1810. 
THE RURAt NEW -YORKER 
1007 
FARMERS AND SOCIABILITY. 
The article on “Social Life in the 
Country,” by Mrs. Howe, page 937, de¬ 
scribes conditions in this neighborhood. 
The women who have sisters, aunts or 
other close relatives visit among them. 
Nearly all keep on borrowing terms with 
one or two others. In five years’ resi¬ 
dence I can count all the social evenings 
on one hand, excepting those church 
suppers at the hall, and a very few par¬ 
ties for the very young people. There 
would be an inquiry into my sanity if I 
were to invite a group of married people 
here. There is no Grange here. I tried 
to resurrect our old one. No use. In 
five years I have not heard one lecture, 
concert or entertainment, except that of 
an itinerant elocutionist. Calls are not 
made except among relatives or on er¬ 
rands. We have astonished the natives 
by raising and keeping hundreds of hens. 
People drive miles to see them, and tell 
us so, and act as though they ought to 
apologize for calling, quite sheepish 
about it. All visitors are brought here 
to see the chickens. What a difference 
in the manner of the city visitors! They 
actually sit down and chat. The farm¬ 
ers look at me as if I were some mon¬ 
strosity, the city people as if I were hu¬ 
man. And this is my old home. But 
I was obliged to work till I was 38 as 
teacher, clerk, stenographer, nurse, etc. 
Of all my girlhood friends, not one calls. 
Yet in my girlhood our house was open 
to parties, etc. They seem to have been 
so absorbed by their families, or their 
cooking as to have lost all social in¬ 
stincts. My own idea is that too much 
cooking is one of the crying evils of our 
section. Tables groan too often. Those 
who have time put their souls into mixed 
pickles and those who cannot are 
ashamed and think themselves nobody. 
A COUNTRY WOMAN. 
There’s always a cause for every evil, 
and there must be a cause for the gen¬ 
eral decline in sociability in the East, 
and I believe that the cause is this: 
Some 50 years ago the emigration began 
from the eastern section of the country 
to the West. New England as well as 
the Middle States gave of her very best, 
and her sons and daughters went to the 
West and there built a marvelous coun¬ 
try; made it what it is, the most enter¬ 
prising part of the whole United States. 
But they took from the East what was 
needed at home: energy, enterprise and 
optimism, and they left the old folks, 
discouraged and lonely, to settle down to 
live as their fathers had lived; to travel 
the same paths, think the same thoughts; 
and, naturally, as they grew older and 
more feeble, sociability declined, and 
they died, as they had lived, alone. In 
many instances, the sons, returning to 
the funeral, were obliged to sell the old 
homesteads, which frequently passed into 
the hands of foreigners, who coming 
here, were quick to see the advantage 
of obtaining for a comparatively small 
sum of money, the long life’s labors of 
others, whose sons were pioneering in 
distant land, enduring hardships and pri¬ 
vations, building up a country and homes 
for another generation to enjoy. 
But the foreigner was not long to stay 
on the old homestead, as a rule. Usu¬ 
ally an elderly or middle-aged man, he 
worked hard and died, while his chil¬ 
dren hurried to the city for employment. 
The country with its few social pleas¬ 
ures and long hours did not appeal to 
them. They wanted factory work and 
town life, and so once more the old 
homestead which had taken generations 
to build, again passed into the hands of 
the stranger, or failing that, fell into de¬ 
cay. We to-day are of another genera¬ 
tion, and few indeed are the old home¬ 
steads that are now occupied by de¬ 
scendants of an unbroken line of the 
rugged New England stock which made 
possible the subduing of our rocky lands 
into fair and fertile fields. The once 
strong bands of friendship which bound 
New England people together have been 
broken by many changes; and we, seem¬ 
ingly, are endeavoring to avoid the ex¬ 
tremes of sociability so often practiced 
by the foreigners who settled in our 
towns. Many of them brought them¬ 
selves to ruin by the lavish entertainment 
and feasting they delighted in on Sun¬ 
days when they entertained their friends 
and kin; but we, at the other extreme, 
selfishly live for ourselves alone. As 
one farmer recently expressed himself 
regarding some young men who came to 
visit his sons: “If them fellers want to 
work I’ll hire ’em and pay ’em, but I 
don’t want ’em takin’ up my boys’ time.” 
This man had evidently forgotten his 
own boyhood, and forgets also that all 
young people must have some pleasure, 
for “All work and no play makes Jack a 
dull boy.” 
One of the hardest things to accom¬ 
plish is to get people who have formed 
settled habits, to change them, so we 
must appeal to the young to make these 
changes for themselves. If you have a 
Grange in your town, join it; if you have 
none, organize one; if you can’t do that 
invite as many friends as you can enter¬ 
tain to your homes some evening. Se¬ 
lect some good topic for debate from 
The R. N.-Y.; there are plenty of them 
in it, or else some subject of vital in¬ 
terest in your own locality. Have a 
friendly debate followed by light re¬ 
freshments, coffee, doughnuts, or baked 
apples, and so get out of your shell and 
enjoy yourselves as God intended human 
beings to do when he gave them social 
instincts. Suppose the debate was about 
the best methods of raising corn. 
Wouldn’t you, after you had heard both 
sides, know more about corn, than if you 
had read the same articles in the agri¬ 
cultural weeklies? Let the women de¬ 
bate, or be judges, anyway, give them 
their part, something besides the re¬ 
freshments and the necessary work en¬ 
tailed. 
Before the exodus of the boys to the 
West there, were singing schools, husking 
bees, quilting parties, revival meetings 
and surprise parties in every neighbor¬ 
hood. In the slang of to-day there was 
“something doing” all the time, but in 
the march of progress the first has passed 
away and the revivals have followed 
their wake from the lack of religious 
interest. Now what the East most needs 
is for the West to send back the grand¬ 
sons of the boys who went west 50 years 
ago. Let them buy and build up their 
ancestral homes again; 'fill them with 
their social, happy, cheerful western in¬ 
stincts, until the old homesteads that 
their grandsires built, are again centers 
of. old-fashioned New England hospi¬ 
tality and cheer. Let them come with 
their new ideas and show New England¬ 
ers of to-day that our valleys will grow 
corn, our hillsides peaches; that we can 
raise our potatoes and garden vegetables 
and also fatten our own meat, which Na¬ 
ture invites us to do, by giving us our 
rugged hillsides and pastures where 
sheep and cattle can thrive. 
SUSAN J. HOWE. 
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