Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1858-06-03

must be MIXED as soon as they are got home
and the work of the day must be freely talked
over with husband, together with the plans for
tomorrow and the little ones are to be got
off to bed ; and then night comes down for
good upon all the household.
This is the very quintessence of routine it.
self. l know that women in the city can well
make complaint on the same score, but thisis-
olated life in the country is routine in the high
est concentrated form. There is nothing in the
world to break it. Unless the inward resources
are ample, the life falls away in spite of your
self into old, formal, dry, unmeaning practices,
and not a gush of new feeling or fresh ex-
perence ever enters in.
Then in winter it seems harder still, for then
the days are-oh so long, short as they are at
the comming Of the winter sostice There
would then appear to be nothing to break the
tiresome monotony. 1t is like the extensive
fields of snow themselves, stretching away and
away as far as the eye can reach and obliter-
ating every trace of line, mark, boundary, or
neighborhood Well might wives of farmers
keep long sticks hanging in their chimney cor
ners, on which to notch these weary days with
pale sunshine, as they slowly pass. 1t would
be congcnial occupation.
The wintry mornings dawn late, with frosty,
nlpping airs and too often leaden clouds lying
in long, low bars along the horizon. The win
dows are covered with all sorts of devices in
frost-work, and steaming broaths blow out
from every open mouth. If a fresh snow has
fallen during the night, the whole world seems
50 STILL 50 entirely hushed, and so buried up
that hardly does the slow swapping of the
kindlngs on the logs break the solemn silence
of the time. Then whether the fingers ache
with the cold or not, breakfast is to be pre-
pared for the household, and very often with
only single pair of hands. The girls may
help little if they happen to be up but it
is not always they are up They have thor
oughly warmed their huge feather beds, and
they do hate awfully to get out of them in the
morning on the freezing, cold floor And now
and then the boys take hand at chopping the
mince meat, perhaps or help peal the smoking
potatoes, with great checked aprons tied high
up under their chins.
? 1t is nine clock, and ten O'Clock, aud even
noon, before work gets fairly in motion and
then, when steams assembled float all around
the blackened ceiling of the kitchen, and the
sovors of stewed pumpkins rise from the i'll
covered mouth of the great kettle, perhaps
there are sausages to fill, ar pork to pack away,
or cheeseS to make, OF butter to churn, or some
other such labor to be attended to, any one kind
of which is enough to require all the energies
of any heroic and courageous woman. How
the women in our arm-houses manage to get
through even 1.-THE of it all is an impenetra-
bic mystery, 1t certainly requires quite as
much generalship as would suffice for the tax
ing of city, or the administration of govern
mcnt or grander scale.
The " men folks - may be off at work in the
woods, dragging logs and {" chopping," it il
true but they know nothing of these multi
form and ever multiplying care and perploxitie
that are sown, thick as thiste-sceds around th'
steps of the farmers wife every day. Indeed
it is a great deal truer than anybody ever ye
stopped to think it was, that if a farmer, nat
urally capable and thrifty himself, gets slov
enly, bchindhand, incompetent wife, nothin,
under heaven will possibly save his farm from
slowly, slowly cankering away under the appli
cation of mortgages. 1t is the eoife that is tn
farmers true support, after all. She makes o
unmakes. 1t is nothing to the question that h
manages to drive good bargains with his cattl,
his horses, his muttons, or his field products
unless she who sits at home, and weayes tn
web of his fortunes about the house, seconc
him earnestly in every one Of his plans an
purposes he does but empty the water l.
draws into sieves instead of buckets. Thu
the farmers wife stands in Importance in gu
agricultural affairs and agriculture, as ever
one knows who pretends to know anythns,.
the basis and bottom of society.
Then her influence over the family, tho chill
dren, and the whole, is almost as autocra
though in a very different way, as that of tt
Gar of Russia over all the subjects 81
forms, molds, colors, and directs everything
The young character is in her hands altogatl
er. She is the head and front of the famil,
whether by an assumed or a conceded authorit,
She is the heart of the. household always, eve
if she does not happen to be the head as vel
She not only bakes and brews, but she trail
boys and girls in those simple, and temperat
} and almost Spartan habits, that afterwards PR
iect themselves with the force of new indiyiC
ual powers upon the destnies of the outsd
5 world
This is the province of the wife of the ia
5 mer-no more, and no less 1t is not her Il
9 to do nothing but make butter and chees
or knit stockings and spin wool, ava
: in the country solitudes but all around h
: she is every day scattering the seed of choi
r grain whose fruits are not for day, but are il
mortal If she would but to see it for hersel
4 what n difference would it not work in b
tasks and in her lot How fresh would
. her resolution, how invigorated would her pu
Q poses become Instead Of bewailing her fc
t tune-such dismal and monotonous retlreme
g she would seem to herself to sit like que
Q at the hearts of the earth, fashionng the fore
G thatare by-and-by certain to control the who
e system.
e Drudgery-drudgery all the country wiy
It constantly exclaim and we hardly wonder
st it, either Yet there is something besid
drudgery in it, to one who sets to work to ex;
o her occupation and ennoble herself Life
know, is made upof good many little thing