1574 
Vht  RURAL.  NEW-YORKER 
December  29,  1923 
Pastoral  Parson  and  His  Country  Folks 
By  Rev.  George  B.  Gilbert 
Off  Again. — When  the  Parson  sent  in 
his  last  letter,  he  was  out  in  Pennsyl¬ 
vania.  How  nice  all  the  people  were 
to  him  out  there.  He  had  very  interesting 
talks  with  the  minister  in  one  place.  His 
parsonage  had  quite  a  little  land  con¬ 
nected  with  it.  One  lot,  right  in  the 
center  of  the  town  had  been  a  real  eye¬ 
sore,  full  of  weeds.  This  minister  put 
a  few  sheep  right  in  this  lot  and  now 
it  is  a  pleasure  to  look  upon.  Then  he 
gradually  went  into  keeping  bees.  He 
just  puts  out  a  sign  for  autoists  and  sells 
the  honey  very  reasonable — three  pounds 
for  a  dollar  or  40  cents  a  pound.  His 
hives  averaged  70  pounds  of  honey.  lie 
sets  the  hives  in  big  dry-goods  boxes  in 
Winter  and  packs  shavings  all  round  them 
to  keep  the  bees  warm,  leaving,  of  course, 
an  opening  tor  them  to  come  out.  It  was 
a  new  one  on  the  Parson  that  the  skunks 
will  come,  and  with  their  front  paw  rap 
at  the  door  of  the  hive  and  stir  up  the 
bees  so  they  will  come  out  and-  then  eat 
them  as  they  appear  at  the  door.  The 
minister  had  killed  three  skunks  at  this 
trick  this  Fall.  Unless  stopped,  the 
skunks  will  clean  out  every  bee  in  the 
hives.  The  Parson  has  known  other  min¬ 
isters  to ’have  been  keeping  for  a  sideline 
and  it  would  certainly  appear  to  be  a  fine 
way  to  make  a  little  money.  The  Parson 
spoke  twice  at  Grange  meetings  here  and 
preached  twice  on  Sunday  also  taking  the 
Bible  class.  The  Parson  had  to  conserve 
his  thunder  somewhat,  talking  so  much  in 
one  place,  but  he  got  along  fairly  well  and 
they  vowed  he  finished  steady,  if  not 
strong,  on  the  home  stretch. 
Chicago. — From  here  he  went  to  Chi¬ 
cago,  arriving  just  at  daybreak  in  the 
windy  city,  and  well-named  it  is.  It  was 
windy  enough  to  blow  your  coat  off  and 
cold  enough  to  blow  your  head  off.  The 
Parson  mounted  a  double-decker  bus  and 
headed  down  the  coast — wonder  the  wind 
didn’t  blow  the  busi  over.  The  people  in 
Chicago  say  they  will  beat  New  York' all 
hollow  in  the  end  in  every  way.  They 
have  room  to  grow  and  New  York  hasn’t. 
They  are  situated  in  the  very  center  of  the 
country.  They  claim  that  one  can  live 
better  in  Chicago  on  $2,500  a  year  than  a 
man  can  in  New  York  on  $4,000  a  year. 
Food  is  certainly  a,  good  deal  cheaper  in 
Chicago.  Especially  was  this  noticeable 
in  the  matter  of  meat.  Bacon  and  ham 
and  most  cuts  of  beef  seemed  to  be  just 
about  teq  cents  a  pound  cheaper  than  in 
the  East.  The  people  seem  to  be  very 
proud  of  their  great  system  of  parks  and 
the  length  of  “Automobile  Row.”  This 
tendency  of  auto  agencies  to  group  them¬ 
selves  in  one  section  of  a  city  is  notice¬ 
able  everywhere.  One  man  claimed  that 
in  the  case  of  Chicago  they  occupied  both 
sides  of  a  street  for  seven  miles.  It  did 
not,  however,  seem  as  long  as  that  to  the 
Parson. 
St.  IvOUis. — It  seemed  to  the  Parson 
that  he  was  really  quite  a  globe-trotter. 
He  felt  as  though  he  was  a  long  way 
from  Mrs.  Parson  and  the  children.  He 
got  td  talking  with  a  boy  that  sat  beside 
him  in  the  Dearborn  Street  station.  The 
boy’s  mother  and  two  other  small  chil¬ 
dren  were  along.  “You  going  far?”  said 
the  Parson.  The  boy’s  mother  spoke  for 
him.  “We  are  just  off  for  Pasadena,” 
said  she,  “having  come  from  Bermuda  to 
New7  York  and  from  New  York  here.” 
The  Parson  had  no  more  to  say  about  the 
length  of  his  trip.  In  the  early  mist 
of  the  next,  morning  he  looked  out  of 
the  car  window,  and  if  there  wasn’t  the 
Mississippi  River.  It  is  quite  a  brook  at 
that;  though  really  it  didn’t  look  quite 
as  big  as  the  Parson  had  pictured  it.  The 
water  looked  yellowish  and  muddy — so 
different  than  most  of  our  New  England 
streams.  Twenty-six  different  lines  of 
railroads  come  into  St.  Louis.  The  city 
is  said  to  be  really  a  sort  of  entity  in  itself 
and  among  railroad  men  is  known  as  St. 
Louis,  U.  S.  A.,  instead  of  St.  Louis,  Mo. 
There  is  only  one,  and  can  be  only  one, 
tit.  Louis.  The  Parson  hopes  he  will  never 
have  to  live  in  a  city  that  burns  soft  coal. 
All  the  buildings  and  everything  look 
dirty.  But  here  comes  a  trolley  down  the 
street.  The  Parson  looked  at  it  with 
amazement — it  must  be  afire.  The  smoke 
is  pouring  out  of  the  further  corner.  But 
no  one  seems  to  notice  it  and  the  Parson 
climbs  aboard.  It  there  isn’t  a  stove  over 
in  the  corner  burning  soft  coal.  The  Par¬ 
son  had  not  seen  a  stove  in  a  trolley  car 
for  more  than  twenty  years. 
The  Convention. — The  convention  of 
the  Country  Life  Association  wTas  held  in 
the  Chase  Hotel  which  is  right  on  the  edge 
of  Forest  Park,  which  contains  nearly  a 
thousand  acres.  It  is  a  fine  hotel  and  the 
Parson  got  a  room  for  only  $4  a  day  !  He 
ate  only  two  meals  there,  however.  One 
meal  was  called  a  lunch  and  cost  $1.25. 
They  said  the  lunch  was  a  dollar  and  the 
quarter  was  for  the  service  but  the  Par¬ 
son  claims  they  just  have  gotten  it  wTrong 
•way  round,  for  the  lunch  could  not  have 
been  over  a  quarter  and  the  dollar  went 
to  the  colored  gentry  that  hovered  around 
him.  The  other  meal  wras  the  banquet 
for  three  dollars.  With  the  exception  of 
what  Warren  H.  Wilson  said,  the  other 
speeches  did  not  amount  to  anything — a 
lot  of  hot  air.  One  story  Mr.  Wilson  told 
was  pretty  nearly  worth  the  trip  out.  A 
city  woman  had  bought  a  place  out  in 
the  country  and  was  having  the  garden 
laid  out.  She  tripped  daintily  down  the 
garden  walk  one  fine  morning  to  super¬ 
vise  Michael  at  his  work.  “This  bed 
here,”  said  she,  “is  for  the  Salivas,  Mi¬ 
chael.”  Michael  kept  at  his  spading. 
“You— you  mean  Salvias,  mum?”  he 
asked.  “No.  no.  I  mean  just  wrhat  I 
say,  just  what  I  say.  Salivas.”  After 
a  little  she  again  addressed  Michael. 
“And  now.  Michael,  as  we  are  going  to 
have  this  bed  of  Salivas,  we  really  ought 
to  have  a  border  around  it  of  some  flower 
that  goes  well  with  the  Salivas.  What 
Michael  would  you  suggest?”  “Well.” 
said  Michael,  “as  a  border  for  Salivas, 
I  would  most  strongly  suggest  a  thickly 
set  row  of  Spittunias.” 
Good  Representation. — There  were 
254  delegates  at  the  convention  from  30 
(States.  It  was  very  interesting  to  talk  to 
these  men.  Of  course  the  matter  of  the 
plight  of  the  wheat  growers  came  up.  One 
man  shouted,  “Why  don’t  they  raise  corn  ? 
It  is  .4  dollar  a  bushel.”  But  it  was  im¬ 
mediately  shown  that  this  change  from 
wheat  to  corn  was  no  easy  matter.  It 
cost  a  great  deal  of  money.  Farms 
equipped  for  wheat  with  great  harvesting 
and  thrashing  machines  and  no  silos  or 
barns  for  stock,  how  could  they  be 
changed?  In  the  case  of  tenant  farming, 
certainly  the  far-away  owner  wTas  not 
going  to  this  expense.  The  Roman  Catho¬ 
lic  people  had  a  convention  in  St.  Louis 
at  the  same  time  as  ours  on  the  same 
subject  and  one  of  their  number  from 
Montana  said  it  was  a  dreadful  situa¬ 
tion  and  no  one  could  see  the  solution 
of  the  matter.  As  the  wheat  man  an¬ 
swered  the  corn  man,  “If  we  all  could 
change  and  go  into  corn,  we  would  raise 
so  much  corn  and  it  would  be  so  cheap 
that  no  one  could  sell  corn,  and  then 
you  would  be  as  badly  off  as  we  are.” 
The  spirit  of  co-operation  and  fellowship 
between  the  Roman  Catholic  clergy  and 
Protestant  brethren  was  something  the 
Parson  had  never  seen  in  the  East.  We 
had  our  minister  luncheon  together  and 
the  big  banquet  together  with  half  the 
speakers  Roman  Catholic  at  each.  It  was 
the  general  conclusion  of  both  that  in 
the  United  States  the  farming  popula¬ 
tion  of  31.000.000  people  is  practically 
unchurched,  perhaps  one  out  of  six  ac¬ 
tively  engaged  in  any  church  work  or 
membership. 
The  Farm  Home. — The  farm  home 
was  the  main  subject  of  the  conference 
and  was  touched  upon  from  every  angle. 
President  Butterfield  pointed  out  the 
greatness  of  the  divorce  evil,  there  being 
a  divorce  granted  every  minute  of  the 
day  and  night  year  in  and  year  out,  in 
this  country.  One  of  the  slogans  for 
the  farm  home  was  “Junk  the  Lan¬ 
tern,”  cut  out  the  long  days  on  the  farm 
and  working  way  into  the  night.  Make 
the  hours  conform  more  to  the  other 
hours  of  labor.  The  next  great  move  in 
educational  circles  is  to  fit  boys  and  girls 
to  make  a  home  and  properly  rear  their 
children.  One  woman  spoke  of  a  mov¬ 
ing  picture  used  by  a  State  college  to 
show  the  labors  of  a  boy  raising  a  calf. 
At  last  it  pictured  the  boy  sitting  up  till 
midnight,  poring  over  a  State  bulletin,  try" 
ing  to  make  the  caf  more  comfortable.  “If 
half  as  much  attention  had  been  paid 
to  the  welfare  of  the  boy  as  to  the  calf, 
he  might  have  stood  some  chance  of 
making  a  healthy,  normal  and  useful 
American  citizen.”  she  concluded.  In 
another  case  it  was  shown  how  a  circular 
had  been  sent  out  with  ten  directions  on 
raising  hogs,  their  housing  care,  etc. ;  how 
they  must  have  running  water  convenient 
at  all  times,  plenty  of  sunlight  and  fresh 
air  and  food  supplies  always  handy.  Prac¬ 
tically  everyone  of  these  suggestions  as 
to  hogs,  if  they  could  be  applied  and  car¬ 
ried  out  in  respect  to  the  women  on  the 
farm,  they  would  be  a  veritable  godsend 
to  them.  In  the  agricultural  colleges,  the 
next  move  is  to  be  in  the  direction  of 
teaching  about  homes  and  children.  Said 
one  agricultural  college  man  to  his  wife 
and  her  mother  who  seemed  to  be  having 
their  hands  full  looking  after  the  children 
at  the  county  fair:  “When  you  women 
folks  learn  as  much  about  taking  care  of 
your  children  as  we  men  folks  have 
learned  about  taking  care  of  our  hogs 
and  cows,  you  will  get  along  a  great  deal 
better.” 
City  and  Country.— One  of  the  best 
papers  was  about  the  groaning  of  the 
city  folks  over  the  dreadful  lot  of  the 
country  folks,  which  after  all  they  were 
doing  everything  they  could  to  copy. 
How  terrible  not  to  have)  furnaces  in  the 
country  and  nice  warm  bedrooms!  And 
yet  no  sooner  do  -the  people  of  the  city 
get  their  furnaces  and  hot  bedrooms  but 
they  go  and  build  a  sleeping  porch  to  get 
away  from  hot  rooms  and  stuffy  furnace 
air.  The  farm  bedroom  with  the  window 
up  the  whole  length  on  cold  winter  night, 
is  enough  of  a  sleeping  porch  for  anyone. 
They  complain  of  the  litter  and  work 
of  carrying  wood  to  the  stove,  but  they 
go  forthwith  and  make  a  fireplace  and 
lug  wood  to  that.  The  boy  in  the  country 
has  all  out  of  doors  for  his  playground 
with  a  hickory  tree  to  climb,  from  which 
he  can  swing  himself  down  far  out  on  a 
hickory  limb,  so  the  city  folks  fix  up  a 
playground  and  stick  up  a  pole  and  put 
a  rope  on  it  with  a  ring  in  the  end.  The 
country  boy  has  his  rabbits  and  his  dog 
and  his  calf  to  hitch  to  his  home-made 
cart,  so  they  give  the  city  boy  a  stuffed 
rabbit  and  a  wooly  dog  and  a  picture 
of  a  calf ! 
Learning  on  the  Farm. — Then,  too, 
what  an  education  farm  children  get — 
most  of  it  quite  unconsciously.  One  man 
told  how  he  went  to  a  farmhouse  and 
during  the  conversation  he  learned  that 
the  woman,  though  she  had  four  small 
children,  took  entire  care  of  the  poultry. 
“What  do  you  do  with  the  children  while 
looking  after  the  outside  work?”  he 
asked.  “Why  I  take  the  children  along 
with  me,”  came  the  answer.  Then  he  fell 
to  thinking  how  much  those  children 
learned  going  the  rounds  of  the  poultry 
work  with  their  mother.  As  she  mixed 
the  feed  for  their  meals,  as  she  culled  out 
a  poor  hen  for  the  Sunday  dinner,  as 
here  and  there  she  helped  a  tardy  chick 
out  of  the  shell.  Many  a  city  child 
believes  the  stork  brings  all  the  babies 
and  all  the  animals  and  fowls  as  well 
the  farm  child  knows  better.  How  about 
the  physiology  a  boy  learns  at  butcher¬ 
ing  time? 
Christmas  Time. — Well,  here  it  is 
most  Christmas  again.  The  Parson  ad¬ 
mits  that  when  he  had  regular  church 
he  used  to  dread  Christmas,  so  much 
trimming  to  do  and  many  extra  services 
and  extra  music.  Sunday  School  enter¬ 
tainment  and  all.  But  it  is  different  now. 
What  a  good  time  we  will  have  down  in 
the  old  church.  We  had  55  at  the  Sun¬ 
day  of  our  Thanksgiving.  We  had  our 
Thanksgiving  service  and  then  all  had 
dinner  together — a  60-lb.  roast  pig  and 
goose  and  chicken  and  everything  else. 
The  Parson  sat  at  a  table  with  fifteen 
children  about  him — all  far-down-country- 
lonely-road  children.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
happiest  meal  the  Parson  ever  ate.  While 
the  woipen  folks  did  up  the  dishes  we 
had  games  and  athletic  sports  in  front 
of  the  church.  And  so  we  shall  have  a 
wonderful  Christmas.  Friends  of  the 
Parson  and  the  work  have  sent  in  funds 
so  that  we  hope  to  reach  altogether  fully 
a  hundred  country  children.  We  cele¬ 
brate  our  Christmas  on  Sunday  in  all  the 
country  places.  The  morning  service, 
then  the  dinner  together,  then  the  tree 
and  the  children  speak  their)  pieces.  The 
old  box  stove  will  be  filled  to  the  brim 
with  oak  and  hickory,  and  the  Christmas 
cheer  will  fill  every  crevice  of  the  old 
church.  The  corners  of  the  church  will 
be  filled  with  tall  cedars  and  the  tree 
itself  will  be  a  likely  pine  ■  filling  the 
room  with  the  odor  of  the  forest.  If  the 
Christian  religion  had  done  nothing  else 
but  give  us  Christmas,  it  has  been  justi¬ 
fied. 
Winter  Coming. — This  is  certainly  a 
wonderful  Winter  so  far.  Last  year  ice 
was  being  cut  on  the  ponds  at  this  time 
and  it  was  very  cold.  Now  the  grass 
is  green  and  night  after  night  there  is 
not  even  a  frost.  While  the  boys  let  the 
water  out  of  the  cars  every  night,  yet 
there  has  not  been  a  night!  this  Fall  that 
they  would  have  frozen  up.  The  Parson 
likes  to  get  ready  for  cold  weather ;  he 
has  the  feeling  he  is  beating  out  the  cold 
north  blasts  and  snows  that  are  sure  to 
come  before  Spring.  Nothing  pays  so 
well  on  the  farm  as  the  little  time  spent 
in  banking  up  for  the  cold.  Leaves  are 
cheap  and  the  hardest  thing  for  cold  winds 
to  get  through  there  is.  One  henhouse  has 
a  poor  foundation  and  we  did  not  get  time 
to  fix  it,  so  the  Parson  and  little  Ta  have 
had  a  great  time  banking  it  up  with 
leaves.  The  north  side  of  the  house  we 
bank  with  cornstalks,  piling  them  high 
against  the  kitchen  corner.  Then  we 
banked  the  corner  of  the  cow  stable  where 
the  pump  is.  All  the  north  and  west 
side  of  the  stable  the  Parson  has  double- 
boarded  and  packed  with  leaves  on  the 
inside. 
The  Screen  Door. — Think  twice  before 
you  take  off  the  screen  door  in  Winter. 
It  makes  the  best  kind  of  a  storm  door 
at  almost  no  expense.  Mrs.  Parson  took 
a  couple  of  flour  bags  and  sewed  them 
together,  having  boiled  out  all  the  letter¬ 
ing  and  other  coloring.  The  Parson 
tacked  this  over  the  kitchen  screen  door, 
and  what  a  lot  of  cold  it  keeps  out. 
M  hen  a  child  come  in,  that  door,  with  a 
good  stout  spring,  follows  his  heels  right 
up  and  cuts  off  a  cold  blast  ever  get¬ 
ting  across  the  threshold.  This  kitchen 
door  has  a  good  deal  of  glass  in  it  and 
one  wants  to  look  out  there  about  a 
thousand  times  a  day.  Mrs.  Parson  has 
ipposed  the  cloth  covering  on  this  account. 
But  we  took  a  piece  of  isinglass  which 
we  once  got  for  the  Ford  and  put  in  this 
at  the  right  height  to  look  out  through, 
and  the  whole  thing  works  to  perfection. 
On  fairly  warm  days  with  a  cooking 
kitchen  fire  this  door  is  just  enough, 
letting  in  a  little  fresh  air 
Classical  Names  of  New  York  Tours 
A  number  of  our  readers  have  noticed 
in  traveling  through  Central  New  York  a 
great  number  of  classical  names  applied 
to  towns  in  the  region.  You  will  find 
Athens,  Carthage,  Rome,  Cato,  Hanni¬ 
bal,  Marcellus,  Pompey,  Scipio,  Solon, 
Hector,  Aurelius,  and  many  others.  It 
looks  as  though  someone,  years  ago,  had 
taken  a  handful  of  names  from  a  clas¬ 
sical  dictionary  and  scattered  them  thor¬ 
oughly  over  that  part  of  New  York.  We 
are  often  asked  how  it  came  that  these 
names  were  selected,  and  no  one  in  that 
section  seems  to  be  entirely  clear  about  it. 
We  have  written  to  the  librarian  at  most 
of  the  public  libraries  in  that  section,  but 
while  they  are  interested  in  the  matter, 
they  had  no  real  theory  about  it.  Finally 
we  heard  from  the  history  section  of  the 
New  York  State  Library  at  Albany, 
where  an  interesting  study  of  the  matter 
is  on  file.  It  seems  that  there  has  been 
quite  a  controversy  about  this  matter, 
and  for  many  years  it  was  claimed  that 
General  Simeon  DeWitt  was  the  man 
who  plastered  the  classics  over  Central 
New  York.  Simeon  DeWitt  was  Survey¬ 
or  General  of  the  State  .  He  was  a  states¬ 
man  and  canal  builder,  and  a  great  fac¬ 
tor  in  New  Yrork  life  a  century  ago.  It 
seems  that  DeWitt  anticipated  the  agri¬ 
cultural  college,  for  in  1819  he  issued  a 
pamphlet  in  which  he  argued  that  more 
of  the  children  of  wealthy  people  should 
be  directly  educated  for  the  profession  of 
farming.  Even  at  that  early  date  he 
urged  the  Legislature  to  establish  an  in¬ 
stitution  where  agriculture  would  be 
taught.  He  probably  had  never  heard  of 
the  present  phrase  of  “a  white-collar 
job,”  but  he  argued  that  mercantile  pur¬ 
suits  were  over-supplied,  as  well  as  man¬ 
ufacturing  enterprises,  and  he  thought 
the  ordinary  college  of  that  day  had  no 
better  object  in  view.  He  was  something 
like  50  years  ahead  of  his  time,  for  it 
was  not  until  1863  that  the  Federal  Gov- 
erment  made  a  land  grant  for  the  sup¬ 
port  of  agricultural  colleges. 
It  appears  that  General  DeWitt  had 
great  faith  in  the  development  of  Western 
New  Y"ork.  In  1792  he  bought  great 
tracts  of  land  at  the  head  of  Cayuga 
Lake,  and  by  his  liberality  towards  set¬ 
tlers  he  became  the  founder  of  the  city  of 
Ithaca.  He  named  the  town  himself, 
and  that  gave  him  the  reputation  of  ap¬ 
plying  other  classical  names  to  towns  in 
that  section.  It  appears,  however,  that 
he  was  really  not  responsible  for  all  of 
them.  A  large  number  of  towns  were 
laid  out  and  designated  by  numbers  at 
first.  They  were  finally  named,  however, 
apparently  by  a  committee  having  charge 
of  these  military  towns.  It  seems  at  that 
time  the  feeling  was  high  against  Eng¬ 
land,  and  English  names  were  not  de¬ 
sired,  while  French  and  Indian  names 
were  also  barred.  Probably  some  strong 
man  on  that  committee  was  overfond  of 
classical  literature,  and  instead  of  giv¬ 
ing  the  people  of  the  towns  the  right  to 
name  their  own  homes,  this  committee 
saw  fit  to  plaster  these  classical  names 
wherever  they  had  an  opportunity.  That 
seems  to  be  the  way  the  names  were 
started.  For  many  years  the  writers  of 
the  day  indulged  in  great  ridicule  about 
these  names,  but  they  are  probably  just 
as  satisfactory  as  Indian  names  or  the 
ordinary  title  put  upon  new  towns.  No 
one  seems  to  object  at  the  present  time, 
and  the  names  will  probably  stand  all 
through  coming  history,  and  yet  it  is 
t  probably  true  that  thousands  of  people 
who  ride  through  that  section  will  won¬ 
der  what  original  student  of  the  classics 
was  responsible  for  this  remarkable  col¬ 
lection  of  names. 
