1422 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
September 27, 3910 
Tite doctors tell us that there is some 
(longer of a new epidemic of influenza 
this Fall and Winter. That is not un¬ 
likely. but with the experience of last 
year it‘will not he so serious, and there 
is no use getting excited over the warn¬ 
ing The tiling to do is to get ready for 
it. The “flu” is a community disease, 
and must be handled by groups—not by 
individuals. School districts and towns 
should get ready for any outbreak and 
be prepared to handle it promptly. 
* 
The Franklin County (Mass.) Farm¬ 
er's' Bulletin tells of a farmer who plowed 
and cultivated his sod orchards when he 
might have cut two tons of hay from 
them. It paid, and he agreed to follow 
the plan. lie told the County Agent: 
“7 hare promised my wife, and now J 
■promise you. and 1 expert you both to 
moke me keep my resol re.” 
A good wife and a sensible county agent 
will be able to keep almost any man up 
to his promise. 
Many a woman who travels with chil¬ 
dren will testify to the nuisance of woll- 
jneauing strangers who amuse themselves 
by playing with the youngsters. It is 
hard enough at best to control lively 
children while on a journey. They are 
restless and excited, and often inclined 
to “show off* in public. Rome man or 
woman will be attracted to such children 
and will give them candy or start some 
sort of rough game with them. After 
awhile the stranger gets tired of the di¬ 
version and sends the child away—or goes 
into another car. The child, however, 
has been started, and cannot realize that 
the rest of the passengers do not want 
to play. lie becomes a nuisance, and un¬ 
less the mother is firm with him there 
will be trouble. It is often a great tempta¬ 
tion when we see an attractive child to 
make much of him. or try to play with 
him. It is another temptation when 
parents have smart children to have them 
sing or speak or give some other enter¬ 
tainment before strangers. This is called 
“showing off.” and is about the worst 
thing you can do for the child unless you 
want him to become some vain, artificial 
character. 
» 
Rome of our readers do not seem to 
realize that New York has a strict com¬ 
pulsory school law. In a district having 
a population of less than 5,000 all chil¬ 
dren between eight and 16 must attend 
the entire term of the public school un¬ 
less physically or mentally incapable. Be¬ 
tween the ages of 14 and 16 the child 
must go to school unless lie can show a 
school record certificate or a labor cer¬ 
tificate. Excuses may be accepted for 
illness, contagious disease in home, severe 
storm or day set apart for religious ob¬ 
servation. A suitable private school will 
be considered as a substitute for the pub¬ 
lic school. The child labor laws are 
strict. Boys over 12 may work at gather¬ 
ing produce—not over six hours per day. 
The law states that children under 14 are 
not to be worked during school terms be¬ 
fore or after school or on Saturdays. The 
child is entitled to these hours “for rest, 
recreation or study and cannot be law¬ 
fully employed.” 
# 
Now comes the season for starting chil¬ 
dren at school. They have played or done 
their share of work during the Summer, 
and now the mind training begins. Too 
many parents expect more of the school 
and the teacher than they have any right 
to do. Even the finest of teachers, in the 
best equipped schools, cannot supply the 
needed influence of good home training. 
It is the worst sort of a mistake to turn 
our children over to the school teacher— 
and forget them. That, in effect, is what 
some parents do, and there are few easier 
ways of ruining the child. We ought to 
recognize the limitation of the school and 
the teacher. There ought to be the most 
frank and cordial support of the teacher, 
and a genuine interest in the school. If 
is worth while to take some trouble to 
back up the teacher with home discipline 
and moral training. It is an old story and 
a true one that unless the child can have 
a fair start and a good influence at home 
the teacher cannot have half a chance to 
develop his powers in the right way. 
* 
“The Heart of a Good Woman.” 
It may be the weather or some other 
outside cause, but during the past few 
months we have had more than the usual 
share of family troubles put before us. 
The world certainly had its full share of 
domestic grief, and our readers write us 
freely about relations between husband 
and wife, or sister, father or brother. We 
cannot always help, and as we read such 
things over it often occurs to us that the 
trouble really comes from an unwilling¬ 
ness to “bear and forbear,” and lo look 
for the good rather than the evil in 
others. And to these husbands and wives, 
in particular, who seem to have drifted 
away from each other, we suggest a read¬ 
ing of the following beautiful tribute from 
the New York Sun: 
Mrs. William Tanner of Hubbard 
Woods, Ill., while walking on the high¬ 
way at a grade crossing of the Northwest¬ 
ern Railroad near Chicago, was caught 
between two planks as a heavy train bore 
down on the spot where she was held 
prisoner. Her husband and a gate tender 
attempted to extricate her, but could not. 
The engineer threw on the emergency 
brakes, but was not able to stop the 
train. The flagman persisted in his ef¬ 
forts to save Mrs. Tanner until the last 
possible moment. As he drew back from 
the track he was struck by the steam chest 
and severely hurt. Her husband con¬ 
tinued in his attempt to free her until the 
engine was upon them and death for her 
was seen by both of them to be inevitable. 
As the train neared the doomed wom¬ 
an her thoughts turned from herself to 
her children, her husband and her hus¬ 
band’s mother. Resigning herself to 
death, she pleaded with him to desert her, 
to save himself, to preserve his own life 
for the sake of others. The flagman heard 
these pleas. He saw her husband give his 
answer to them. Tt was to clasp his 
wife in his arms and sacrifice his life with 
her under the wheels of the locomotive. 
* 
This plain recital of an extraordinary 
tragedy stirs the mind as well as the heart. 
The awful alternatives presented to the 
husband forced on him a choice all other 
men may pray to be spared. On the one 
hand his children, his family ; on the other, 
his wife, whom no available human agency 
could save. lie had no time to think, some 
will say, but they have never been in 
imminent danger. When death stares men 
in the eye they think quickly. Who can 
say what weighing of duty, what apprais¬ 
al of human values, he made while the 
thundering engine covered the few seconds 
which measured his wife’s span of life? 
We can say that when he saw her fate 
was sealed life as men love it ceased for 
him. To survive meant nothing except ex¬ 
istence to bear a burden. To die meant 
release from sorrow no man would face 
willingly. Was the comfort his compan¬ 
ionship would give his wife worth more to 
William Tanner, worth more to her, than 
performance of his obligation to their 
children, performance of his obligation to 
his mother? The decision was a cruel one 
to make. There will be those who will 
say lie failed in the crisis, that he should 
have lived, breadwinner and protector for 
tin' woman who brought, him into the 
world, for the children he and his wife 
brought into the world. But we count of 
little worth the condemnatory opinions of 
any who has not stood before death with 
one he loved and had the choice to make 
between dissolution and desertion. 
The good woman rings true in the 
metal of Mrs. Tanner. Her resignation 
to the inevitable came before either of 
the men who struggled to save her would 
admit it. Her thoughts turned from her¬ 
self to others: her husband, her children, 
her husband’s family. Heart and mind 
she gave to them. Her body she forgot. 
That others should not suffer, that others 
should he saved, cared for, guarded : these 
were the wife’s thoughts, the mother’s 
thoughts, the daughter’s thoughts. There 
is nothing so fine, nothing so generous, 
nothing so wholly free from dross as the 
heart of a good woman. 
Price of School Sanitary Toilets 
A number of our readers have asked if 
the smaller schools are permitted to in¬ 
stall small tanks. There seems to be a 
feeling that manufacturers have combined 
to control prices for these toilets. The 
following statement has been obtained 
from the New York State Department of 
Education: 
In (he endeavor to stabilize the prices 
of approver, sanitary toilet equipments, to 
prevent overcharge of agents and to es¬ 
tablish as low a price level as possible, 
early in the Spring each manufacturer 
was requested to file for confidential in¬ 
formation the net prices at which his out¬ 
fit was to be uniformly sold to the schools, 
and he was at the same time notified that 
prices must not be advanced without first 
informing the department and filing a re¬ 
vised price list. Each manufacturer is ex¬ 
pected to give the same price to one dis¬ 
trict as to another, but no two manufac¬ 
turers are expected to give the same 
prices, nor do they. Although these equip¬ 
ments have nearly doubled in price since 
they were first adopted for use in schools, 
the prices thus far this year have been 
approximately the same as last year, not¬ 
withstanding important improvements. 
However, by reason of increasing cost of 
material and labor, there are now indi¬ 
cations of early increase. The increase 
in cost of these outfits would well bear 
comparison with the increase in cost of 
general plumbing equipments. Tanks of 
smaller capacity than normal have upon 
request been approved for schools of uni¬ 
formly small attendance, but as with 
small and large shoes, labor being the big 
item, the difference in price was disap¬ 
pointingly small. As a result of this, to¬ 
gether with the auvantage of a larger 
tank, the demand for the smaller size lias 
been so limited that few if any of the 
firms manufacture it longer. 
FRANK H. WOOD. 
School Attendance 
fan we keep two of our children out of 
school? A boy. 14 years old, is in fifth 
grade; a girl. 12 years old, is in eighth 
grade ; she has passed spelling in Regents’ 
examination. We would need them at 
homo to help work, as we are on a 170- 
acre farm. How old must a child be be¬ 
fore he can get, a working certificate? 
These children started to go to school be¬ 
fore they were six yearn old and have 
missed very few days. They are large 
and strong children. j. n. s. 
Lewis Co., N. Y. 
The 34-year-old son. who is in only fifth 
grade at school, does not qualify for a 
school record or releasing certificate, and 
therefore the parent is required to have 
this boy in school regularly from day to 
day. while the school is in session, until 
he has completed eighth, grade work and 
holds a Regent's preliminary certificate as 
proof of such completion, though when 
the boy attains his fifteenth birthday, if 
b" has completed up to that time only 
sixth grade work, he would qualify for a 
school record or releasing certificate. 
Parent may be further advised that his 
32-year-old daughter is under age for a 
school record certificate, regardless of ed¬ 
ucational attainment, as all children, sev¬ 
en to 14. physically and mentally compe¬ 
tent, are required to attend school. 
JAMES n. SUTJ.XVAN. 
New York Department, of Education. 
A Successful Farmers Wife 
The Atlanlie Monthly prints a collec¬ 
tion of “Letters from a Rage Brush Farm” 
which are undoubtedly the plain, honest 
expressions of a farm woman. Her home 
is on a lonely farm in Idaho, where pro¬ 
ducers are at the mercy of middlemen, 
and where women live lives awful in their 
loneliness. No wonder such a woman 
writes as follows: 
T am not a successful farmer’s wife. 
Do you know what it takes to be a suc¬ 
cessful farmer’s wife? She is a woman 
who must not read (there is no time); 
she must not be interested in polities (of 
course not) ; she must have unlimited ca¬ 
pacity for work (Is hours out. of the 24) : 
she must economize pitilessly on what she 
has. and do without everything possible 
(if she has milk to drink, what else could 
one desire?) ; she cannot have any of the 
niceties of person (imagine a farmer's 
wife with manicured nails, carefully cared- 
for hair, face cold-creamed) ; she must 
never expect a day off, or an afternoon 
free (even Sundays are days of work) ; 
she must not expect, to see or hear opera, 
the movies, plays, lectures or concerts 
(can't afford time or money); she must 
be able to do anything on the farm that 
her husband can (many a time she must 
take a hired hand’s place) ; besides which, 
of course, she must do all baking, butter- 
making. washing, ironing, cooking, clean¬ 
ing, bathing of children, gardening, chick¬ 
en care, including hatching, hair-cutting 
lor the family, curing of the Winter’s 
meat, helping gather and store Winter 
vegetables, canning of fruits. Of course, 
she has all poultry to kill. pick, and clean 
for the table, and any she may sell. Also 
she must sew for the family, and must 
P -h and darn as long as the cloth will 
hold au added thread. 
And why must she do all this? Oh. be¬ 
cause she is a farmer’s wife. Why must 
she receive almost no compensation? 
Rame reason. Why have no time to take 
care of herself or go to see and hear 
things she loves? Because she works so 
hard. And why does she work so hard? 
Because she is a farmer’s wife. And why 
should a farmer’s wife, of all the women 
in the world, be compelled to suffer such 
a fate? Because the farmer has chosen 
his profession with the idea that in it lie 
is the most independent man on earth. 
Husband s Rights in Wife’s Estate 
I gave m.v wife money to buy a home 
for us She had tin* deed made out in her 
own name. She died suddenly, leaving 
no will. We never had any children. My 
wife had one sister. Both of her parents 
are dead. Will you tell me whether I. her 
husband, inherit the real estate, or does it 
all go to her sister? Who inherits her 
personal property? IT. W. 0. 
New York. 
l'pon the death of your wife, leaving 
no children, and yourself surviving, the 
personal property would be divided, one- 
half to you and the other half to the next 
of kin. That is, her sister. As for the 
real estate, the same would go to tin* sis¬ 
ter, subject to your life interest. As for 
your position, the property having been 
purchased by your wife in her name with 
your money, it is difficult for us to advise 
you in that regard, and had better be 
taken up by you with some attorney who 
can go over with you the evidence that 
would show that your money purchased 
the .same. a. w. g. 
No strikes Arc Permitted in This Laundry 
