬ 
ish this. But there are some things which I 
want to say, and with the Rural’s permis¬ 
sion, I’m going to say them, too. 
First of all, there is plenty of sunshine in 
this world. To be sure there is plenty of sor¬ 
row, too ; deep, bitter, heart-breaking sor¬ 
row, and I’ve experienced my share of it, but, 
then, if we want to find the sunshine, we can 
do so many, many times when we do not. It 
is so easy to sum up all our cares and griev¬ 
ances, so easy to think that nobody ever did 
have so much trouble as we have. But isn’t 
it just as easy to sum up our blessings, if we 
want to do it ? Of course, it is, but nine times 
out of ten we don’t want to do it. 
“ I’ve more trouble than any other woman 
on earth ! ” How often I’ve heard that said, 
and said, too, by those who seemed, to me, 
to have everything. 
The sun is shining just as much for all as for 
one. Perhaps it is hidden by the clouds some¬ 
times, but it will come forth again. To be 
sure, if a terrible storm comes and the winds 
and rains crush and blight your most precious 
flowers, break and kill your most cherished 
bud, the sun will never shine on them again. 
But new flowers will come—perhaps none that 
will be as dear to you, perhaps none that will 
fill the same place, but new beauties will be 
all round you on every side. Will you close 
your eyes to every good gift from heaven, 
because the one you cherished most of 
all is lost ? Will you never admit that a rose 
or a lily is fair, because you lost your own 
plant,lost the one you thought loveliest of all? 
To you there will never be one quite so fair, 
but there will be hundreds that are lovely. 
Let us look for something bright when we 
can. Don’t go poking in all the dark corners 
for a ghost or a spook of some sort to haunt 
you. When a real goblin comes, he’ll come 
right out and face you ; he won’t need any 
“poking” after. 
Farmers don’t always have the happiest 
times in the world, and neither do their wives 
aud daughters, but what’s the use of hunting 
up the “dark side?” Why not try and find 
the bright one? And there is a bright side to 
find, too. I’m a farmer’s daughter, and I’m 
proud of it. I have helped in the field as well 
as in the kitchen. I can harness—or as we 
say down in Pennsylvania, '“gear up”—a 
horse as well as a man. Maybe my finger¬ 
tips aren’t as tapering, or my nails as pink, as 
those of some of my fairer sisters are, but 
maybe I’ve more health, strength, push, and 
vitality than they have—anyway I wouldn’t 
give my health for any amount of beauty. 
° How I remember the great mugs of milk 
and cream I used to drink! How I remember 
hunting in the barn for nice fresh eggs and 
how I remember eating them, too! Do you 
think my parents would have raised 10 great, 
strong, healthy children if we had lived in 
some little coopy band-box of a house in the 
close, crowded city? Well, I guess not! We’d 
all have been dead long ago. 
How my heart aches when I see some poor, 
wan, little thing sitting on the door-steps in 
the hot, stifling air of a summer’s day! How I 
think of the green fields at home!—of the old 
swing in the orchard!—of the cool little creek 
where we used to wade up aud down undei 
the trees! 
Mothers, farmers’ wives, let me say a word 
to you. Keep your children in the country as 
long as you can. Don’t mope and lepine 
because they cannot have all the advantages 
of the city’s fashions. If it is education you 
want for them, they can get the greater part 
of it right where they are. If the district 
school doesn’t afford a very extensive educa¬ 
tion, get books for them and let them study 
at home. Books are cheap and postage is 
cheap. The city’s polish is all very well, but 
while gaining the polish, it too often happens 
that some of the real ore is filed away. 
When some of the farmers’ wives are com¬ 
plaining of the long hours, of the ceaseless 
round of work they are compelled to endure, 
do they ever stop to think of the poor, halt 
famished, miserable beings who toil from 
morn till night in the stifling, ill-smelling ten¬ 
ement houses here in the city? Toil, toil, toil . 
—for what? A handful of rags to cover their 
nakedness. Perhaps dry bread and tea; per¬ 
haps a little handful of fire, or, perhaps, not 
even that much. 
When you cook your great pots of old-fash¬ 
ioned vegetable soup (how I wish I had some) 
or take up a dish of cream-white mashed po¬ 
tatoes, do you ever think what they would 
cost in the city? Do you know that at the re¬ 
tail grocery stores here in New York you 
would have to pay from eight to ten cents for 
a quart of potatoes! A quart! Think of it! 
only a handful, and I could eat nearly that 
much at one meal myself. 
Be thankful for the blessings you have. 
Don’t go searching all the time after some¬ 
thing which you cannot have. If you do the 
latter,you will never enjoy what is yours, aud 
will grow to be disappointed, dissatisfied old 
women. Dreamings, longings and theories 
are all well enough—I wouldn’t for the world 
have you all Gradgrinds—but unless your 
dreamings and longings impelyou to do some 
thing, they won’t amount to a row of pins. 
•• Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. 
Do noble things—not dream them all day long. 
And so make life, death and that vast forever 
One grand, sweet song.” 
Thus wrote Canon Kingsley to his little 
daughter while she was away at school. 
There are scores of dreamers—let them 
dream—but it is workers we want. Do not 
bring your children up to look upon work as 
demeaning. Nothing that is honest is dis¬ 
honorable. To be sure there are lots of call¬ 
ings that, though honest, I wouldn’t choose- 
but perhaps that is because I have been for¬ 
tunate enough to be fitted for something bet¬ 
ter. But if I couldn’t get anything better, I’d 
do what I could get to do. If I didn’t find my 
proper groove at first I’d keep on working till 
I did. If I was faithful and in earnest (and 
had my health, of course) I’m sure I wouldn’t 
starve. If some people turn up their noses at 
me because I work for my living, why let 
them turn them up,—it will disfigure them, 
not me. 
I’m afraid I’m wandering away from what 
I began to say. We don’t need any one to 
point out the dark and gloomy things to us, 
for they seem to have the faculty of making 
themselves known without, but do let’s try 
to find the sunshine ! 
If you close up all the blinds of your house 
tightly, the sun can shine tfil its tired and it 
won’t do much good for you. The furniture 
and walls will get musty and damp. I can 
come to you and say the sun is very bright, 
but if you won’t open the doors and windows 
and let it in, what’s the use of my saying so to 
you ? It won’t benefit you any. 
Enjoy what you have. If it is a clear day, 
be satisfied ; don’t waste it by continually say¬ 
ing “ I know it will rain to-morrow ! I know 
it won’t last! ” Just say to yourself ; “ Ob ! 
how glad I am that it is such a bright, lovely 
day!” 
I don’t always practice what I’m preach¬ 
ing, but then I try to do so. If I hadn’t been 
chasing after the sunshine all my life, I’d now 
be an old, dilapidated woman, but, as it is, I 
am, I hope, able to stand a good many 
more storms. 
Farmers, wives, boys, girls, appreciate your 
country homes. Be thankful for the pure, 
fresh air you breathe—be thankful for the 
many, many blessings you are now enjoy¬ 
ing, blessings which thousands long for, 
and cannot have. It cannot always be 
clear. The rains and storms are necessary to 
perfect the products of the soil, so are trials 
and cares necessary to develop what is in us. 
‘‘Over our hearts and into our lives, 
Shadows will sometimes fall; 
But the sunshine is never wholly dead. 
And heaven is shadowless overhead, 
And God is over all.” 
DORA HARVEY VROOMAN. 
It is truly said that a little gentility is a 
dangerous thing. There are no such sticklers 
for etiquette as the;would-be fashionables, who 
have heard of good society, but have never 
seen it. Having no innate good-breeding, 
they hedge in their lives w-ith convention¬ 
al ties and rules borrowed from the ‘ ‘Hand¬ 
book of Politeness.” It is unsafe to do an 
original and spontaneous act in their pres¬ 
ence, or let fall a remark that’s not correctly 
common-place, if you would beware of offend- 
When Baby was sick, we gave her Castoria. 
When she was a Child, she cried for Castoria, 
When she became Miss, sbe clung to Castoria, 
When She had children, she guv a them Castoria, 
