242 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
circumstances have made it necessary for me to assume the re¬ 
sponsibility of man and woman in my family, and I have come to 
the conclusion that the men have their full share of hardships.’’ 
The privations which a farmer’s lamily must sometimes endure, 
isolated as they are from society, must necessarily be felt most 
keenly by the farmer’s wife. “ Many times ” said one working 
woman of the farm “ has ray winter clothing laid all the year in 
its summer retreat, while I never once left my home or my child¬ 
ren, but cared for all their wants, performed all the varied labors 
of the household myself.” “This” she added, “I then thought 
was much like as many years of prison life, but time has given it 
a different coloring. I now see they were years of pleasure and 
profit.”. Well might she say this. Many thousands could not 
purchase the farm where she toiled. That mother sits to day in 
her luxurious home, honored among women ; her children first in 
their profession, are better to her than a crown of diamonds, and a 
beautiful old age is crowning a useful life. There is many a 
mother who has only reached the other side of forty, who in look¬ 
ing backward over the years of her farm life, if she has been suc¬ 
cessful in her home making, and see her children inclining to 
ways of wisdom and industry, will take a far different view of the 
case now from what she did then. She will realize there is some¬ 
thing better to live for than the pleasures of society; there are 
things harder to be endured than the daily round of domestic 
cares. 
We remember now a prosperous eastern farmer, rich in this 
world’s goods, with many acres of green pastures, with fleecy 
flocks and gentle herds. From his farm went out tons of creamy 
cheese, quantities of golden butter. The farm house was clean as 
polished silver; but no shrub or tree ever shaded it; no flowers 
ever bloomed by the doors. There was no time for books or 
papers. The sons grew to manhood with no interest in the farm 
or in their studies. The mother rode daily in her carriage. The 
daughters became wives and presided over other homes much like 
those of their childhood. The sons, clamorous for their birth¬ 
right, squandered the hither’s wealth, and those parents went to 
their graves in poverty and sorrow. 
Within the sound of the same church bell, on a rocky hillside 
