Daily State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1861-1865, 1862-04-30
Western women.
BY MRS. FRANCIS ID. GAGE.

"New York ladies are fearfully and won
derfully made. They have a great many un-
accountable crotchets in their pretty little
heads. It's the hight of the mode to carry
fat, putting poodle dog about in their arms, or
lead them by gilded chain. But if lady
carries her baby herself, she loses caste i'm
mediately."
So says Mrs. George Washington Wyllys, |
who never takes up her pen when she has not |
a good thing to say, and when she writes her
chapter on the genus homo called the New
York ladies, because some correspondent of a
Western paper has written from New York
that New York ladies are no more like our
Western women than dissolving plate of
ice-cream is like plump apple dumping"
OF course they are not, Mrs. Wyllys. Our
Western women are-unlike New York wo-
men-sensibe; wear thick shoes in winter,
and paint roses on their checks over the cook
ing stove; or with five-mile ride over the
prairies on a breezy day to see an old friend,
or take the butter and eggs to market
"Nursing poodle dogs" forsooth. There is
no chance for dog nursing out here, / can tell
you. Such things are not to be thought of;
women out west do their own work, and hired
servants are so out of all repute that one can't
get more than a dollar a week though they
are as scarce as hens's teeth. The woman
here that don't do her own work, sew or wash
for six, take care of two babies, one two years
and the other three months old, isn't consid-
cred much of woman, 4" no how" Women
work, women are healthy, strong, long lived;
they don't love TO be pale and headachy; they
have duties and cares; and can eat pork and
beans, and go to meeting without gloves; take
care of sick friends, and watch through long
weary nights by the pillow of poor neigh
Dor.
have known them turn out and sew for
unfortunate families, get up circles to help the
widowed and the fatherless. They 90 out to
take tea in good calico dresses, and it is not
the fashion to keep folks waiting at the door
three-quarters of an hour before even a SER
want girl opens it to say, "not at home.'
Western women 90 a shopping, but they
take the beets and turnips, chickens, geese,
blackberries, and exchange them for blue
check and STONES, that their strong handed
boys may not fear the bite of rattlesnakes, or
mad dogs in August.
Trading done, they speed homeward and
refresh themselves BY getting dinner, and eat
corn-dodgers or ham and eggs, without dream
of indigestion. Their children do not half
die (guess YOU wouldn't think so if YOU could
look inside the home at bed time,) and their
husbands don't break-unless they have in
vested the last drop with some merchant who
has been dabbling in stocks to help some New
York lady's husband out of fix New
York ladieS" and Western women" are two
different species of human.
We could find Western ladies that are not
the linaal descendants of farmers. and could
claim nativity in some of the brown stone
fronts, and their parentage from the snobocra-
cy-theY are plenty in prairiedom. But we
don't set any store BY 'em, and could spare
New York or any other city dreadful site
if thew want 'em; it takes monstrous little of
the like to do US out here, and no mistake
But, dear LIFE, we've not a woman to spare
no, not one. Every whole-souled, loving,
true woman-wife, mother or sister, is a treas
ure in the land.
The level prairies, and beautiful, swelling
hills aud valleys, with their luxurant groves
and lofty forests, have homes for them all.
And II Mr.. Tracy, or any other philanthro-
pIst. can gather up colony of these poodle
dog" nurses, or money-spending shoppers. -
sen them out to Egypt to help us gather in
tho immense crop OF blackberries and rasp-
berries that are just tempting us into the fields
and woods, we will promise to take the pale
out OF their cheeks (at least twenty-four hours }
and give them exercise without the aid OF a
gymnasium. We can promise without any
fear of failure, to set every nerve and bone
and muscle in motion before October-if ONLY
with the shakes.
But. bless us, what's the use of talking ?
New York ladies' are no more like Western
,conlen than music box is like a sewing ma
chine. or a theatre Ike railroad, or an opera
ike an agricultural fare. "Them's no ac-
count" said old Charlotte as a half dozen OF
the former Haunted by-"them's trash. Hang
'em with silk and ribbons from the top of their
heads TO the soles of their feet, and 'twon'r