6i4 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
September 3 
| Woman and | 
l The Home. ♦ 
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 
FROM DAY TO DAY. 
A READER in Tennessee, northern-born 
and bred, sends us this note about 
woman’s work : 
Many farmers here keep six sheep or there¬ 
abouts. The women want the wool to take to the 
mill for cloth. The women milk the cows, feed 
the pigs, make the garden and help hoe the corn, 
then come to the house, build a quick fire, bake 
some hot bread of some kind, make coffee and 
cook bacon. Of course, there are exceptions, but 
the farmer's wife of the South is more of an out¬ 
door woman than North. Perhaps the climate 
makes the difference, but she does not think a 
man can milk. Horseback riding is not an ac¬ 
complishment but a necessity, the regulation 
mode of travel. 
# 
Regarding those hideous Cuban land 
crabs, which proved so repulsive to our 
troops, we must mention one extenu¬ 
ating 1 virtue ; they are very good to eat. 
These crustaceans are, naturally, vege¬ 
table feeders, though they have the 
scavenger habits of sea crabs and lob¬ 
sters. They are usually concealed in 
holes during the day, but come out at 
night. They are penned up and fat¬ 
tened on cane tops, corn meal and mo¬ 
lasses before being eaten. The crabs 
form a desirable addition to gumbo. A 
delicious soup, much appreciated in our 
household, has chicken stock as its 
foundation, freely flavored with okra, 
tomato, and as many fresh red peppers 
as the family palate will stand. The 
soup is passed through a sieve, so that 
it is perfectly smooth, and creamy in 
consistency and, about 10 minutes be¬ 
fore serving, the shredded meat of boiled 
crabs is added, ordinary salt water crabs 
being used. This soup is very appetiz¬ 
ing in sultry weather. 
* 
A good many women are now reported 
in various lines of electrical work, espec¬ 
ially in connection with electrical rail¬ 
ways. One town in Ohio is mentioned 
where women are employed, not as elec¬ 
tricians, but as conductors on electric 
cars. According to statements made by 
some of the daily papers, these women 
work 10 hours a day for $4 a week. It is 
quite possible that living would be cheap 
in the town named, but the wages are 
unjustly low, and the women who accept 
such pay do great harm to the cause of 
labor. We consider that a woman has a 
perfect right to earn her living in any 
calling for which she has ability, but 
she does wrong to enter what is com¬ 
monly considered a man's occupation, 
and then underbid him. If her work is 
as satisfactory as a man’s, she should 
receive the same wages; if inferior, she 
should enter a field for which she is bet¬ 
ter fitted. Women are rapidly driving 
men out of some occupations that were 
formerly controlled by them ; it is. how¬ 
ever, a poor compliment to us if we are 
preferred only because we are cheaper. 
* 
A pre-nuptial agreement, recently 
filed in Massachusetts, presents some un¬ 
usual features. The contracting parties, 
Fordyce Whitmarsh and A. Minerva 
Cleveland, agreed as follows : 
All real and personal estate shall remain the 
separate property of the party owning the same, 
to the same extent as when married. 
Property acquired by either party shall remain 
the property of the person acquiring the same. 
Each party can manage or dispose of his prop¬ 
erty without consulting the other. 
The said Whitmarsh will pay the said Cleveland 
during the first five years of their marriage 50 
cents per week for her personal use. 
Five years from the date of their marriage he 
will pay to his wife the sum of $500, or, in case of 
the death of either party, it will be payable from 
or to the estate of the deceased. 
After five years the husband is to pay his wife 
$1.50 per week. 
This is, we are told, Mr. Whitmarsh’s 
third venture in matrimony, so we infer 
that he is guided by experience in the 
generous offer of 50 cents a week for his 
wife’s personal expenses, with a rebate 
or bonus of $500 at the end of five years. 
Marriage settlements are so much the 
custom abroad that this agreement would 
not seem so strange to a foreigner as to 
an American. Considering how often it 
is that disagreements about money mat¬ 
ters cause the first trifling jars in do¬ 
mestic life, we think that it would be 
better if, from the very first, a clear 
understanding existed as to the manage¬ 
ment of the family income ; neither is it 
asking too much for a man to secure a 
portion of his means or property, apart 
from business risks, for the support of 
his family, should misfortune come. 
When a man marries, he gives hostages 
to fortune, and must prepare for possible 
contingencies with the same business 
sense that he would display in a business 
partnership. _ 
FARM LIFE IN ILLINOIS. 
TIIE CORN FARMER’S FAMILY. 
[The R. N.-Y. expects to give from time to 
time studies of farm life as it appears iu vari¬ 
ous parts of our country. Our purpose is to at¬ 
tempt to show something of the social aspect of 
farm life—how men aud women live, and how 
their social ambitions are bounded. The series 
begins this week with a picture of life on a corn 
farm in Illinois. Others will follow—from the 
jjoint of view of the Yankee, the Southerner and 
the Westerner who may fairly be classed as 
“ average” farmers.] 
“Early to Rise.” —“Come, Sarah, 
time to get up ; we want to get into the 
field early this morning so’s to finish 
planting to-day,” called Farmer Brown 
to his wife one morning in May. 
“ Oh. dear ! it’s corn, corn, from one 
year’s end to another, but it would be 
much worse not to have any!” solilo¬ 
quized his wife. She finds a fire built 
in the kitchen stove, teakettle on. After 
starting breakfast, the chickens are 
looked after, milk skimmed and calves 
fed. The hearty breakfast of ham, eggs, 
potatoes, bread and butter, apple sauce, 
ginger cookies and coffee is soon dis¬ 
posed of. 
“ Send out a lunch, Sarah, about nine 
o’clock; five o’clock breakfast will not 
last until noon.” Out he goes, and soon the 
click, click of his check-row corn planter 
is heard. His mind is on that corn un¬ 
til a little voice says, “ Here is your 
lunch, Pa. Can’t I plant while you eat 
here under the tree ?” 
“No, John; Bill and Fan want a 
breathing spell, and I will water them 
before I start again.” While eating pie, 
fried cakes, bread and butter, with a 
bottle of sweet cider (canned from last 
Fall) to wash it down, Farmer Brown 
talks corn to John until the child won¬ 
ders what would become of everybody 
if there were no corn, and why Brother 
Louis did not want to stay on the farm 
and raise corn, to which query the father 
replies, “ We can’t all be farmers, John, 
and I expect Louis will be a big man 
some day when he gets his education. 
You see, we have to raise this crop of 
corn to help him get it.” 
“When will you raise one to get my 
education ?” says John. 
“ Oh! you don’t want very much school¬ 
ing to be a farmer. Read, write, spell 
and pretty good in figures is enough to 
be a farmer!” So the seed of “don’t 
have to know much to be a farmer” 
is early implanted in the child’s breast. 
Plenty to Eat. —The dinner table, 
with its red tablecloth and stone china, 
is loaded with eatables. Meat and po¬ 
tatoes three times a day are found on 
the average farmer’s table. Plenty to 
eat is the rule. It is not uncommon to 
find pie, pudding, sauce, cake, pickles, 
cheese, crackers and honey on the din¬ 
ner table. 
“ I shall have to build fence after the 
corn is harrowed,” said Farmer Brown ; 
“ I don’t like barbed wire, but it will 
have to be that, I guess.” 
“ I think a hedge so much prettier and 
cheaper, too,” says the wife. 
“ I don’t want any more hedge ; I can’t 
raise good corn within three or four rods 
of it,” there it is again, Corn! Corn! 
“ Hello, Dick! When do you finish 
planting ?” 
“This noon,” said the neighbor who 
drops in. 
“ Well, you beat me half a day, but I 
had 40 acres and you 35.” 
“ To-day is Friday ; Mary will be home 
to-night from her school. She says that 
teaching is hard work ; I suppose it is, 
but she gets good pay. Her education 
cost me considerable money, but our 
Mary is a good girl. I think that she 
missed it paying out so much money for 
a piano when one-third of it would buy 
a good organ, and she could put the rest 
of it out on interest. But that is her 
business, not mine, I suppose, as long as 
she earns the money.” 
Sociability Flourishes.—“ I am going 
to Mrs. Thornton's this afternoon to a 
‘ rag party ’; she is in a hurry about her 
carpet, and the neighbors are agoing to 
help her. I won’t be home very early, so 
supper will not be on time to-night,” 
said the wife. 
“ All right, stay as long as you want 
to, and find out how many are done 
planting,” and Farmer Brown goes to 
feed Bill and Fan a quantity of the 
golden grain that would scare an eastern 
farmer. 
One rarely sees a poor horse in Illinois ; 
if the corn crop is not so good one year, 
there is generally some left over from 
last year’s crop, and there has never been 
an entire failure in the corn belt. It is 
laughable to hear these farmers talk of 
their pet crop ; it is, “ Have you laid 
your corn by ? ” (meaning through cul ti- 
vating ) “ When are you going to begin 
husking?” “When do you finish?” 
“ When are you to shell ? ” winding up 
with, “ Have you sold your corn yet?” 
In the great corn State of Nebraska, one 
seldom hears these queries, which is 
rather strange when so many are from 
Illinois. There seems to be more of the 
old-time sociability among the average 
farmers of Illinois than we had in the 
East 30 and 40 years ago. There are 
singing schools and literary societies at 
the schoolhouse. Wedding anniversaries 
and surprise parties are frequent, with 
gifts and bountifully-spread tables and 
a good social time Making quilts, rag 
carpets and knitting work is not out of 
fashion, although the women are as 
stylish in dress as the town dwellers. 
Fancy work has many admirers, and the 
latest stitch, color or fabric is more often 
mentioned than the last new book or 
doings of the woman’s club. 
In the paper-rack at Farmer Brown's, 
you will, probably, find one political 
paper, one and possibly two farm pa¬ 
pers, the Y’outh’s Companion, the county 
paper and one or more of the house¬ 
keeping and home periodicals. There 
is a parlor at Farmer Brown’s which is 
thrown open “when company comes. 
The “ boughten ” carpet (perhaps a Brus 
sels), lace curtains, table with fancy 
lamp, albums, books, etc., easjr chairs 
and couch, with pictures and numerous 
pieces of fancy work, and Mary’s piano, 
are the pride of the household. The 
sitting-room has its rag carpet, shades, 
sewing machine, table, lounge and 
chairs,with numerous pictures, and is the 
living-room of the family. Here Mother 
sews and chats with neighbors who 
come in ; Father reads, sleeps and plays 
checkers with the children or a neigh¬ 
bor ; Mary and Louis study and tell of 
their experiences at school; John has 
his playthings, and the dog and cat have 
a rug on which to sleep by the stove in 
Winter. 
Thrifty with His Money. —Farmer 
Brown believes in having things com¬ 
fortable indoors and out. If he has $100 
to spare, he is very likely to loan it out 
on good security, instead of investing 
in a new buggy or something he docs 
not absolutely need. He keeps from two 
to three cows of the “general-purpose” 
kind, although “ Sarah has been at me 
to get Jerseys, but she can’t make me 
see yet that any cow is worth $L00. The 
women are all in love with a Jersey cow 
for some reason, because they are 
pretty, I suppose; but I want to see 
the dollars the cow will bring before 
I spend my hard-earned money in that 
way.” 
“But, Father,” says John, “Mr. Day 
sold his Jersey cow's calf for $30, and we 
get only $3 for ours.” 
“Well! well! .John, the fools are not 
all dead j'et!” 
But the average Illinois farmer is be¬ 
ing educated to sec that one good cow is 
worth two or three of the scrubs. 
Farmer Brown puts on a decent suit of 
clothes when going to town, and likes to 
look respectable. His wife has a pocket- 
book of her own, and delights in taking 
in the “ bargain days ” at the stores, and 
in drawers and closets, will be found 
piles of various kinds of goods bought 
because cheap and “ will be needed 
some day.” Farmer Brown loves his 
wife, but if he should tell her so, or kiss 
her, I think she would be frightened for 
fear he was not in his right mind (but 
the Illinois farmer is no exception). In 
fact, Farmer Brown is a good sort of a 
man. He looks out for Number One, and 
is willing to help others when it does 
not discommode himself. He believes in 
his countrjL his State is the best , and 
Chicago the greatest city on earth. 
MRS. FREDERICK C. JOHNSON. 
ppielisie 
THE MODERN 
STOVE POLISH 
No other polish 
has solarqe a sale. 
None so good. 
J.LPrescott&Co. New York 
