Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1880-10-06
Secret of Yankee Thrift

| Looking closely at the face of one oI
those women whose habit it is to do the
washing of the family, saw what | had
not before observed, that in her youth she
must have been quite pretty. Her education
had not been neglected. her tastes were
refined, her brow showeu intellect. The
vlvactity, the ease and grace of manner
the flow of conversation on many topics,
so natural to women of leisure. we're
wanting. They had gone, methought, into
the wash-tub and the cooking stove. And
yet, tired as she was on washing and
ironing days, she was not unhappy. Her
father man in good circumstances, not
grasping, but noted rather for his liber-
ality, had perferred for her The school OF
the mlIliner to the fashionable boarding
school, and as a milliner she had worked
many years. Her husband. who is evi,
IDENTIFY prospering and certainly is kind,
thinks it no hardship for her to do the
work to which | have alluded. Neither
he nor bis wife appear to regard it as
drudgery.
Here. then, is the grand social division
between north and south. Here comes in
the saving which makes one section rich
and keeps the other in debt. " But the
woman holds up the heavy end of the log,
and that is not right" In this particular
case the husband finds better paying work
than milking, chopping wood, gardening,
etc. but thousands of husbands do these
things as matter of course. | have
seen professional man, well enough off
to be thought rich in our part of the world,
backing his shoes in his front porch,
where every passer-by could see him. The
minister in -, a man of attainments
often passed through the principal street
OF the village, pail in hand, on his return
from milking. Illustrations drawn from
his personal experience as II farmer gave
point to his sermons that nothing else
could have given.
The richest citizen in -, man
of So, blows big horn in the village
band. Not only hotel men, but merchants
and doctors have carried my trunk up and
down stairs. Only the largest hotels in
dulge in the luxury Of porter. My land
lord in Litchfeld said he had been think
ink for long time about getting little
darkey to set up in the business as boot
black. 1--WE three hotels. he said, "ought
TO give him n good lving.n
lu brief, the men as we'll as the women
of New England know how to use their
hands and are not afraid to soil them
1t is the custom of the country, and one of
long standing. "A Lebanon town ac-
count of services and supplies upon this
occasion (the breaking out of the revou-
tion) made out subsequently as in all the
towns of Connecticut, for settlement at
the colonial treasury-awards Trumbull,
for his own personal labor at this time.
the sum of two pounds and sixteen
shillings." Trumbull was then governor
of the state, but had store few hundred
yards from where | am now writing, and
there he did the boxing, barreling, etc.
for which the above bill was rendered.
Such things on the part of men and
women do not tally with our southern
customs or fit into our modes of thought.
But what will youP You can't eat your
cake and have it too. In its last form the
question shapes itself thus " Isn't it bet
Ter to have fewer ladies and gentlemen,
and more Independence" You and
might say no." but taking the world as
we find it, there would be much to rejoice
at if all its rural districts were peopled
as New England is.-A Southerner'S
GLeantngS in Connecticut.