16 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 5, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
If there was anyone left at Hope Farm 
with a firm belief in Santa Claus in the 
flesh, ah imagination like a rubber band 
would be needed to picture a sled and 
reindeer speeding through this mud. There 
is no one left here to believe that a man 
with a girth of 75 inches or more can 
come down through a 20-inch chimney, 
but happily we all believe in the spirit of 
Santa Claus, and we give him larger 
measure of heart development as the 
years go on. We have seen 24 Christmas 
days come and go at Hope Farm. When 
our first brood of children were little 
things we thought there never could be 
anything quite like the day again. Those 
were pioneer days, when we were crowd¬ 
ed into the old stone house without con¬ 
veniences, and no place where a weary, 
nervous woman could get off by herself 
for a moment out of reach of noisy Ht tie 
ones. Those were happy days in spite of 
all the troubles and struggles. Yet here 
we are, after nearly a quarter of a cen¬ 
tury, and Christmas Day comes with the 
same old spirit and the same happiness as 
of old. The children are back from 
school and college, and we have a halt 
promise that Rose and Rita may be with 
us over New Year’s. So the old house 
seems very full today. It is dancing with 
youth and bursting with quiet happiness. 
As these hopeful young people i'ne up at 
the table Mother and 1 glance at each 
other and smile, and I know we are 
thinking the same thing. It may seem 
fine to be rich or famous (we do not 
know from experience), but, after all, a 
good family of clean, devoted children is 
the richest prize of life. I im\e a neigh¬ 
bor who is something of a sport, and he 
wanted to bet me that there would be two 
feet of snow by Christmas. I made him 
this proposition : “If we really have a 
white Christmas I will come up to your 
house and saw a cord of wood. H there 
is no snow you will come to my shed and 
cut a cord.” He felt very sure. 
“And split it?” he said. 
“And split it!” . 
There is no snow anywhere in sight as 
I write this. My boys propose to go over 
on the new farm and pick up a load ot 
dead apple wood—with a tough knot 
every few inches! A cord ot that, well 
sawed and split, will put caution into the 
vision of any weather prophet. 
***** 
The children came home with large 
ideas of life and visions of the future 
floating before them. Here is Cherry-top 
_with a registered height of 70.4 inches. 
It sjeems hard to believe that this is the 
baby that we once easily tossed with one 
hand. He tells great tales of life far up 
on Lake Champlain. He helped save a 
student who fell in through the ice. He 
is sure he hit a fox in the leg with a rifle 
ball, and certainly fired at a deer! A 
mighty hunter that—for New Jersey, lhe 
first night after he got home he went to 
an entertainment and won a 10-lb. tur¬ 
key as a prize. So you see, things are 
coming his way. The girl from the 
Moody School in Massachusetts tells us 
how the girls do the housework so as to 
reduce expenses. She intends to be a 
missionary, and that means work, if any 
job ever did. The young engineer tells 
us what is going on at his New Jersey 
college; they are all back with good rec¬ 
ords and the finest faith in the future. 
There are no world-beaters among them; 
just good, happy young folks, and the 
finest thing about it all was their great 
joy in coming home. No food ever tast¬ 
ed quite so good. IIow they did attack 
the cream and butter. Fortunately there 
is a black calf in the barn—substantial 
evidence that old Blackie is able to pro¬ 
vide all the milk the children can drink. 
I am interested in how they feed students 
at these institutions. Mother has always 
insisted that the children should be 
brought up to eat all the buttei and 
cream they want. “That is one of the 
things a farm is for,” she says. Long 
before we knew that cream and butter 
contain hosts of vitamines the lady of 
our house set her children the example of 
opening a hot biscuit, putting in a great 
chunk of butter, laying it aside till it 
melted all through, and then eating it. 
I must say the children were always glad 
to follow Her example. As for me, I was 
brought up on quite another principle. 
Our folks baked brown bread in one of 
the old-fashioned ovens. That left a 
hard crust nearly an inch thick on the 
top of the loaf. This was carefully cut 
off and laid aside for the boy to eat— 
since chewing this hard crust would im¬ 
prove his teeth. Sometimes my aunt made 
this crust into “brewis” by soaking it in 
hot. water. Some people claim that “oleo 
was invented during the siege of Paris m 
1871. A mistake. They made it in New 
England when I was a boy. I have seen 
our folks mix ham fat, beef gravy and a 
small amount of butter into a mess which 
the boy could eat on his brown bread 
crusts, and my memory is that the boy 
called it good‘and asked for more when 
the old folks were good-natured. 
***** 
The habits you acquire in youth are 
hard to tear away from, and I will con¬ 
fess that sometimes when taxes are heavy 
and fruit prices are low I have looked on 
with no favorable eye as I saw my chil¬ 
dren “eating butter as they would 
cheese,” or using cream as most city peo¬ 
ple do milk. Yet Mother has had her 
way in this, and it came hard when the 
children found one little pat of butter be¬ 
side their plate—in one case “oleo” at 
that—and “cream” resembling milk thick¬ 
ened with cornstarch! Well, they are 
making up for lost time right now, and 
the black calf at the barn is said to carry 
an anxious expression. It seems to think 
these lively students are robbing him— 
but he is booked for veal, anyway, so lie 
doesn’t count. If I were appointed a 
commissioner to go around and investi¬ 
gate the cooking at public institution, I 
should begin right at the most vulnerable 
spot, and call for prunes and fishballs. I 
claim that nothing will more fully test 
the ability of any cook than the prepara¬ 
tion of these two dishes. As for prunes, 
they have long formed the basis of a 
hoary old boarding-house joke, while fish- 
balls are rarely mentioned in polite so¬ 
ciety, except as possible food for convicts 
or poor folks who are obliged to eat them, 
yet when properly made, both prunes and 
fishballs will rank high up on the list of 
angel food. My children are far re¬ 
moved from angels, but on Sunday morn¬ 
ing they surely keep the stove busy, and 
'the frying pan sputtered and laughed as 
the white pats of egg and potato and 
codfish browned to a crisp. 
* * * * * 
I presume it is natural for men and 
women of middle years to spend a part 
of Christmas thinking over what they 
have given to society. When we pass on. 
as we must in time, is the world going 
to be any better because we have lived in 
it? That question will come to all of us. 
It came to me as I sat at table watching 
this great company of young people. It 
will come to men who eat their dinner in 
the woods, to lonely, childless people, to 
rich men in palaces, to poor men in tene¬ 
ments, to masters of great industries, to 
great statesmen and authors, to men who 
work for daily wages, and clerks who toil 
at dry and uninteresting work. Many of 
them have worked 40 years or more at 
unending toil, until drudgery has become 
a habit seemingly without recompense. 
They will all be asking themselves “What 
have I really accomplished, and what do 
I pass on?”" For, as I remember life at 
20, we ask, “What am I going to do?” 
And we have so much in mind that it is 
hard to decide. At 60 we are more in¬ 
clined to ask “What have I done?” And 
there are so few things that it is hard to 
drive them together to make a fair show¬ 
ing. It comes to me this Christmas that 
a group of good children or good influence 
upon the minds of children is about the 
finest thing that a man or woman can 
pass on to future history. When a man 
and woman can feel sure that their chil¬ 
dren do not fear them, but have such 
confidence that they will freely come to 
one or the other with their troubles or 
ambitions—well, it’s a great Christmas 
present, a glorious gift—full of compen¬ 
sation for years of struggle and care. 
***** 
Do I believe in college education for 
boys and girls? Well, just now I do not 
feel like getting into any controversy over 
the school question, but I will answer the 
question honestly. No. I do not believe 
that college education is desirable for all 
children. I know of several cases where 
such education, or the things that go with 
it, have practically ruined the students. 
I never would send a child to college or 
high school just because it is the popular 
habit to do so. It is, I think, far better 
to put some children right at work and 
force them to become self-supporting. If 
they have the real stuff to build on they 
will wake up and get the education later. 
We have had three children who I think 
are not fitted for college. I frankly think 
they will be more successful in life with¬ 
out such an education as the modern col¬ 
lege offers. That will seem like a shock¬ 
ing thing to some of our people, but I 
make the statement after much thought 
and experience. We have already gradu¬ 
ated or started eight children at college, 
and I would spend my last dollar to put 
them through, but that is because they 
show in their conduct and their ambitions 
that they are sorting out most of the 
mean and malignant influences which are 
unquestionably found at every college, 
and picking up some of the gold. If it 
were the other way, and I found they were 
absorbing the mean and nasty habits 
which I know are part of college life, I 
would take them out tomorrow and put 
them at work. A woman is likely to con¬ 
sider that her children are angels (with, 
of course, a little inferior hlood from 
their father), but the man knows better. 
I think he should remember his own 
youth and not be too harsh or exacting, 
yet at the same time be firm and fair. 
Life at its best is much a matter of 
salesmanship. A man must be able to 
sell himself the good things of life as well 
as to sell them to others. Some years 
ago the women at a country church gave 
a supper. They cooked three kinds of 
meat, roast beef, roast veal and roast 
ham. They thought they had enough, but 
an unexpected crowd came out of town 
and ate up nearly all the beef. The head 
waiter was almost in tears over it, for 
everyone wanted beef, and there was very 
little left. When her husband came she 
appealed to him. 
“What shall I do? Everyone calls for 
beef, and it’s nearly all gone, and all this 
(Continued on Page 23) 
When skating pond 
takesTom from kindling 
pile, there’s a chance for 
a story-telling picture. 
Such pictures are sure of 
a smile when you turn 
the page in your Kodak 
Album. Illustration 
from a Kodak negative. 
A Kodak for the Farm 
I N addition to the dollars-and-cents 
value that Kodak pictures of cattle, 
horses, hogs, crops, equipment, buildings, 
have in the business of farming, Kodak 
plays part the year ’round in the farm’s 
fun—as the picture above shows. 
Get a Kodak at your dealer’s for your 
farm. 
Autographic Kodaks $6.$0 up 
Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y. 
RHODES DOUBLE CUT 
PRUNING SHEAR 
Patented 
-THE only 
*♦ Dru 
RHODES MFG. CO., 
329 SO. DIVISION AVE., GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. 
pruner 
made that cuts 
from both sides of 
the limb and does not 
bruise the bark. Made in 
all styles and sizes. Ail 
shears delivered free 
to your door. 
Write for 
circular and 
R O O I I N G 
Remnants, Smooth surface 
1-ply . . 85c 2-ply . . $1.05 
3-ply .... $1.35 per roll 
Buffalo Housewrecking & Salvage Co. 
479 Walden Avenue Buffalo, N. Y. 
‘BACKACHES WEIGHT ONLY | 
'2?SU5L£S 1 
SAWS 
DOWN 
EASILY 4BEES 
CARRIED I 
9 Cords In lO Hours by one man. It’s King of the 
woods. Catalog Y68 Free. Established 1890. 
Folding Sawing Machine Co., 1005 E. 75th St. Chicago. Illinois 
LIME m LAND 
S OLVAY brings better, greater crops 
the first harvest. SOLVAY makes 
sour soil sweet and releases all fertility 
the land contains to hasten growing 
crops to full maturity. 
Most farm lands need lime, and none 
is better than Solvay Pulverized Lime, 
stone — high test, non-caustic, furnace 
dried, and ground fine to spread easily. 
Every farmer should read the 
Solvay Booklet on Liming 
•—sent FREE on request. 
THE SOLVAY PROCESS CO., Syracuse, N.Y. 
