860 
THE RURAT> NEW-YORKER 
Dr Eliot's Three Poems. 
OME years ago Dr. Charles W. Eliot, 
formerly president of Harvard Uni¬ 
versity, declared that he could select 50 
volumes which would contain the founda¬ 
tion for a liberal education. These vol¬ 
umes are known as a five-foot library. 
While Di\ Eliot’s selections have been 
criticised by many, he has certainly gath¬ 
ered a wonderful store of the world’s best 
literature. More recently Dr. Eliot 
stated that every American child should 
commit at least three poems to memory. 
These are Longfellow’s “The Village 
Blacksmith,” Hunt’s “Abou Ben Adhem,” 
and Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl.” Fifty 
to 60 years ago it would have been a 
rather strange child, in New England, 
who could not recite the first two poems. 
They were printed in every school reader, 
and who among the old boys and girls 
from the country school districts has not 
recited one or both of them? Bryant's 
poem is not so well known, yet it is the 
best of the three. 
* ■ * « 
To a Waterfowl. 
Whither, midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last 
steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou 
pursue 
Thy solitary way? 
Vainly the fowler’s eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee 
wrong, 
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 
Thy figure floats along. 
Seek’st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
On the chafed ocean-side? 
There is a power wnose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless 
coast— 
The desert and illimitable air— 
Lone wandering, but not lost. 
All day thy wings have fanned. 
At that far height, the cold, thin at¬ 
mosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
Though the dark night is near. 
And soon that toil shall end; 
Soon shalt thou find a Summer home, 
and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows; l’eeds 
shall bend, 
Soon o’er thy sheltered nest. 
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on 
my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 
He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy 
certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright. 
—Wm. Cullen Bryant. 
* * * 
Very Valuable Property. 
(Reprinted By Request.) 
I ain’t no hand to brag my children up 
Above all others, but I’ll tell you now, 
That little girl of ours does win the cup— 
In my own estimation, anyhow. 
I’ll guarantee a dozen folks have said, 
“She looks jest like her mother”— 
don’t it please 
My wife to have ’em say so? She gits red 
As fire, her heart’s so full she has to 
sneeze. 
An’ smart? Why I’ll bring folks to 
guarantee 
They never saw her beat—I’ve heard 
’em say 
In that respect she sorter favors me. 
Her smartness ’pears to trace right 
back, m.v way. 
She don’t weigh over 30 pounds, and yet, 
Her little fist can pound away our care. 
You bring a million dollars and I’ll bet 
That you can’t buy that baby’s small¬ 
est hair. 
* * * 
The Old Mail. 
Walt Mason. 
Be kind to your daddy, O gamboling 
youth; his feet are now sluggish and 
cold; intent on your pleasures, you don’t 
see the truth, which is that your dad’s 
growing old. Ah, once he could w'hip 
forty bushels of snakes, but now' he is 
spavined and lame; his joints are all 
rusty and tortured with aches, and weary 
and worn is his frame. lie toiled and he 
slaved like a government mule to see that 
his kids had a chance; he fed them and 
clothed them and sent them to school, re¬ 
joiced when he marked their advance. 
The landscape is moist with the billows 
of sweat he cheerfully shed as he toiled, 
to bring up his children and keep out of 
debt, and see that the home kettle boiled. 
He dressed in old duds that his Mary 
and Jake might bloom like the roses in 
June, and oft when you swallowed your 
porterhouse steak, your daddy was chew¬ 
ing a prune. And now that he’s worn by 
his burden of care, just show' you are 
worth all he did; look out for his com¬ 
fort, and hand him his chair, and hang 
up his slicker and lid. 
A GROUP of young men w'ere seated 
in a Western restaurant discussing 
ways of spending their vacation. One of 
them said, “I am going home to see the 
old folks. Father is getting a little old, 
he has worked hard, and may not be here 
long. I shall probably work while I am 
there, but that seems the best way to 
spend my vacation this year.” A middle- 
aged man at the next table turned to the 
group of young men. 
“I want to congratulate you,” he said. 
"You are right. I went back last year 
where the old folks lived. They were 
both dead, but I fixed up the lot in the 
cemetery and paid to have it kept neat 
and tasty.” 
“That was all right,” said the younger 
man, “but what did you do for them 
before they died?” 
The older man looked at him for a mo¬ 
ment. then he choked, pushed his food 
away, paid his bill and walked out of the 
restaurant without a word. Through all 
his days he will be haunted by the 
thought that he neglected the old people 
while they lived and while they needed 
him. It is an awful thought to haunt 
and chase a man throughout his life. 
There are rich men today who would 
give their gold if they could get away 
from it. In this great, busy, rushing 
world young people with life all ahead of 
them cannot always realize what it 
means to the old folks to see their busy 
children grow away from them. “Re¬ 
member thy father and thy mother.” 
* * * 
LL sorts of “remedies” for the tramp 
hen have been suggested. These 
run from shooting the hen and fighting 
her owner to letting her alone to tear up 
your garden at will. Here is a new one. 
This means going by night into your 
neighbor’s yard and scattering buck¬ 
wheat and corn in his flower or kitch¬ 
en garden. His hens will do the rest. 
Instead of coming upon your premises 
they will “follow the grain” and before 
the owner wakes up they will have his 
garden in great shape. Then his wife 
will enter the argument and the hens 
will be shut up. 
* * * 
AST month a correspondent suggested 
advertising for teachers in the hope 
of obtaining a wider list to select from. 
The object of advertising is to enlarge 
the circle of people who know your wants 
or your offerings. Whether a man puts 
up a shingle in front of his farm or buys 
space in some expensive magazine the 
object is the same, whether he wants a 
teacher, a hired man, a horse or a piano. 
* * * 
Y OUR writers on medical topics are 
orthodix, though orthodoxy is out of 
fashion, and, what is better, show common 
sense. Occasionally some one of your 
estimable correspondents gets worked up 
over the dangers of damp sheets, which 
no human being ever gets between if he 
can possibly help it, and attributes the 
origin of our infectious colds to that or 
some similar unessential or merely con¬ 
tributory factor. A knowledge of the 
infectiousness of common, and uncommon, 
colds, of their serious consequences and 
of the importance of as much quarantin¬ 
ing of infected persons as possible, is a 
thing of vast importance to our welfare 
both in town and country. Infections, 
intemperance in eating and drinking, nar¬ 
cotics and stimulants, these are the ever 
present devils that assail us. We can 
tuck our heads under our wings like 
the birds and breathe 002, limit our 
bathing to accidental plunges into the 
lake, and shiver in settles before a green 
wood fire, but if we keep the infections 
and the non-living poisons out of our 
insides we shall stand better chances of 
living out our alloted spans. w. E. n. 
v v * 
HE Canadian Farm has been conduct¬ 
ing a discussion on “Do Women In¬ 
fluence Men to Leave the Farm?” All 
sides of the matter are being discussed, 
but here is one hopeful note: 
I have failed to notice a case where 
a woman induced a man to leave the 
farm, against his will, but I do know of 
several cases where the wife has kept the 
husband on the farm. For most women 
love the freedom of the country life, 
where we can give our children plenty of 
plain, wholesome food and they can see 
the beauties of nature. 
The writer of this says that on too 
many farms grandfather would come 
back and find himself unable to handle 
the labor-saving devices which the farm¬ 
er now employs. Grandmother would 
come back and find herself entirely at 
home with the fixtures found in the 
kitchen! That was a good article last 
month from the woman who sat down 
and talked this matter over with her hus¬ 
band. See page 777. 
* if * 
M RS. HELENE C. LOVE JOY, a 
woman who confesses to 50 years, 
has just completed the four years’ course 
in horticulture at the Ohio Agricultural 
College. Mrs. Lovejoy graduated from 
the College of Arts in 18S4, but came 
back to complete the horticultural course. 
In addition to her school work Mrs. Love- 
joy kept house for a family of three. 
* * * 
T HE girls of Gamma Pi Gamma, the 
honorary society at the Kansas 
Agricultural College, excludes all “Hunk¬ 
ers.” No person who has ever failed in 
a college study can belong to this society, 
which is confined to girls taking home 
economics. What housekeepers such girls 
ought to make! 
* * * 
L ESLIE’S WEEKLY gives an article 
by a woman who instead of “liv¬ 
ing to eat” learned “eating to live.” She 
brought her family within sight of debt 
by extravagant housekeeping and then 
saved the home through economical buy¬ 
ing and saving. When she started to 
reform she says: 
Again I turned to my cook books and 
magazines, this time in the search for 
hints on economy. I must admit that 
they were disappointing. I am convinced, 
by my own experience, that a great deal 
of the extravagance of our American 
housewives is chargeable to the women’s 
magazines, which delight in stimulating 
every form of gastronomic extravagance. 
They delude the eye with pictures of ex¬ 
travagantly spread tables, excite the cu¬ 
riosity with recipes for strange and costly 
dishes, and when they pretend to teach 
economy, usually lead us into dreary 
wastes of tasteless and nutritionless 
June 27, 
menus. The housewife who would see 
her family well fed on the minimum ex¬ 
penditure must use her own common 
sense. 
There is no question about the need of 
common sense. We have often thought 
we would like to locate some of the good 
ladies who prepare the wonderful food 
described in these magazines right in a 
farm kitchen, say when the thrashers 
were coming. 
* * * 
T HE age of the cold storage egg is a 
favorite subject for jokes when 
the city imagination grows stale. This 
one will appear in time: 
New York woman is suing for divorce 
because her husband wrote to a girl 
whose name he found on an egg. Foolish 
jealousy. The girl’s a grandmother by 
this time. 
Some of the “fresh-laid eggs” which 
city people eat are certainly old enough 
to have produced grandchildren. It 
would require only seven months or so 
for a Leghorn egg to fill that part of the 
programme. As for the girl, she would 
be foolish to trust her name with an 
egg until it was made into cake. 
* * * 
B ROOKLYN, N. Y., has a Domestic 
Relations Court in which cases of 
“trouble in the family” are tried. The 
judges decided to learn, if they could, the 
underlying causes which led to these do¬ 
mestic troubles. They carefully investi¬ 
gated 750 cases and made the following 
report: 
Ninn- Per 
Cause. her. Cent. 
Drink . 390 45.8 
Other women .117 13.7 
Laziness. 79 9^2 
Jealousy . 76 8.9 
Incompatibility . 75 8.8 
Gambling . 33 3.8 
Out of work . 30 3.5 
Lazy and untidy wives. 20 2.3 
Mother-in-law interference... 12 1.4 
Other men (accusations of 
husbands) . 10 1.2 
Cruel ti’eatmcnt . 8 .9 
Thus we see that drink and laziness 
are responsible for more than half these 
domestic troubles, while lazy wives were 
responsible for only a little more than 
two per cent, of the cases. And what be¬ 
comes of the sad old joke about mother- 
in-law? On this showing there are neax-- 
l.v seven lazy husbands, 39 drunkards and 
10 “other women,” to one interfering 
mother-in-law. The fact is that this last- 
named character has long been used as a 
scarecrow or joke when in most cases 
she is a friend in need. 
* * * 
G O TO SCHOOL.—Elementally in¬ 
struction is obligatory with a very 
large O in France. If a child ab¬ 
sents itself from school four times a 
month, the father or guardian or person 
responsible for the child may be sum¬ 
moned to appear before a municipal 
school committee. If the party in ques¬ 
tion fails to put in an appearance, his 
or her name is pasted at the entrance 
of the City Hall for a fortnight, together 
with the reasons for the summons. Upon 
a second offense the offending party may 
be brought before a justice of peace, and 
if satisfactory reasons are not assigned, 
he may be subjected to a fine of from 11 
to 15 francs (.$2.12 to $2.90) or to im¬ 
prisonment from one to five days. If the 
child is insubordinate or refractory the 
father or other responsible party may call 
in the services of a constable 
* * * 
W E NEED “EDUCATION.”—Last 
Summer a young . .an with a family 
of little folks, living on a rented 
farm, became ill. He cried unceasingly at 
first because of the inroads that must be 
made on the little sum he was saving up 
to buy a farm. Knowing by experience 
something of the difficulties that beset 
these men, perhaps my observations and 
conclusions may have some value. Drain¬ 
age is at the bottom of most farming 
operations in this section. Alas, it is not 
at the bottom of much of fclie land; it has 
yet to be put there. Once there it is 
only the first step in the building up of 
run down land. We do not expect a 
man to win his L. L. D. and support him¬ 
self and family at the same time, all 
without capital. Yet because a man 
fails to give his farm an L. L. D. and sup¬ 
port a family with little or no capital, it 
is assumed by some that he needs educat¬ 
ing. A year or so ago two countrymen 
at the State Fair were attracted by a 
placard. “Black Rot of The Grape.” 
Pausing a moment, one of them said: 
“What is the use? If I found out what 
to do I couldn’t do it.” The weary- 
looking expert in charge said: “It is sim¬ 
ple enough.” As the women passed on 
the grape lover said: “Simple enough! 
To fight the black rot would take mind, 
muscle and money. It might be simple 
enough to furnish the mind, but the mus¬ 
cle and the money—that part is not 
simple.” j. f. c. 
