The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-27

she not care to add to it, but
she wishes in her heart there was no such
thing as food known, and would herself, were
it not for the cravings of her men folk, gladly
live on tea and bread or coffee and pie all the
year round. The girls, instead of looking
forward eagerly to your coming, and being
ready to discuss Shakespeare and the musical
glasses with you, have probably gone off to
teach or work in a factory, as the readiest
way of supporting themselves and tightening
their fathers burdens. Even If you should
find them at home, however, so far from
wanting to make coffee and brewis and bake
bread for you, they have been so long and so
faithfully learning the great democratic lesson
of equality, that the last thing in the world
they wish is to wait on you. They think you
are quite competent to wait on yourselves,
and that if you did more of it it would be bet
ter for you; so they set themselves resolutely
to keep you in mind of the futility and base
lessness of the little airs of refinement and
social superiority which you bring down with
you from the city.
It must be borne in mind, too, which it
seems not to be by many persons, that farm
ers who offer country board are not induced
to do so by feeling of compassion for the
city people, or from a desire to bring the
roses back to their cheeks. They are induced
to do it by the hope of making little money
with the least possible outlay on their part,
and the least possible distur bance of their
daily life. People who complain of the
coarseness of their fare and the badness of
their beds talk as if they deliberately went to
work to set up a poor boarding house, and
that the poverty of their table was the result
simply of desire to cheat. 1t is nothing of
the kind. The way that the farmer asks you
to live is rather better than the way he and
his family live all the rest of the year. The
saleratus bread is the bread always consumed
in the family, and if he sends his fat chickens
and his lambs and his best vegetables to the
market, it is because he has always
done so; if he were to let you
eat them, he would probably make
little or nothing by keeping you. What
you ask him to do when you call for good
bread and fresh meat every day, and good
vegetab es and milk of the first quality, is to
rearrange his whole life and business for two
months in the year. If he were to give you
such a table as you ask for, he would have to
get from New York such a cook as you
pay sixteen or eighteen dollars month to-
and, instead of the wild ''help" whom you see
rushing to and fro furtively between the
kitchen and the wood-pile like guilty thing
upon a fearful summons, probably
picked up in the nearest settlement at five or
six dollars month, he would have to get a
waiter or two from the city at double that
his house will contain, the thing would never
pay. He does not want to go into new bust
ness; he simply invites you, if want country
air, to share the fare and conveniences of his
own household. ..t..
The remedy is to be found-if remedy there
be-in the multiplication of boarding houses,
managed by people who understand keeping
them, and make q business of it. Boarding
city people cannot be tackled on to farming,
as American farm life now is and as Ameri-
can women now practise cookery. What we
want is a greater number of country inn
keepers, who know what city people need to
make them comfortable, and are not above try
ing to supply it, instead..of making, as SO many
''hotel-keepers" do, steady effort to reform
city manners, and show guests that
their desires are unreasonable. Let
us suggest, too, that, now that women are
looking about so eagerly for new fields
of employment, and are so fretted by the
public disinclination to let them be lawyers
and brokers, that there is here an excellent
opening for farmers daushtars. A company
of young women, in any healthy and pic
tgresque locality, who could furnish amongst
them really good cooks, chambermaids, and
walters, and were not above being polite-no
servile, bit polite-might, we are sure, rear
golden harvest every summer. There would
be little difficulty in their finding houses o.
capital II they gave any evidence OF ability tc
make use of them; and they might rob sum
mer of the terrors it now has for so many
thousands of families.
But of the improvement of board in farm
houses we cannot conscientiously hold on
any hope. 1t cannot come without a total re
organization of American agricultural life
and the breaking up of many very deepl,
rooted habits, and these we are not likely t.
see in our time. People who cannot stan(
farm house board, and cannot afford the grea
hotels or country houses, would therefore d.
we'll to stay at home. If they have to do so
too, we see no objection to their persuadin,
themselves, as SO many do, that the air o
Murray Hill is as pure as any on the continent
and that, for real GOODNESS and repose, ther
is no place on a summer evening like tn
stoop of a New York house. But there i
little use in abusing the farmer
and just as little in dreaming
golden dreams of the summe
that is to be. All board is vanity and vexa
ton of spirit, whether it be in town o
country. There is probably no image whic
SO many active and subtle brains have de
lighted in conjuring up as the ideal boarding
house-keeper. Many is the pillow on whic
she has spread succulent beefsteaks and pots
toes done to a turn, and light, wholesome
and well-baked bread, with a winning an
, respectful smile. But the vision fades wit
the morning light, and we fear it will be Ion
. before poor humanity sees it embodied i
flesh and blood