THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
for a discouraged daughter is an unhappy, 
discontented girl. 
THE 
SPHERE OF THE 
DAUGHTER. 
FARMER’S 
JAMES H. GRIFFITH. 
v^arge and ever-increasing proportion of 
our population know nothing of the sacred in¬ 
fluences of the old-fashioned country homes, 
and while all that is strongest, truest and 
most beneficent in American institutions has 
originated in these home3, little or nothing is 
being done to perpetuate them. In this our 
present emergency to whom shall we go for 
help if not to the farmers’ daughters? A home 
presided over by the spirit of paternal and fra¬ 
ternal love, where there is no drudgery; where 
all bear their share of the daily burdens 
cheerfully and in a spirit of sacrificing love, is 
a tremendous power for good. Such homes 
are unfortunately becoming scarcer and 
scarcer as time goes on. Daughters are be¬ 
coming impatient of the so-called restraint of 
home life, and their ambition is to acquire a 
smattering of some superficial accomplish¬ 
ment to the neglect of household duties. Can 
they withstand the terrible temptations which 
beset them on every side, and by their faith¬ 
fulness and patriotism set back the great tide 
of socialism, communism and other forms of 
immorality which threaten our land? 
The daughters of America have indeed: 
“A heritage it seems to me, 
One well might wish to hold In fee.” 
But this glorious heritage is entailed with 
tremendous responsibilities. We have for¬ 
eigners of all ages, both sexes, and various 
degrees of servitude, who know little and care 
less for our social traditions or restrictions; 
“women’s righters” who are talking eloquently 
of a so-called higher sphere for women outside 
of and independent of the family relation, and, 
last but not least, the vast army of young and 
middle-aged women, the “anxious and aimless” 
all directly or indirectly opposed to the old- 
fashioned modes of living. Add to all this the 
temptations which come to the farmer’s daugh¬ 
ter in the form of the city dude and the ‘ ne’er- 
do vveel” of the village, and we may well trem¬ 
ble for the future of the American homes. 
The life of the farmer and his family is mon¬ 
otonous enough at best, and we should wel¬ 
come anything in the way of art, literature 
or music, which would furnish recreation for 
the whole family. The trouble is that the 
farmer’s daughter gets a smattering of the so- 
called aesthetic arts, and she is at once alien¬ 
ated from her “old-fashioned” father and 
mother, and instead of lightening the loads of 
the burden-bearers, only makes them the 
heavier. In the average farmer’s family there 
is au endless amount of work which must 
be done. Servants in the great maj ority of 
cases are altogether out of the question. 
No member of the family can shirk his or her 
share of the work without making it harder 
for some other members. If the daughters 
spend their time in the parlor taking music 
lessons or doing fancy-work, the mother must 
do the drudgery. All over our land mothers 
are being sacrificed to gratify the ambition of 
their sons and daughters. If this sacrifice was 
for the best good of the children and the com¬ 
munity, it would not be so bad; but in the ma¬ 
jority of cases it only makes them ambitious, 
without the means to satisfy their unnatural 
longing; in a word, “anxious,aimless and use¬ 
less.” There are forms of education and cul¬ 
ture which overflow into the family and 
which elevate and strengthen every person 
who comes in contact with it. After a hard 
and vexatious day’s work the restfulness and 
pleasure of an evening of music can hardly be 
overestimated. But, too often, music, in com¬ 
mon with other arts, becomes essentially sel¬ 
fish in character, and then it is an injury 
rather than a benefit. T e most unfortunate 
event in a country girl's life is when she leaves 
the mother in the kitchen and goes into the 
parlor to entertain the hypercritical city dude 
and his country cousin, the cheap and despi¬ 
cable village chump. It only requires a little 
influence of this kind to cause her to loathe 
her schoolmates in homespun and to turn her 
thoughts toward the city and city advan¬ 
tages. The next step is a more or less dis¬ 
guised contempt for the uncouth manners and 
ungrammatical language of “father” and 
“mother.” If she finally drifts to the city, 
her career is usually a short one, the details 
of which are too horrible for contemplation 
let alone description. As I write I notice an 
item in to-day’s Herald, which tells a story 
repeated over and over again in the daily 
papers. 
“The neatly dressed young woman who 
was arrested on Monday night while attempt¬ 
ing to leap into the river from a Fulton ferry¬ 
boat, is still in Raymond Street .Tail, Brook¬ 
lyn. . . . She came here from Vermont, 
five years ago, but was unsuccessful in secur¬ 
ing a position in an office, which she believed 
could be had for tho asking,” 
There is no companionship more elevating 
and helpful, no love more Christ-like than 
that of the mother. The happiest families are 
those In which maternal love and confidence 
are fully reciprocated, all forms of culture 
which knit the family into close relationship, 
and which elevate and recreate. All the mem¬ 
bers of the family should be encouraged; but 
the things which create a false ambition, and 
which result in selfishness, pride and laziness, 
should be discouraged. An unknown author 
in a recent exchange sums the matter up 
very completely when he says: 
“The young man who knows how to lay off 
corn and potato rows, and to regulate the dis 
tance of the same so as to get the crops, is 
worth a cow-pen full of nice, kid-gloved, fan 
cy-overcoated fellows who know how to lead 
at a fashionable waltz. Setting a plow just 
right, and adjusting gears so that shoulders 
and backs of horses will never hurt, is worth 
a thousand fold more to the country than 
knowing tnw to pose in a parlor. Yes, and 
the girl that can bake a loaf of bread and 
make a sweet roll of butter is worth a whole 
seminary of those soft-handed angels who sit 
in the ‘pahlah’ and let their “maas” do tho 
kitchen work.” 
SHE FAILS TO SEE IT, 
FRED GRUNDY. 
Human happiness may be summed up in a 
very few words, and chief among these few is 
contentment. Near the close of his brilliant 
and successful life, Governor Seward, of New 
York, is reported as saying that his ideal of a 
fortunate career was the life of a prosperous 
farmer, with no acquaintance beyond ten 
miles from home. The farmer’s daughter who 
is satisfied with a reasonable share of the sun¬ 
shine of life, and is willing bravely and cheer¬ 
fully to face its inevitable shadows is a pre¬ 
cious jewel; for she is the embodiment of that 
real, restful contentment which exercises such 
a hopeful, encouraging influence upon all 
about her that fortunate indeed is the home 
that is blessed with her presence. 
To the majority of country girls, I am sorry 
to say, farm life is intolerably dull and prosy. 
“Bah!” says a buxom young miss of 17, “such 
a wearisome, humdrum existence is fit only 
for pigs and stupid old cows. I hate it!” The 
quiet, pleasant games and amusements of 
home have no attractions for her; they are 
too slow. The young men are awkward and 
dull, and their hands and feet are large and 
coarse. They don’t dress so nattily as the 
city chap and they are not half so polished. 
“They’re good enough,” she says, “for red- 
haired, freckle-faced girls, but not for me; I 
want a gentleman!” 
This young girl, like thousands of others, 
is surrounded by opportunities grand as the 
Infinite, but she fails to see them. She has a 
smattering of education, and she imagines 
she knows it all, yet she cannot name half-a- 
dozen grasses and weeds that grow on her 
father’s farm. Of the hundreds of wonderful 
beetles and bugs, and the curiously formed 
caterpillars and worms she sees every summer, 
she is totally ignorant. To her they are sim¬ 
ply nasty worms and horrid bugs. The many 
bright-plumaged and sweet-singing birds that 
yearly nest in the grove and on the meadows 
are only “chippies, or robins, or something!” 
She knows nothing whatever of their habits. 
She can’t even name five of the varieties of 
apples that grow in her father’s orchard. She 
doesn’t know one breed of cattle from an¬ 
other. Conifers are all “evergreens.” Decid¬ 
uous trees, “big,” or “little.” She doesn’t 
know that there is more than one variety of 
cabbage, peas, radishes, strawberries, grapes, 
raspberries, or cherries. They are all “big,” 
“little,” “red,” “black,” “long 1 ” or “short.” 
She has no time to think of such fol-de-rol; 
her mind is too busy with dresses, hats, bangs, 
frizzes, ribbons, beaus, buggies, rings and 
novels. She reads of the wealthy Chollys, the 
austere Everards.and the faultless Algernons, 
until she dreams that she is the reigning belle, 
the queen of a palatial mansion, and has a 
full hundred of these ridiculous popinjays at 
her feet, bogging her to illuminate the sad 
darkness of their several lives with just one 
single beam of her enchanting smile. But 
she cannot; her heart is another’s—the aristo¬ 
cratic and haughty Vivian has a lien on it. 
She’s his’n! 
But, seriously, it is a melancholy fact that 
a majority of country girls despise farm life 
and everything savoring thereof. They han¬ 
ker for the excitement of the busy town—for 
the companionship of the stylishly dressed 
and apparently wealthy spindle-shanked 
dudes who stroll about the streets in tight, 
checkered trowsers, bob-tail coats, high chok¬ 
ers, flaming ties, paste pins and waxed mus¬ 
taches, and who devote themselves so assidu¬ 
ously to dangling slim canes and ogling the 
ladies through single-barreled spectacles. 
The city is her Mecca; to get there the hight 
of her ambition. She imagines that once in 
the city, untrammeled by the old-foggy reg¬ 
ulations of home, she can soon rise to a posi¬ 
tion of wealth and influence. But mark the 
sequel? If after wandering up and down the 
streets for weeks she at last obtains employ¬ 
ment as a shop girl, it is only to learn that 
instead of rising to a position of stylish inde¬ 
pendence, as she expected, she has descended 
to the estate of a veritable slave. I am well 
aware that there are stores in the cities where 
the saleswomen are kindly treated, but the 
proprietors of such stores are constantly de¬ 
luged with applications from good and exper¬ 
ienced clerks. The novice must go lower— 
much lower down. 
For a mere pittance, barely enough to keep 
body and soul 1 together, she must stand be¬ 
hind a counter 12 to 14 hours a day, and smil¬ 
ingly wait on and pleasantly chatter with peo¬ 
ple whom she wouldn’t even deign to notice 
in her native village. The Everards and Al¬ 
gernons she expected to seek her out and fall 
at her feet fail to appear, but “friends” of her 
fellow shop-girls do. And though for a time 
she utterly ignores them, she eventually learns 
that her only chance of obtaining a breath of 
fresh air is to accept one of them as an escort 
on a Sunday excursion to a suburban beer gar¬ 
den, artfully termed a picnic ground. And 
while we may wish that we had the power to 
send a good angel to snatch her away, as a 
brand from the burning, and bear her back 
to the quiet peaceful home among the green 
hills, we are obliged to bid her a long and sad 
farewell 
GLIMPSES OF FARMERS’ DAUGHTERS. 
ALICE BROWN. 
The lives of most people are all changes, 
and the farmer’s daughter is no exception. 
She is found everwhere filling positions in 
every rank open to women, and this will al¬ 
ways be so, for she cannot always stay on the 
farm if she wishes it, and her education is best 
when it fits her for changes. 
The Swiss Go ernment treats its children 
wisely when they wish to leave home. In¬ 
stead of hindrances and discouragements, aid 
is given to those who leave the crowded 
mother-land. They are watched over in their 
new homes and not suffered to become paupers 
in the land they adopt for their own. The 
wide knowledge and experience of the govern¬ 
ment are used for the protection of its weakest 
children. 
In farmers’ families where it is probable the 
daughters must be self-supporting when they 
reach womanhood, their education should be 
such as to give them a fair chance of success. 
Whether as wives or working singly, they 
will find life smoother if they have been wise¬ 
ly fitted in girlhood to do well at least a few 
things. A musical education given to one 
farmer’s daughter has proved a constant pleas¬ 
ure and profit to her in her womanhood. She 
became a minister’s wife, and in church, 
prayer-meeting and Sunday-school is her hus¬ 
band’s dependence and willing helper when 
organist or leader is absent. But if her music 
was used only for the pleasure and instruction 
of her family of boys and girls it would be in¬ 
valuable to her. 
Another country-bred girl, one of a large 
family, found no opening at home for her en¬ 
ergies after graduating from a young ladies’ 
seminary, and led an aimless, half-satisfied ex¬ 
istence until a friend urged her to learn dress, 
making. The result was a busy, independent 
life and many opportunities to brighten the 
lives of the people who employed her, many of , 
them old friends who made her welcome as a 
friend as well as a worker. Being the fortu¬ 
nate possessor of a contagious good-humor 
the families in whach she sewed, often laid 
aside some load of household trouble, and per¬ 
haps forgot to take it up again after the sew¬ 
ing was done and the dressmaker gone. 
The girlhood of another woman was spent in 
hard work in a family of seven boys, and was 
followed by a few years of teaching, when she 
became a farmer’s wife. After ten years the 
family moved to a growing young city, 
bought a house with a lot large enough for a 
barn, chicken house and range and a garden. 
Here the wife raised fruit and vegetables in 
the garden, cared for the chickens and cow, 
supplying the table with as fresh and whole¬ 
some fare as though still living on the farm,and 
by the sale of milk and eggs always had a few 
dollars at hand for unexpected demands upon 
her purse, such as arise in a city household. 
Her education in the hard school of her coun¬ 
try-house, harder than is usual for the farm¬ 
er’s girls, fitted her to make the most of her 
city garden, saved to her husband many dol¬ 
lars of expense, and was her special pride and 
pleasure. No one else could raise quite so 
many tomatoes from the same number of vines 
nor have strawberries so plentifully from a 
patch of equal size. The row of beaHs was 
always loaded with pods, aud it was only be¬ 
cause the family demanded sweet corn three 
times a day that her supply of that ever fell 
short. 
Some farmers’ daughters remain at home. 
One living in comfortable circumstances saw 
her brothers and sisters leave for homes of 
their own, and still stayed to be the compan¬ 
ion aud helper of her mother aud father, stay¬ 
ed afti :• the mother’s life was over, until her 
father passed away, and still she remained, 
trying always to make country life as bright 
as possible by entertaining friends, by study 
aud reading, by growing flowers, and vines, 
and trees, and studying botany to interpret 
the wonders of the woods, which near her 
home were prof ely filled vvith wild flowers. 
After her father’s death the care aud super¬ 
vision of the farm, the live-stock, and the 
house kept her life wholesale, aud the two 
motherless nephews under heT' care kept soli¬ 
tude aud loneliness at bay. Flowers bloomed 
all winter in her suuuy sitting-room, and her 
fingers were equally at home between tho 
pages written by eminent authors and in the 
soil of her garden and flower beds. 
A real love for the country once planted in 
the hearts of the daughters of the farmer, will 
never be entirely uprooted. To the parents is 
entrusted the planting of such a love. A 
bright home, where sympathy and all possible 
advantages are given to the growing girls, 
will make the country a magnet to hold them 
contented while there aud draw them irresist¬ 
ibly when they are in the cities that, with 
buildings and pavements, smother out the 
country life, both vegetable and animal. 
Hundreds of country-loving girls have spent 
years of their lives in cities and hundreds of 
those growing up will do so. Is it wise to in¬ 
sist that this is only evil, and discourage 
every aspiration pointing to such occupations 
as are possible only in cities and towns ? Such 
occupations for a woman will try her strength 
and courage at the best, and how much more 
if, through the opposition of friends, she enters 
a new work half equipped aud unhelped by 
the support that sympathy gives ? 
—- « »- 
TOWN AND COUNTRY LIFE. 
ANNIE L. JACK. 
As far as my observation goes, I think that 
farmers’ daughters have many reasons for 
seeking employment in the city. It affords 
advantages for mental culture, for amuse¬ 
ments and for social intercourse that cannot 
be obtained in country places, and a freedom 
from the restraints that influence young peo¬ 
ple that are so well known as to be continually 
under surveillance. Besides this, the home 
work is often drudgery, unrelieved by labor- 
saving machinery or kitchen comforts, and, 
last but not least, this heavy toil is generally 
without compensation. Give the girls a regu¬ 
lar allowance of money as their very own, 
and as if it were earned, and not grudged, 
and they will be willing to spend it for them¬ 
selves on dress or whatever they choose, 
learning lessons in domestic economy and 
often in self-denial, and they will be better 
able to understand the cost of what they wear. 
Mother love, from error of a mother’s judg¬ 
ment, often makes the mistake that it is best 
to save and shield the daughter from hard 
work and unpleasant duties. Again, some 
mothers are heard to say that they would 
rather do the work themselves than teach a 
child, and so disinclination to work often be¬ 
comes second nature in the child. Much will 
depend, however, on the daughter, whether 
she is naturally selfish or otherwise, for, I have 
seen sons just as careless in allowing the 
mother to wait on them, and do menial work 
for them. The old saying, “Learn young, learn 
fair” suits in this case, and children of either 
sex can be helpful as a labor of love. For the 
other state of affairs mothers have themselves 
to blame. 
The glamour which surrounds the city chap 
in the eyes of a country girl, if it exists at 
all, is due to the contrast between the lives 
and mauners of residents in the city and coun¬ 
try. The city chap shows the best side in so¬ 
ciety aud is only seen there. Personal contact 
with the world is apt to keep his wits sharp¬ 
ened, and makes him quick at repartee. He 
is, as a rule, more careful of his personal ap¬ 
pearance, more at home in the small talk that 
“takes” with a certain class of girls; he lives 
nearer the barber, and acquires an air of cul¬ 
ture that is often unreal. For this state of 
things novel-reading is greatly to blame 
Country girls are often uuwilling to marry 
farmers because they must have seen the lack 
of appreciation their mothers have received, 
and fear a like fate. Arguing this question 
with a number of farmers, I have heard them 
indignantly assert that country girls do mar¬ 
ry farmers. My own observation proves that 
when a girl really bestows her heart she will 
not withhold her willing hands in loving ser¬ 
vice. Better be the wife of a poor but honest 
farmer, with love and a few acres of land, 
than marry a speculator subject to reverses 
of fortune. But if a girl does not see love and 
