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THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
Pastoral Parson on the Lonely Road 
By Rev. Geo. B. Gilbert 
Providing Supplies. —Yes, we had a 
sociable down on the four corners the other 
night. It was Saturday night, for it is 
then when you have gotten in a good 
week's work you feel like getting out and 
going somewhere. Father says: “We’ll 
quit in good season tonight, it’s Satur¬ 
day,” and mother has supper a half hour 
early. On the Pastoral Parson's farm 
we quit for the week on Friday, as there 
is much to do to get ready for Sunday 
and 12 to 15 miles ride. We made up 
a big freezer of ice cream to take along— 
with our own milk, eggs and ice, it is 
not a serious matter. Then I opened the 
clams for a six-quart can of clam chow¬ 
der, and we put that in. Besides this I 
have always on hand a supply of crack- 
erjack, assorted wafers, milk chocolate, 
etc. Yes and there was a box of chew¬ 
ing gum in. I know that’s awful, but 
then it’s once a week in the country, not 
every day like the city. There was one 
family near the church, that is within 
a mile, that had persisted in never as¬ 
sociating with us in any way. I found 
one of our churchmen there helping get 
the stones out of his garden patch. Such 
a pile as they got! I jumped out here, 
and looked over the work, and admired 
the biggest chickens I had seen this year. 
We had always remembered the children 
Christmas and I had left papers and 
cards there for years. And that evening, 
I couldn’t believe my eyes, that man and 
his wife appeared! 
Arranging The Church Building.— 
But before I tell you about the social it¬ 
self, I want all The R. N.-l r . readers to 
know how we fixed our church so that 
we could have a fine place for this work. 
Like so many country church buildings, 
there is no place for any social life. We 
took down a choir gallery in the rear of 
the church, carefully saving the lumber. 
Then we put up a partition nearly in 
the middle of the church. This left 
plenty of room in the church proper to 
seat all the people in that part of coun¬ 
try, and made half the space to warm up 
on a cold morning. Then in the half of 
the front of the church we made an up 
and down stairs. To the left of the 
front doors we put a burlap curtain 
across, so that as you enter this room to 
go into the church proper, you need not 
sec* the cook stove, tables, etc., on the 
other side. When we have many to eat 
we just pull back the curtain and have 
a big fine kitchen-dining room. Down 
here the men smoke if they wish and all 
the eatables are served. Here the men 
generally sit in the evening around the 
kitchen stove—and isn’t that home-like? 
Back of the stove the young fellows can 
put their felt boots in Winter, while 
shoes are worn for the* games up stairs. 
There isn’t much shining nickel on this 
old stove, but a big 60-cup coffee tank 
seems to hit the farmer’s eyes fully as 
well. Up stairs we have a smooth floor 
and seats around the outside and a big 
piano I picked up in the city, square to 
be sure, but just as well for us, and also 
a graphophone. This last is a great 
thing for the country social. It is always 
ready and so inexpensive. I cannot be¬ 
gin to tell how much this alteration in 
the church has done for us. We did 
much of the work, and the expense was 
very small. The main body of the church 
looks just as well. About three feet from 
the floor upstairs on the side next to the 
church we have a ledge with windows of 
opaque glass which swing out into the 
body of the church being hung on hinges 
like doors. With it this arrangement in 
case of a very large number ever coming 
to the church, these windows are thrown 
open and this social room becomes a 
part of the church itself, thus being able 
to seat even more than we did before. 
Amusements. —But we must return 
to our cross-roads social. I do not know 
where the people all came from—we had 
55 there. First there were games es¬ 
pecially to suit the little ones. Among 
the best games I have found after many 
years are courtesy, where one trotting 
around the circle slaps on the back one 
of the opposite sex, who running in the 
opposite direction endeavors to get the 
empty place first; toss the handkerchief, 
with one in the center trying to catch it, 
“Jacob and Itachael,” “Wink,” Roll the 
Platter. There need to be no kissing 
with any of these. Then we had ice 
cream and soda and confectionery, etc. 
Now here is a plan I always follow. 
When it comes time for ice cream, we 
pass it to everybody there, either in 
cones or saucers. Cones are great things 
for this social work ; they save so many 
dishes. The back-to-the-lander has no 
money to spare, and none of his children 
are to be left at home because it takes 
“so much to go around.” 
A Farm Talk. —After refreshments 
we were all called together and then for 
an hour we had a talk about farming. 
It was interesting to see the women fully 
as alert and interested as the men. The 
main subjects were about seeds—what to 
plant and how to plant them; what kind 
of corn to plant, when to plant it. The 
new families learned not a little from 
those who had lived for years in the 
neighborhood. Then we got on poultry 
and just had to break off till next time. 
They all decided to keep track of their 
eggs and report at the next social. Then 
the ladies visited together or went up¬ 
stairs to the games; the men and I talked 
farming, and the young people went up¬ 
stairs and had Virginia reels and quad¬ 
rilles, etc., till almost midnight. Such 
a fine time as every one had! A little 
after eleven some of the old folks and I 
got out that clam chowder. When you 
have been up IS hours and live 12 miles 
from a fish market a good hot chowder 
isn’t so bad. 
Wiiat Women Need. —Now about 
woman’s part in all this. There is a 
great deal said and more written (and 
less done) about the running water and 
handy woodbox and this is all very well, 
but I have yet to find a woman on the 
Lonely Road who mentioned any of these 
as the great ache of her country life. Now 
this is no excuse for you men folks to 
put off getting that pump into the well 
instead of pulling the water up with a 
rope, but it is the fact. The women “way 
down country” tell me in every case that 
the great thing they miss above all others 
is a chance to visit with other women 
folks. This does not reflect at all on 
the company of the men folks at home. 
We men folks pull up on the road and 
talk over the crops and markets, and how 
to keep crows off the corn, but just as 
soon as the women folks get their heads 
together we say they are “gossiping.” 
This is a shame, and the sooner it is 
stopped the better for all. What do they 
want to talk together about? Spring hats 
for one thing, and whether last year’s 
could be fixed up to go again; house 
furnishings and especially wallpapers; 
dresses for the children and for the girls 
the last day of school; cooking utensils 
and the relative value of aluminum and 
enamel ware; the traits and characteris¬ 
tics of small children, and most likely 
this time of year the feeding of baby 
chicks. And there are many, many other 
things. A sociable like ours Saturday 
helped a great deal but I have learned 
now that it is not enough. The women 
of the back district want to meet among 
themselves on an afternoon over a good 
hot cup of tea, and that, too, once a 
week. It’s up to us men folks not to 
sneer about such a meeting, nor to be 
stuffy if supper is a little late and we 
have to milk before eating. Supper has 
had to wait for you and me more than 
once, and the evening been spoiled for 
mother doing up the dishes. How many 
of us farmers will offer mother a team 
to go with? Why should she hesitate to 
ask for it, better, why should she have to 
ask for it? I don’t care if it is right in 
Spring’s work. There is pea brush to 
get and the last planting of potatoes to 
cut and plenty to do, and the corn can 
be marked out first thing in the morning. 
The early Fall frosts never froze a field 
of corn just because mother went to the 
sewing circle with the horse. Isn’t it 
best for such a gathering to be around at 
the different homes? “I get all cleaned 
up,” says the mother of this house, “and 
then no one sees it.” Of course no one 
cleans house to have it seen, but then 
when you have worked hard and papered 
the front room, it doesn’t hurt anyone to 
have some one see it and admire it a 
bit. It cheers one mightily at his work to 
have it seen and praised by earthly eyes 
once in a while. And after tea the flow¬ 
er bed can be looked over, some Dahlia 
roots promised and you will look at their 
eyes when they behold the size of those 
chicks you kept behind the kitchen stove 
in March. “How 1 had to hurry to get 
over to the Pines the other afternoon,” 
said a woman to me yesterday, “but 
things have looked different all the 
week.” 
Visiting Together. —Yes, that is what 
we need in the country today. Who has 
had experience with this cheering whole¬ 
some neighborhood circle? Do yoii 
bring your own work and do you like 
best to sew for some outside object? Dow 
would it do to break the eternal succes¬ 
sion of that stocking basket by taking it 
to the sewing circle—each one taking 
their pile along? Don’t let it make you 
work—crackers and tea were the lunch at 
one I have been looking up. Never let 
a sociable make you so much work you 
dread it. That means in due time the 
death of the social. The frosting on that 
cake might run in hot weather—take egg 
sandwiches instead. It seems to me like 
a sacrament to visit and eat together. 
You will never say such hard things or 
think such hard thoughts about that 
woman across the way whose chickens 
scratched up your flower bed, if you eat 
with her every week. Lonesomeness and 
anger and hate are more wearing than 
whipping rugs. Let the country social 
and the sewing circle smother them with 
cheer. But do you know what one wom¬ 
an said to me last week? “If the women 
of this neighborhood wanted to get to¬ 
gether, I don’t believe the men would let 
them, as the men hate each other so 
around here.” So another time I shall 
have to write something about the boys 
and men on the Lonely Road. 
A Cradle of Men. 
The picture given on this page shows a 
house on the Old Home Farm at Alton, 
N. II. This is a typical New England 
farm house of a former generation. Most 
of the prosperous farmers of that day 
built a plain box of a house, such as we 
see in the picture. There were few ex¬ 
terior decorations, and the houses were 
like their owners, plain and substantial. 
The thing about this house is the fact 
that probably more college graduates 
have been born and raised in this dwell¬ 
ing than in any other house in New 
May 29, 1915. 
Hampshire. There has been a long line 
of college men starting from this home 
and going through Dartmouth, Harvard 
and the higher institutions of learning. 
The big elm tree standing in the yard 
was transplanted as a curiosity over 70 
years ago by the first man to go to Dart¬ 
mouth from this old house. The boy of 
10 who planted the tree died two years 
ago at 88. The great stone walls and 
bridges made on this farm testify to the 
work done by each generation in clearing 
the land, and this farm certainly has a 
record for producing and training men 
that would be hard to match even in that 
hard stony land where labor and plain 
living develop character. 
The Woman Who is Much Alone. 
“There are no end of queer women in 
New York who became so by living alone 
and getting their meals on an oil or gas 
stove,” says a writer for girls. New 
York is not the only place where lonely 
women have grown “queer,” and these 
reflections are for any woman who may 
dread that fate. People, surely, were 
not made to be solitary, we are most of 
us so dependent on each other. Still, 
loneliness is a pretty good test both of 
courage and resources. What a woman 
does in her leisure time is an indication 
of her tastes. One has to do something 
to fill the time. Time is money, or can 
bo made so, unless it be the enforced 
leisure of the invalid or convalescent. 
The worst danger to be dreaded is idle¬ 
ness. Falling into long reveries about 
nothing or endless novel-reading are not 
much better. 
The last of her family on a Canadian 
farm, and the. mother on a western 
ranch who had sent her only child away 
to school, filled the daylight hours in 
the same way, by spreading out the 
housework. One semi-invalid knits end¬ 
less bootees for a certain store, and reads 
old-fashioned books while knitting. She 
has been alone so much that she grew to 
think she required it, but contact with 
others at a big sanitarium has made her 
over. Another woman talks to her pet, a 
tame canary, and is surprised at her ten¬ 
dency to use “baby talk” to it or to plan 
her day’s work aloud. Means and health 
forbid adopting a child as she would like. 
During the long hours she often eagerly 
desires the sound of some voice other 
than her own. The “canned music” of 
the graphophone would bo a boon to her, 
but she never thought to buy one. One 
woman has grown discontented with her 
surroundings. Not far away, another 
woman has decided to do plain sewing 
for her neighbors, and give the money to 
the little mission church she can help in 
no other way. 
Some women get careless in personal 
appearance, others in the looks of the 
house. “It doesn’t seem worth while to 
dress up or dust when there is no one 
to see,” remarked one. The reading of 
a good woman’s magazine, a healthy in¬ 
terest in clothes and a full length mirror 
are needed. Have you never seen a 
dowdy woman view herself in a pier 
glass and straighten up? 
Over at the tenant house, little Mrs. 
Vane is alone all day. She has been a 
mill worker and misses the noise, the 
companionship and ceaseless activity of 
the mill. She has a chiffonier drawer 
full of coarse crocheted lace, the only 
fancy work she knows. 8he is as proud 
of it as an artist could be of pictures. 
One resourceful young woman was 
practically alone all day in a city apart¬ 
ment; she was in attendance on an in¬ 
valid who could not stand any unneces¬ 
sary sound. She had much leisure, con¬ 
stantly interrupted. She managed to 
make many people happy by her cheery 
letters to shut-ins. The pen did not dis¬ 
turb the invalid, and the letter writing 
could be dropped at any moment. One 
girl has been surprised to find enough of 
interest in her quiet life to let her earn 
her living with her pen. 
Not long ago, there was here for a time 
an elderly woman who had spent most of 
her life in other people’s kitchens. She 
had fallen into the habit of swaying back 
and forth at her solitary meals and her 
life had narrowed until all that interest¬ 
ed her happened before 1S76. “I like 
to fix my work so it kinder takes all 
day,” she said. “When I set down, I 
ain’t got nothin’ to do but worry.” This 
is an extreme example, but shows what 
may happen. edna s. knapp. 
