The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1882-09-22
TO THE WIVES OF FARMERS.

The wives of farmers should be as well
posted as their husbands, in regard 20
the material changes which are every
day being made in the profession 10
which they are allied not only for pre-
cont information. but for future Iell-
ance when perhaps the husbandman
having reaped his last harvest, shall
himself have been carried home, carry
ing his sheaves with him.
There is no greater mistake than the
one so often made, that of removal of
families to cities and towns after the
death of the father who spent his life
cultivating home for them.
Removed to entirely new scenes and a
different order of life, at growing
stage, the children are torn from their
old roots without having gathered suffi-
cient strength to strike the new ones
firmly, and all their lives pay the forfeit
in half fulfilled desires and unsettled
longings for the things which their ear
ly upheaval has rendered impossible of
attainment, in town or country.
Especially is this so with the daugh-
teIs of America, where womanhoOd, by
an injurious custom which is enfeebling
the human race, begins ten, nay fifteen,
years too early. The uprooting of their
first habits of life changes into a chaotic
melange what would in time have be-
come a well-ordered life. New desires
and fresh hopes are engrafted on the
stems of those which never reached frui-
tion, and the whole character is weaken
ed and thrown out of its course 1t u.s.
ually ends in the daughters marrying
some town-bred youth of feeble physique
and still more feeble morals, and they
add their quota of bandy-legged and
short-lived children to the general mass
of unhealthy babies, who live a little,
suffer a good deal, and, if fortunate, die
early else reach a maturity that is bad
for themselves, unwholesome for the ma
tion, and a living protest against forced
maternity and disordeued lives.
The sons, nine times out of ten, be-
come the hangers-on of places where eX-
elements of various kinds are retailed
in various forms and the usefulness of
lives, spent in cultivating their nature
along with the soil, is changed to the
aimless leisure or the wild license Of a
life which prefers city slums to country
purity. The very widest of city youths
are those who, are accustomed to city
sights and opportunities, come within
their influence and drink of the stag
nant cup it offers to youth of all discrip-
tions. Truth is, one needs not look for
lliC SdluClAc VI NIllOC IliC1 anu Guo
swine are to be found in every city in
the world.
1t should not be so. Oh, no-but it is.
Then, we repeat, let the women Of the
farm keep themselves abreast with all
the knowledge pertaining to the profta-
bic culture of the soil ; and should they
Oe left without husband or father, stay
upon the farm and cultivate it to their
own growth and good, and to that of the
whole world. In this way may women
best show their independence, their
ability to stand alone.
Nor does this life preclude the fulfill
ment of every aspiration, no matter in
what direction. For the eye of her who
would model the human form, or paint
the clear hues of flower and sky, and
bending foliage, what higher tutoring
could their be than the swaIt forms,
stepping freely from the glebe and hill,
and the glorious colOring of summer
day in the wide reaches of the country.
They have the very thing that poor
city artists tramp hundreds of miles to
gain and surely the very soul of music
lies in gurgling brook and bird song, in
the sough of the wind, the rustic of coin
blades, and the tender humming of in
sects in the grain.
The duties of the household leave, or
should leave ample leisure for these, and
the very physical labor that weaTies the
body, prepares the soul for all such in
fluences. Stay, then, where the nature
of all things show clean on their surface,
and where "to be'' and Ito growr are
synonymous terms. Stay there until
manhood and womanhOod, then into the
cities, if you will, to make them cleaner,
sweeter, stronger, instead Of adding to
their weakness, their vileness and vast
ing disorder.