274 
steady reliance in the matter of cultivating 
corn, and as he was only required for that use 
on an occasional day or half day,he was nearly 
always at my disposal. But then I rode every 
other horse, good, bad and indifferent, that 
came on the place, so you need not wait for 
an especial saddle horse. For many years the 
luxury of a side saddle was unknown to me. 
A blanket tightly strapped on the back of my 
Bucephalus did duty instead, but I acquired 
an ease and freedom of motion that one does 
not always get at a riding school. When at 
the age of fourteen I taught a country school, 
my first hardly earned five dollars were in¬ 
vested in a second-hand side-saddle. Let no 
consideration of the want of a habit deter you 
from the pleasure. A pair of your big broth¬ 
er’s second best trousers (and now that ladies’ 
riding habits are worn short) any old dress 
skirt of black or gray; your best-fitting waist 
or jersey, and a light straw hat of any kind 
and you may have as much pleasure as in a 
tailor-made suit costing thirty dollars. Last 
summer at Los Gatos, California, I made my¬ 
self a riding skirt of silesia at eight cents a 
yard, the whole thing costing fifty cents; wore 
it for two months with as much enjoyment as 
I could.have derived from a costly cloth habit, 
and then used it for a skirt lining when I was 
obliged to leave behind me the delightful little 
mustang, and the glorious climate of Cali¬ 
fornia, for the eighteen feet of snow, and the 
icy sidewalks of New York. 
You don’t need lessons in the art. Begin 
with the gentlest horse in your father’s sta¬ 
ble, irrespective of gait (unless you are natur¬ 
ally fearless), and first learn to sit a horse. 
Sit well and firmly, keeping your face so that 
a line drawn from your nose would reach ex¬ 
actly between your horse’s ears. Go slo wly at 
first, until you can ride at a walking pace 
without allowing your body to sway with 
every motion of the horse. There is nothing 
more graceful than a lady on horseback, if 
she knows how to ride, and nothing more 
awkward if she sits as if she were about to 
fall off, and bounces up and down from her 
saddle. Try to sit as if you were a part of 
the animal. It is not fair for the boys to 
have all the fun, and I doubt if I should ever 
have had this pleasure had I not at first vigor¬ 
ously disputed with my brothers the privilege 
of driving the cows to pasture on horseback, 
and of taking the horses to the adjoining vil¬ 
lage blacksmith shop to be shod. Then my 
indulgent father became interested in my 
ability to ride, and the result was a snow- 
white saddle horse, my dear old Major, one 
of the happiest reminiscences of my childhood. 
Try it, girls, and see if you do not have cause 
to thank the Rural for the suggestion. 
SOME WORDS ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. 
THIRSA. 
I read with much pleasure Mrs. Wager- 
Fisher’s letters; but “my idol has fallen.” 
Her letter, “The Dark Side of Farm Life,” has 
dissipated all former interest and left to me 
a “meaningless mass of clay.” 
I am a farmer’s wife, and know that, like all 
other vocations in life, we have its lights and 
shadows; but I do claim that we have more 
sunshine than shadow. The irreparable wrong 
Mrs. Fisher has done, is the picture she has 
presented to our boys and girls, who may not 
know to the contrary, as we do. We keep 
help both in and out the house, and while her 
suggestions about the management of help 
might do for some localities in the West, they 
are not at all practical. 
We have tried having some of the help live 
in tenement houses. It is attended with much 
inconvenience and loss to us; for instance, we 
have three men living in tenement houses; 
they have to come here to get orders for the 
day; in the course of an hour there may be 
a change in the weather, it may storm; they 
will quit work and go home. Now, one lives 
half a mile, another one mile, the third, one 
and a half mile away; it will take another 
man an hour to go with a message to those 
men and back again, when if they were at 
“headquarters,” they can be doing something 
under shelter and save the time which to a 
farmer is money. 
They have their room and are supplied with 
papers and books. We try to hire intelligent 
help with good and cleanly habits, and if they 
prove otherwise—they go. We eat at the 
same table and do not feel degraded; I wonder 
if Mrs. Fisher knows how much time it saves 
to have one table instead of two or three (if 
we had to grade our help), which would be the 
next thing. If we can give them a word of 
counsel or good cheer, we do it as we try to 
do every thing else, with a soul in it; and, hor¬ 
rors, of horrors! if they are sick we take care 
of them. This means, of course, our help we 
have for the year; we usually have four men. 
In our'harvest’time, which lasts many weeks, 
we plan our' work so as to have the afternoon 
to do'as we please, the heavy part of the work 
being done in the morning, cooking dinner and 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
upper together, and only warming over at sup¬ 
per, so in half an hour we can get that meal, 
which is at five o’clock; then we gather our 
vegetables in the “cool of the evening” and 
our berries in the morning. We take care of 
milk and butter too—but one of the rules of 
the house is “make your head save your 
heels.” We have time for many social 
demands which are instructive and pleasant. 
I have flowers, music, and all the “comforts 
of life,” and do earnestly protest against 
being called a “drudge.” It is beneath any 
woman to so situate herself, and it is with 
every woman to say whether or no she will be 
a drudge (how I abhor the name); but more, 
the person who will settle down, loses all in¬ 
dividuality and becomes a mere machine. 
I know there are some who do, but you will 
find them elsewhere as well as on the farm. I 
tell you, friends, we have the most indepen¬ 
dent life of all. With all due deference to 
Mrs. Fisher’s knowledge on other subjects, 
she certainly spoke of what she did not fully 
understand this time. 
SUNSHINE IN THE HOUSE. 
SELMA CLARE. 
“The girls of a family,” says a writer in 
Harper’s Bazar, “have it in their power at all 
times to do a great deal of work in behalf of 
the male members of a household.” 
This will seem almost a sarcasm to many 
readers of the Rural, who realize, as only the 
“girls of a family” of brothers can do, how 
much work, “real” hard work, they not only 
have it in their power to do, but actually do do. 
Eliminate the word “work” from the sentence 
quoted above, and you will come nearer to the 
meaning of the writer, which doubtless was 
that they have it in their power to do a great 
deal in making sunshine in the family. If 
I were a man, and courting a girl who had 
brothers, I should want, unobserved, to see 
just what her relations with those brothers 
were. If she were on terms of delightful 
comradeship with them, I should feel pretty 
certain that I bad chosen rightly. Girls 
should realize, especially where they have 
younger brothers, something of the respon¬ 
sibility that rests upon them. There is the 
parlor, or family sitting-room, to be made 
bright and attractive, with music, if possible, 
and books, flowers, and games for the brother 
who may be inclined to be a little wild. Make 
him feel that he has no better friend or chum 
than his sister. It is not only the brother 
whom you are benefiting, but his future 
wife and unborn generations. Don’t snub 
him. Make him feel an interest in his and 
your home, by helping you make something 
for its decoration. It depends upon you girls 
to make home a place which your brothers 
shall look forward to as one in which they are 
sure to spend a delightful evening, and the 
courtesy and gentleness with which you shall 
inspire each, will not only'make your life hap¬ 
pier, and his own better, but your future sis¬ 
ter-in-law will owe you a debt of gratitude. If 
you find a man who treats his wife in an un- 
gentlemanly manner, you may make up your 
mind either he has no sisters, or they were not 
of the right kind. Boys love to tease, I grant 
you, but to divert this flow of animal and 
boyish spirits into a proper and agreeable 
channel is a sister’s part and something of the 
pleasing punishment that women bear.” 
A PLEASANT HOME. 
MRS. S. H. ROWELL. 
Mrs. Everett was the mistress of a pleas¬ 
ant home; she made it what it was by her own 
efforts. It was not magnificent in its exterior 
or luxuriant in its interior furnishing, but it 
was better: it was neat and comfortable. Her 
carpets were not too nice to use, or her furni¬ 
ture too costly for everyday wear. She had 
no best room that was kept expressly for 
the reception of company. Her children were 
model children for behavior, and it was a real 
treat to see them play together. They were 
taught to be kind and obliging, and the elder 
ones took care of the little ones and kept them 
happy and quiet. I had been stopping for a 
visit with an old schoolmate, and her children 
made the house a perfect Babel of confusion, 
and I was glad to shorten my stay as much 
as possible out of regard to my nerves. So it 
was a most refreshing change to come into 
the wholesome atmosphere of Mrs. Everett’s 
home. I had been there two days, and had 
watched the workings of her household, 
and had never heard one cross or sharp 
word spoken by parents or the children, and 
as this was a regimen entirely new to 
me, I determined to inquire into the 
secret of their management; so, after the 
young people had retired and we were alone 
in the bright sitting-room, I asked the mother 
how she managed to keep her children so happy 
and good; “they are the best behaved family 
I ever met.” “Do you think so? I am 
glad of it. You see Mr. ^Everett’s 
business keeps him in his office all the 
day, and often through the evening, and 
sometimes quite late at night. So you per¬ 
ceive that the care and management of the 
little ones must of necessity devolve upon me. 
You know that I was a teacher for several 
years before I was married, and was, conse¬ 
quently, thrown in contact with a great many 
families, and could see the difference in the 
forms of government, and the effect that the 
government had upon the children in the dif¬ 
ferent households; and I came to the con¬ 
clusion that the better parents governed 
themselves the better they could control their 
children. Do you recollect the Boren family? 
No matter what the children did, it was a 
cuff or a spank—one continued punishing, 
from the time they were out of their beds in 
the morning till they were asleep at night, 
except when they were in school; and I do not 
believe their mother gave them a pleasant 
word while I boarded there. It was scold 
and fret all the live-long day. As a mat¬ 
ter of course the children were cross and 
snarling, and striking each other; at least, it 
was a natural consequence; I did not blame 
them. Well, I profited by that lesson, and as 
I could not see that the least possible good was 
effected by scolding, I made up my mind that 
if I ever had a family of my own I would not 
allow myself to fret or scold at them.” 
“And do you never have to scold?” 
“I never intend to be cross enough to in¬ 
dulge in it.” 
“I have not heard you speak a loud or sharp 
word.” 
“I next went to board with the Lees. The 
mother was one of the sweetest little women I 
ever met. Her children were obedient and 
lovely. She was so easy with them that I 
should not have expected they would have 
minded at all. Her government was love, 
and it worked admirably. The little ones 
could not bear to grieve her; if she looked sad 
they were unhappy till she smiled again. If 
she was sick, there was no end of the waiting 
upon and care she received. Everything was 
just lovely, and the strongest ties of affection 
bound them together. It was the pleasantest 
family I ever met, and I thought it worthy of 
imitation. I never saw Mr. Lee command 
one of the children to do anything; he always 
asked them, and they were ready to serve 
him with the greatest pleasure. Having these 
two examples before me, of course I could not 
help contrasting the effects of the entire dif¬ 
ferent management, end make my choice. 
I think it a great responsibility to train up 
children, and I think that a happy home is 
one of the most desirable blessings that can 
be bestowed upon a family of children. If 
they have the most pleasure at home, they 
will love to remain there, and if absent will 
look forward to coming back with anxious 
desire. Children have rights that should be 
respected, and each child should be willing to 
give others the privileges that belong to 
them.” 
“Well, my dear Miss Everett, you have re¬ 
duced your theory into practice, and I never 
have been thrown into a family that I found 
so orderly and happy, or a home that was al¬ 
together so pleasant as the one where you are 
the presiding head.” 
“I am glad you enjoy it; you may find 
more luxury and wealth, but I am content 
with my own dear, pleasant home.” 
GOLDEN GRAINS. 
If any speak ill of thee, flee home to thine 
own conscience, and examine thine heart. If 
thou be guilty, it is a just correction; if not 
guilty, it is a fair instruction. Make use of 
both. So shalt thou distil honey out of gall, 
and out of an open enemy a secret friend. 
“I have a right to think, to speak, and to 
do.” But, Mr. Beecher says, you have the 
other right, also, to hold your tongue. You 
are not bound to speak whenever you have a 
mind to. . 
The power of persistence, of enduring defeat 
and of gaining victory by defeats, is one of 
the forces which never loses its charm. 
The three things most difficult are to keep 
a secret, to forget an injury, and to make 
good use of leisure. 
Self-respect —an inward dignity of char¬ 
acter, which, once acquired and righteously 
maintained, nothing—no, not the hardest 
drudgery nor the direst poverty can vanquish. 
It is the drifting icebergs settling with any 
current anywhere that wreck the ships. 
Beecher says the constable sleeps, and the 
sheriff nods, and the judge is unknowing; but 
the laws of God follow a man by night and by 
day, and never leave him. 
No school is more necessary to children than 
patience, because either the will must be 
broken in childhood, or the heart in. old age. 
The Independent says, “If any one is desir¬ 
ous of knowing the truth for himself, he may 
know it without any appeal to scientific ex¬ 
periment, 'philosophical Jnquiry,'or rational- 
APRIL 24 
istic disputation. If any one is willing to do 
God’s will as set forth by me he shall know in 
himself in the doing of that will, that the doc¬ 
trine is of God. 
A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, 
making everything in the vicinity freshen in¬ 
to smiles:.'., 
Happiness generally depends more on the 
opinion we have of things than on the things 
themselves. 
If you can not bring yourself to ask a bless¬ 
ing aloud at table, the silent blessing, which 
is now customary in many families is the next 
best thing. Let all heads be bowed, and all 
hearts be lifted to God for a moment, before 
the distribution of food begins. The Bible 
classes with the heathen those families that 
call not upon God . 
There is no good in arguing with the inev¬ 
itable. The only argument available against 
an east wind is to put on your overcoat. 
Spurgeon says “Without me ye can do 
nothing,” is as true of strong men as of babes 
grace. Temptation, like fire, will burn when 
tne wood is green, and certainly it hath no less 
power when the fuel is old and sere. Those who 
think themselves at Heaven’s gate may yet sin 
their souls into deepest hell, unless the un¬ 
changing love and power of God shall uphold 
them even to the end. 
The Religious Herald says; the manners 
of a Christian ought not te be something 
which ean be put off and on like a garment, 
but they ought to be a product of his relig¬ 
ion ; the outward expression of the heart that 
is under the influence of Christ. 
Kingsley thinks the ultimatum of living 
is the performance of duty. If a man is busy, 
and busy about his duty, what more does he 
require for time or eternity?. 
To understand the world is wiser than to 
condemn it. To study the world is better than 
to shun it. To use the world is better than to 
abuse it. To make the world better and 
happier is the noblest task of man or woman. 
CONDUCTED BY MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
A KITCHEN CONVENIENCE. 
A lady of my acquaintance says that by 
the help of her husband she has acquired one 
thing during the year that proves a genuine 
blessing. 
She desired a table close to her cook-stove, 
that should always be on hand when wanted 
and quite out of the way when not wanted. 
This she has secured. It is so simple, so con¬ 
venient and so cheap that I have thought some 
of the Rural housekeepers might profit by 
the idea. The accompanying sketch will show 
how it is constructed. The table proper, of 
which one end is shown at A B, in Fig. 104, is 
jt. v-r 
Fig. 104. 
formed of two boards, each a foot wide and 
about 20 inches long, glued together at one 
edge, with a strip securely nailed across each 
end. It is supported by means of the stand¬ 
ard, C D, and a hook at A, a standard and 
When Baoy was sick, we gave her Castoria, 
When she was a Child, she cried for Castoria, 
When she became Miss, she clung to Castoria, 
When she had Children, she gave them Castoria 
