The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1876-07-05
The Useful Woman.

devoted, though not exclusively, to
the rights of woman, tells us how one
woman fought the battle of life and
won the victory.
And this the story:
''There lives a widow out West. -
says this Friend of Woman, "who ney.
er did anything useful until her hus-
band died and left her half a dozen
children to take care off,
But here we pause on the threshold
with uplifted hands of amazement. A
woman has borne and reared six child
rem, and yet has never done ANYTHING
useful. Let the startled mind pause.
however, till the history of this USE
less woman is completed:
''She thought great deal of her
husband, but he did not leave her
enough substance to buy him a grave
stone; and this fact set her to work,
She determined that the poor mans
grave should have respectable mark.
So she got Il marble slab, and went to
work OH it, making a grave-stone for
the departed. Thus she began to carve
out her fortune '-end ended bv learn
ing and prosecuting the successful and
lucrative trade of stOne-cutting.
In what touching tangle do facts
and opinions and judgments lie in the
mind OF the compiler of these short
and simple annals Of the Door! TAX
ing care of six children is nothing use
ful, but cutting out a grave-stone for
man who never had caliber enough
to do it for himself is usefulness. If
we are to look upon this as veracious
history, and not as mere fable COM
posed to teach that with sufficient spur
women can do whatever men can do,
we Immediately revert in imagination
to the necessarily marrow home of q
man who is not worth his own grave
stone.
There are six children, the eldest
undoubtedly about nine years old, and
they have all to be nursed and fed and
dressed and housed ; the table is to be
set, the meals are to be prepared, the
dishes are to be washed three times a
day; the rooms are to be swept and
washed, the clothes to be washed and
ironed and mended, as well as made.
and some of the children are to be got
to school. From morning till night
that woman can never have known
one hour S cessation of work and watch.
For, be it observed, her subsequent
attempts and success show that she
was resolute, energetic and able wo-
man. She was not the kind to stuff
an old hat into the pane Of glass that
her boy ball--which she had rolled
up for him out of the last desperate
fragment of an outworn stOcking-had
unhappily broken, even though her
easy-going, shiftless husband had no
more money to spend on GLACIERS than
grave-stones.
She was the kind that would send
fora pane of glass out of some old
window that she had observed stand
ing lamely against a neighboring fence,
and, with a pennyworth Of putty,
have that window mended two hours
after it was broken, and Johnny well
warned that he was not to play in such
dangerous proximity again. Her
boards were always secured clean, and
her bit of carpet thoroughly swept,
and her rude furniture carefully dust
ed. But of course she had no time for
stone-cutting. Every cent that her
mild, mindless husband earned she
spent with the wisest thrift for it is
consoling to reflect that he is only
weak, not wicked. lie did not waste
his small substance in whisky and
gambling. He smoked an ill-smelling
pipe, but that was his only vice. He
brought all his money to his wife, not
SO much submissively as instinctively.
and he admired her and deferred to
her and she, like many another STIR
ring, active, capable woman, really
liked the inoffensive little creature
whom it is difficult not to imagine her
despising.
And so by-and-by he died, that is,
he just faded out into little more
than his previous insigniiicance, and
SO disappeared from the earth, for his
personality could withstand no dimin-
ution. What, then, does this perverse
woman, his wife, do, but concentrate
herself on a graVe-stOne, giving him
thus more solidity in his death than
all the quintessence of his whole life
could furnish. What possible editica-
ton is perpetuating the memory of 4
man who for thirty or forty years has
never accumulated SO much as a grave.
stone "a man who had introduced six
children into the world without max
ing slightest provision for their future.
and then skunk out of it himself, leay-
ing his wife to bear all the brunt of it.
besides carving him q graye.stone !
Perhaps, after all, our anllalist is near
er right than we have accredited him
for is it a useful thing to rear six per
sons after such Il spiritless pattern as
this
What the world wants is strong.
sturdy, upright men and women. It
has no need of any more lazy, Shift