deeds. At latest accounts the membership 
had reached the number of 14,600, being 
formed in circles of ten members. Each Ten 
take up any line of work nearest them. There 
are Tens among school-girls—Studious Tens, 
Obedient Tens, Patient Tens; and there are 
Shut-in Tens, consisting of ] ermanent in¬ 
valids. 
* * * 
The insignia of the King’s Daughters consists 
of a little Maltese cross of silver bearing the 
letters I. H. N., hanging from a hit of royal 
purple ribbon. Badges and circulars relative 
to the society may be obtained from Miss G. 
H. Libbey, 18 Washington Place, New York. 
The cost of the badge is thirty cents, and the 
annual fee is ten cents. This work was first 
suggested by the Rev E. E. Hale, whose pub¬ 
lication. Lend a Hand, inculcates the prime 
idea of the society. We can all do something 
towards bringing the millennium a little near¬ 
er, if we only take the work nearest us. 
* * * 
After all. there is a good deal of sunshine in 
farm life, as a busy Southern mother tells us; 
perhaps we don’t all look for it in the right 
place. At any rate, if fate puts us ou a farm 
the best thing is to hold up the bright side, 
and see if we can’t polish up the dark one. 
Happy good nature is the most valuable ac¬ 
complishment in the world. 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 
V. H. S. 
I THINK like Mrs H., in Rural of April 14, 
that there has been a misunderstanding 
manifested in some of the comments upon 
Mrs. Fisher’s letters concerning farm life; of 
course a 9 she was to show the dark side, she 
only wrote of that and she did truly repre¬ 
sent parts of it faithfully, as I know by ex¬ 
perience and observation. We of the South 
are not troubled much about our hired help 
(men I mean] except cooking for them. The 
negroes when finding themselves live on the 
plainest of food, but just let them be prom¬ 
ised board and they soon are not satisfied 
with what the boss himself eats; they get very 
dainty as they get fat and sleek. We farm¬ 
ers’ wives do not have harder times than our 
sisters in the towns. My mother is a mechan¬ 
ic’s wife and she has always had a good num¬ 
ber of hands (th se dainty town ones too) to 
board; but we who live on small farms where 
all the horses are work animals do indeed feel 
sometimes as if we lived on an island in mid¬ 
ocean. We never get an animal to drive 
without talking a great deal about it and 
somelimes raising a “row.” This is very 
hard; at least to me. I was raised in a small 
towm and was used to seeing company every 
day; ever since I have been married have 
been living on a farm too far to walk, conse¬ 
quently stay at home weeks at a time. 1 
have six little ones and of course never get 
lonesome, but often wish I could run across 
the street to my Uncle’s and have a good chat 
as I once did. These little fellow's are a great 
comfort, and tidal too. I do indeed sympa 
thize w'ith Rena Ross: ’tis indeed hard to 
know w'hich to do first and what part we 
must leave undone entirely. We have the 
poorest of hired help; they are just as R. 
Ross says, and not one I can fiud strictly 
honest. I am doing my own work w'ith the 
help of a little darkey, and I cannot break her 
from telling me untruths about work I leave 
for her to do alone. 1 have very little experi¬ 
ence with white girls, but prefer negroes if 1 
could get one that would tell the truth and 
be willing to live at one house a whole year. 
1 hope when my children get a little larger to 
do without help. 
I would like to mar Mrs. Fisher ou the 
bright side of farm life. I do not mean the 
rich farmer; of course, his is, I think, the 
most delightful life, but I mean the poor one. 
Perhaps Mrs. F. thinks she could find no 
bright side; of some I fear that would be true. 
I think one very bright spot in a woman’s life 
is w'hen she is bathing her little dimpled 
laughing babe just after he gets up, even if 
the butter is waiting to be worked, the table 
to be set and dinner to start. All my little ones 
enjoy this time. Then after dinner in sum¬ 
mer when we snatch a few minutes to read 
what our sisters say; in winter after supper 
(if there are not too many stockings to darn) 
these are indoor bright spots; outdoors in 
summer our vegetable and flower gardens j 
planting and watching the tiny plants getting 
so much larger every day—then we take one or 
tw'o days and go to the woods or on the creek, 
fish, romp and play with the little ones; these 
are bright indeed—not forgetting our dear 
little chickens, turkeys, etc. Will some of 
my sisters add to these? 
OUR WILD FLOWERS. 
MARGARET B. HARVEY. 
American wild flowers have a delicacy 
and beauty altogether unique. It seems a 
THE RURAL WEW-YORKEH. 
MAY 42 
great pity that the general public does not 
seem to know this fact. The average woman 
goes off into ecstacies over a rare exotic at 
the florist’s, and would laugh at the idea of 
anything lovelier or sweeter in our own woods 
and meadows. But nothing more dainty can 
be imagined than our own anemone; nothing 
more fragrant than our own trailing-arbutus; 
and nothing more brilliant than our own cardi¬ 
nal-flower. 
Among the earliest of our spring flowers 
are the trailing-arbutus, called in New Eng¬ 
land the mayflower; the hepatica, or liver- 
leaf; the wood anemone and the rue-anemone; 
the star-flower; the ranunculus; the spring, 
beauty; the dog-tooth: the bloodroot; the 
dentaria, and the saxifrage. A little later 
come Solomon’s seal, columbine, bellwort, 
and wild geranium. This list includes the 
principal wild flowers likely to be found dur¬ 
ing April, May and June, in latitudes north of 
the Carolinas and east of the Mississippi. 
The dainty, pink-blossomed, sweet scented 
trailing-arbutus has become so celebrated for 
its beauty that it is now tolerably familiar to 
many. Not so well known are the handsome, 
large-flowered, pink, blue and white hepati- 
cas, nestling among their ivy-like, glossy, 
evergreen leaves. The blue, of a rich, deep, 
velvety shade, are remarkably pretty. The 
white star-flower is an elegant variety of the 
well-known chickweed. We have two familiar 
anemones, so called, considerably resembling 
each other, both abundant and exquisitely 
dainty, with petals like snow-flakes. The real, 
or wood-anemone, has larger leaves and streaks 
of darker pink on the outside of the blossoms, 
which grow singly, distinguishing it from the 
false anemone. The ranunculus, with its open 
corolla of bright gold, is a sister of the later 
buttercup. The blood-root is as showy as a 
tulip, with its milky petals, golden center and 
red-veined leaves. All of these love the rich 
woods. The trailing arbutus, in particular, 
prefers the high, unbroken woodlands, under 
laurel bushes. 
The saxifrage is only found on rocks and in 
rocky soil. It is a dainty little plant, with 
spiked blossoms, like a silvery feather. Later 
it is succeeded by the columbine, one of the 
most regally beautiful of all our native flow¬ 
ers. It may always be known by its graceful 
bells of coral-red, lined with yellow, the bells 
surmounted by curious horns. The leaves are 
also very pretty, consisting of delicate, di_ 
vided leaflets, remotely suggesting ferns. 
The dog-tooth is often called the dog-tooth 
violet. It is not a violet at all, however, but 
a true lily, having six yellow petals dotted 
like the tiger-lily. It probably received the 
name because it nods its head as the violet 
does. The leaves are curiously mottled with 
green and brown. The Spring Beauty has 
grass-like foliage and a daiuty, cup-like blos¬ 
som veined with pink. These both like low 
woods and the banks of creeks. Dentaria is 
sometimes found with the Spring Beauty, and 
its pale pink corolla makes it somewhat diffi¬ 
cult to detect the difference at a distance; but 
the dentaria, or toothroot, as it is often called, 
is not so common. Its pretty blossoms are 
cruciferous, that is, they have four equal 
petals, like a Greek cross. The flowers are 
sweet-scented. 
Those who can fiud any of the following are 
fortunate. The abolaria, the golden coryda- 
lis, the Dutchman’s breeches, the pixie and 
the showy orchis. They are all rare—in fact, 
the pixie has never been found outside of the 
New Jersey pine barrens. It resembles the 
trailing-arbutus in having an evergreen vine 
and pink, trumpet-shaped blooms; the leave's, 
however, instead of being broad are needle, 
shaped and the flowers are somewdiat like 
those of the phlox. The abolaria, or penny¬ 
wort, bears a tiny little spike of pale-blue 
blossoms, extending only a few inches above 
ground. The golden corydalis aud Dutch¬ 
man’s breeches belong to the same order as 
the bleeding heart of gardens, but they are 
much more delicate aud beautiful. The 
flower of the funner is golden-yellow, that of 
the latter, white tipped with gold. Theshow’y 
orchis bears a singular spurred blossom of a 
variegated pink and purple head. It belongs 
to the great orchid family, some of whose 
tropical members display a profusion of fan¬ 
tastic shapes, as bees and butterflies. 
We have several species of Solomon’s seal, 
all of which closely resemble their near rela¬ 
tive, the ldy of the valley. Bellwort bears a 
pretty, creamy-yellow ldy, at the end of a 
leafy stem; this is also a member of the great 
lily tribe. The wild geranium, as I know it, 
has a showy pinkish-purple blossom as large 
as a silver quarter, on a tall plant, exhaling 
the unmistakable geranium odor; but my 
friends who live north of the Delaware Water 
Gap are likely to know another kind of a wild 
geranium with a small, pink blossom, quite 
pretty, but strong-scented, almost fetid. 
From early spring until late summer, al¬ 
though most abundant in the spring, we have 
with us a delicate little flower, growing in 
thick patches or tufts, giving the effect of 
snow. The blossom is pale, milky-blue, al¬ 
most white, w'ith a yellow center. It is known 
by a variety of names, as innocence, bluet, 
forget-me-not, star of Bethlehem—but the 
name by which it is best known has not yet 
reached the books, that is Quaker lady. 
Violets may be gathered from April to 
July. Now, the average woman thinks she 
knows all about violets, but she doesn’t. She 
thinks they are blue; but they are not—they 
are purple, white and yellow. She thinks we 
have no sweet-scented violets in this country, 
but we have the little white one of the woods. 
We have, in fact, about ten species of native 
violets. They include the common purple 
violet, the heart-leaved violet, the arrow¬ 
leaved violet, the hand-leaved violet, the 
bird foot violet, the sweet-scented w’hite vio¬ 
let, the cream-white yiolet, the rough leaved 
yellow violet, the round leaved yellow violet, 
and the dog-violet. The last, a pale purple, is 
the earliest and the latest that blooms, and 
may be known by its branching stem. The 
rough-leaved yellow, and the cream-white 
are also branching. The bird-foot is almost 
as handsome as a pansy, with its mauve pet¬ 
als and golden center. The leaves are divi¬ 
ded like those of the late buttercups. The 
other violets differ from each other chiefly in 
the shape of their leaves. 
The May-apple, like a little umbrella, bears a 
large, beautiful, waxen-white blossom under its 
canopy. This is, when first opened, quite fra 
grant, although soon becomes strong. But, 
by this time, the wild-rose and buttercup and 
daisy are coming—spring slides into summer 
before we know it—the violets are still here, 
but the trailing-aibutus has gone and before 
the violets too have gone it will be summer, 
indeed. We must study the middle series of 
American wild-flowers another day. 
beautiful sight I know is the affection of the 
old couple who sit opposite me at my boarding¬ 
house table. They are frightfully plain, both 
of them, but I have come to find them beauti¬ 
ful through witnessing the love they bear each 
other. He opens the door for her as gallantly 
as would any swain of 20 for the angel at 
whose feet he is sighing: wraps her shawl 
about her tenderly, and when he bids her 
goodbye for the day takes her hand in both of 
his and gazes into her eyes in a way that shows 
his heart is still true. 
FOR AND ABOUT WOMEN. 
ALICE GOLDSMITH. 
A French marquis divides women into two 
classes: Women who listen and women who 
do not, and when giving advice on matrimony 
always said, “Marry a handsome woman if 
you will, a rich one if you can, but in any case 
marry a woman who listens.” This is a good 
qualification in a woman, but I am amused in 
my work among exchanges, to note the divers 
and numeious accomplishments and endow¬ 
ments we are required to possess. We must 
ride, and walk, swim; sing, aud perform on 
some musical instrument; must cook, and 
mend; must talk, and be silent, and one saga¬ 
cious writer says, “Be sure the woman you 
marry can laugh, for a woman who cannot 
laugh is a bore.” 
In regard to the listening woman, let me 
give you a hint. If she attempts to do any¬ 
thing excejit. listen while you are talking, 
don’t take any stock in her as a satisfactoiy 
listener. Beware of her if she is crocheting, 
or tatting, or embroidering crimson peaches 
on old-gold plush, for she will think far more 
about her stitches or shading of silks than 
about the tale you are unfolding. As a wife 
she will perhaps be able to darn the family 
hose and listen w'ith due attention, but she 
can’t do the “knit one, purl two, widen one” 
business. * 
Being rather garrulous myself, I go in for 
the listening women with all my heart, but 
would beseech the talkers to be merciful. I 
once knew a woman of that sort with a talk¬ 
ing parrot of a husband, but she was talked 
to death. He used to follow her about while 
she attended to various household duties and 
talk by the hour. I have seen her so distract¬ 
ed in the endeavor to keep her mind on his 
discourse, and at the same time to avoid put¬ 
ting salt instead of sugar into the pie, that I 
inwai dly vowed to choose my husband from 
some asylum for the dumb. 
On the other hand, nothing is more aggra¬ 
vating than the woman who absently says 
“Yes, dear,” when she don’t hear a word of 
what her husband is saying. Take us all in 
all, 1 fear “the perfect w oman, ncbly planned,” 
is a scarce article. 
Coquetry, which is looked upon by most 
people with abhorance, is regarded among the 
French as a desirable quality, if not a posi¬ 
tive virtue. With them it is looked upon as 
the science of charming, and to charm is the 
primary purpose of a French woman’s life. 
We must admit that they effect their purpose. 
Rightly indulged in, coquetry is really noth¬ 
ing more than a sincere desire to please. The 
heroines of William Black and W. H. Bishop 
are coquettes of the light sort. French wo¬ 
men do not don this charming coquetry with 
their bridal dresses, as do so many of our 
American women, who, once they have 
charmed and caged a husband, neglect to gild 
his chains with all the little pleasing arts by 
which they succeeded in capturing him. A 
woman should not really begin to flirt until 
she does so with her own husband. The most 
GOLDEN GRAINS. 
The true value of a good home is too often 
only realized when it is broken up and gone.. 
The Pittsburg Dispatch says, the man -who 
can plow a field may not be able to shine in 
society, but society wouldn’t be able to shine 
long without him.... 
Beecher said, “On the western side of my 
place there is a vine that has twined itself 
about a tree until it has girded it so that the 
tree has died. And I have seen God’s mercies 
twine about men so abundantly that they 
choked out the manhood that was in them.”.. 
It takes so little to make a child happy that 
it is a pity, in a world full of pleasant things, 
that their should be any wistful faces, empty 
bandsor lonely young hearts. 
The happiness and misery of men depend 
no less on temper than fortune. 
Better to be despised for too anxious ap¬ 
prehensions, than ruined by too confident 
security. 
The N. Y. Mail and Express says it is no 
w'onder if he who reads, converses and medi¬ 
tates improves in knowledge. By the first 
a man converses with the dead, by the second 
with the living, and by the third with himself; 
so that he appropriates to himself all the 
knowledge which can be got from those who 
have lived and from those now alive. 
The Independent says: ‘It is not best for 
us,’ said an experienced Christian when pass¬ 
ing through deep affliction, ‘always to have 
our own way in this world.’ Very true. We 
do not know enough of the future to know 
what is really best for us. We should hence 
cheerfully consent to let God have his way in 
ordering the events of life, and regard that as 
best for us.”. 
“No,” said mamma, “we can have no idea 
of w hat God is. He is beyond our comprehen¬ 
sion.” “Mamma,” replied little Edith, “I 
fink I know what Dod is like; he must be like 
a bis’op, only p’aps not quite so gwand.”. 
One who has lived to the age of threescore 
and ten, when he calls the roll of those who 
commenced life with him, and whom he knew 
in bis younger days, finds that almost all of 
them are gone. Only here and there does he 
hear any response to his call. How short is 
each human life! We surely have no time to 
waste in sin and folly. 
Domestic Cc.tm.oimj 
CONDUCTED BY MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
Tell us: Which are you, Mr. Hyde or Dr. 
Jekxjll? _ 
A marked difference: The young woman 
with city tastes that lives per force in the 
country, and the young xvoman xvho flies to 
the countx'xj from the city as if to avoid a 
pestilence. 
A FARMER’S DAUGHTER’S DOMESTIC 
REVERIES. 
CHARITY SWEETHEART. 
“I "want a bit of the green crop land, father,” 
I said the other day, and he turned to look at 
me as much as to say, “What is the girl up to 
now?” “I am going to grow beans,” I said, 
“and have saved enough seed from the garden 
crop the last two years to plant several rows 
in the field. You can tell me w'hen the ground 
is ready, and when hoeing time comes, for I 
want to do the work myself.” 
“Haven’t you enough to do in the house?” 
he questioned dubiously. I knew' perfectly 
well I had, but there seem so few opportuni¬ 
ties for making a little pocket-money in the 
house, that I have been trying to earn a little 
in the garden, aud beans are easily managed 
and marketed. I sent a sample of mine to a 
seedsman to get the name, aud to ask if he 
When Bauy was sick, we gave her Castorla, 
When she was a Child, she cried for Castorla, 
When she became Miss, she clung to Castorla, 
When she had Children, she gave them Castorla. 
