206 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
June. 
The Farmer’s Wife. 
Eds. Cultivator —So much has been said and sung 
in praise of “ a farmer’s life,” that, apparently, no time 
or space has been spared to speak of the life led by his 
“ better half.” Our country is blessed with an abundant 
monthly harvest of leaves, containing valuable informa¬ 
tion in regard to the culture of almost all kinds of fruits 
and plants, and the appliances and means best adapted to 
the improvement and growth of the domestic animals— 
but these “ lords of the soil,” seem studiously to have 
forgotten that their houses, as well as their barns and 
pastures, contain live stock, to which a part of their at¬ 
tention should be given. 
The farmer’s wife should be an independent, healthy, 
happy, and cultivated woman—one on whose culture, 
both physical and mental, the agriculturist has bestowed 
at least as much thought as he has upon that of his swine 
or his turneps—but is it so? 
When a young farmer arrives at an age that he wishes 
to choose for himself a fitting wife, he naturally desires 
one whose intellect and taste has been enlarged and 
educated to an equal degree with his own, and generally 
he prefers one who has either been reared upon a farm, 
or has become personally acquainted with rural pursuits; 
and his wishes are readily gratified, for girls who have 
been carefully trained and well educated, are happily, at 
this day, far from being rare, or difficult to find. A 
genuine love of good books, skill and taste in music, and 
the arts, combined with depth and strength of intellect, 
are possessed by many of the young girls who have en¬ 
joyed the privilege of a country birth and residence. 
Such a person, not unfrequently unites her fate with 
that of a farmer, thinking no doubt, from what she has 
read in agricultural periodicals, that thus she can more 
certainly gratify her taste for horticulture and the em¬ 
bellishment of her home, and at the same time fulfil a 
more exalted destiny than she could expect to, if she 
was to become a part of the fashionable circle of the city 
or village. Yet she is ambitious to perform as much 
labor as her neighbor, who has for years been engaged in 
household labor, and therefore assumes the duties of 
house-wife, and maid-of-all-work, and her husband, who 
has been accustomed to see his neighbors’ wives toiling 
from morning until night, in the cook and dairy-room, 
thinks it all right, with as little reflection as the peasant 
of Europe bestows upon the coupling his wife and mule 
together at the plow or the cart; and thus from mere 
custom, and want of thought, he allows the woman of 
his love to become his most devoted slave. 
From this time forth, the life of the farmer’s wife is 
one of confinement and unremitting toil. From early 
dawn until late at night, it is nothing but mend and 
botch, cook and bake, wash and sweep, churn and make 
cheese, wait upon her husband and his band of laborers, 
' bear children and nurse them. No time for relaxation 
or enjoyment, or the improvement of her mental or so¬ 
cial faculties is found. As the means of the farmer and 
his family increase, the husband becomes more noticed, 
and his circle of acquaintances and friends enlarges; he 
daily meets his associates and mingles with the world, 
but his wife toils on in the old dull routine, with 
nothing to break in upon the monotony of her exis- 
tence, except perhaps the advent of another child, or the 
death of one to whom her her heart is bound in the 
strongest ties. 
The husband, it may be, is engaged in some public 
business, or drives frequently to town for a market or for 
his pleasure, but he never thinks of his martyr wife, and 
the necessity there is in her nat ure, that she should share 
with him his pleasures and relaxations. Her labors are 
never ended, her cares never cease, until premature old 
age has come upon her, and with blanched and bowed 
form, she sinks into an early grave, leaving the children 
of her love, and the property she had saved and earned, 
to the care of a more youthful successor, who not seldom 
avenges these wrongs by tyrannising over the husband 
and abusing the children. 
This is no fancy picture, or a delineation of what was 
in by-gone days, but unfortunately the original can be 
found in almost every neighborhood, and even among 
those who are called model farmers. Neither is it con¬ 
fined to the cultivators of the soil. All classes and oc¬ 
cupations of men include too many in their ranks, who 
practically scout the idea that their wives and daughters 
are human beings, with soxils in some way connected with 
their bodies, and that they are 1 ‘ endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights and privileges,” among 
which are life and the rights to enjoy the pure air of hea¬ 
ven. uncontaminated with the odors of the kitchen or 
the steam of the wash-tub—that their social and intel¬ 
lectual nature is an essential part of them,—and that to 
live, in the full sense of the word, is to enjoy and in¬ 
crease the ability of enjoying these higher attributes, by 
a free and varied intercourse with the pure and the gifted 
of their own and the opposite sex. 
We hope to see the day when men, even those who 
consider it a privilege as well as a duty to gain a live¬ 
lihood from honest toil, will take as muchpainsto secure 
these social pleasures and innocent amusements for their 
wives and their daughters, as they do to give proper ex¬ 
ercise and recreation to their horses and their cattle. 
When farmers will consider it proper for the females 
of their families, to join with them in forming and execu¬ 
ting their plans for the improvement of the soil and of 
society—when they become aware of the fact that their 
wisest advisers and their truest friends are to be found 
within the limits of their own households; and will 
invite their friends to their homes, and there form their 
farmer's clubs, and arrange their plans and examine their 
prospects, they will discover that the female part of the 
community have a genius above being simply their maids- 
of-all-work, mere labor-saving machines, designed to 
cook potatoes, or mend stockings; or to make fashionable 
calls, and repeat the silly nothings and nonsense of polite 
society. 
Let farmers take as much pains to increase the happi¬ 
ness and cultivate the minds of the females of their house¬ 
holds, as they do to enlarge their fields and fertilize the 
soil, and they will secure a harvest of more value than any 
or all to which a premium has ever been awarded by any 
agricultural committee ever chosen. C. II. Cleaveland. 
Waterbury, Vt., May, 1852. 
