Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1871-09-01
In Doors and Out.


is doing the hardest part of the labor on
thefarm. Her work. is moreexacting, more
perplexing, and more protracted than
that of men. Certain things she must do,
tired or rested, sick or we'll. She must
do them in given way and agiven time;
and, what is worse, her work is never
done. Beginning in the morning as ear
ly as her husband, she works later than
he does, all the while with the uncom-
Portable certainty that the morrow brings
no respite and no change.
Take this in case--the history of the
actual experience of single day-some-
thing that came under the personal OBJ
servation of the writer--a record that
thousands of men will recognize as
sample of their everyday lives from
spring to autumn of each year.
The scene is in a Northern town, and
the parties are man and his wife in
middle life, having two children, living
upon hundred acre farm of passable
fertility, WEIGH keeps six cows, four young
cattle, two oxen, one horse, four pigs,
four turkeys, forty hens anda few sheep.
Leaving out Monday for washing,
Tuesday for the ironing, and Saturday
for the general baking, we wsll take
Wednesday as a specimen of the other
DAYS of the week.
The wife rises at four o'clock. general
ly lights the fire, puts on the teakettle,
and at the same time kettle of of pota-
toes, washed the night before to boil for
breakfast; then fills the churn with wa
ter from the we'll, to cool it for use; then
skim the milk and puts the cream into
the churn; then strains the morning
milk; then prepares breakfast, which
she hurriedly eats, with one hand on the
churn-crank fguratively speaking) and
the other dispensing food to the waiting
fowls, both of which receive attention
Immediately on her leaving the table.
A few minutes brings the butter, and
then come workingano sailing, then the
preparation of yesterdays churning for
market; then washing the milk pals, the
milk-pans, the churn and the breakfast
dishes, with thorough subsequentscald-
ing of each except the last; then gen.
eral cleaning and putting in order of
what has been disordered by the morn
ing's work then the turkeys are to be
fed the second time and let out; then
luncheon prepared; then chamber-work
until the principal meal of the day is
: undertaken at length, from over the hot
stove, dinner then washing the dinner
dishes then skimming milk Gf weather
is hot); another lunch, then cooking,
always more or less; then getting the
turkeys into their respective apartments,
then supper; then straining the milk
washing the pans and pals and dishes,
and at length somewhere about nine
o'clock-seventee hours since she left it
the bed
All of this interspersed with OCCASION
al sewing, as moment offered chang
ing the children's garments twice during
the day, once for school, and then to
their home clothes when school is over
9 besides helping to get them on and off at
morning and night; besides the thou.
sand nameless things that every good
housekeeper and mother finds to do and
all this but an average of the three light.
est days of the week, giving Sunday as a
day of only partial rest at that.
Now, take the husband. He gets up
at four o'clock, milk six cows, taking him
an hour; feeds the pigs, eats his break.
fast, mows, and stirs and opens hay till
! noon; rakes and pitches till night-nevel
hurried and never perplexed, most of the
. time talking with his neighbor, with
whom he exchanges work, leisurely do
ing his little noon chores and his night
ones, and by set of the sun is reading his
/. paper, in the comfortable consciousness
of so much hay secured-a lot moved
:, over that is finished for year. And thi;
is a sample of the heaviest work of the
summer.
Look on this picture and then on that
neither of which is, in any particular
overdawn.
O 1t is not ours to give any specific coun
II sci. There is no question about the in
q Justice that the farmers in this countr,
% have, in the main, unconsciously perpe
y trated upon those who are walking with
y them the long path. The world ha.
n long since (and truthfully) adjudged
A that, considering what woman does ant
y what she suffers, her complaints are few
. And because this is true, there is fal
u greater reason for that consideration
n which she so eminently deserves.
What the genius of man can do it hai
done to tighten the labor of his own sex
Moving machines, horse rakes, and tn,