News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-08-03
Living on $40 a Year
story Showing the Wonders that
Necessity MAY Work.

In the Won1Gn's Journal ssT. W. H.
relates the story of New HAMPSHIRE
woman, who by the sudden loss of he,
little invested property had remaining
only an old farmhouse and some land
The sufferer was wholly alone in the
world, had paralyzed arm, and was
threatened with blindness. The only
work which her enfeebled condition per-
mitted was in the way of knitting and
making artificial flowers by these two
arts she could earn SIS annually" Her
whole available income was $40. She
appropriated u1e-fourth of it for read
ing. In her own very interesting ac-
count of her life she says:
Gin very cold spells I took a warm
freestone and crawled into bed. 1 was
too i'll to WORK and thus to do saved fire.
wood. [ would put mittens on my
hands and read awhile, and when the
room became too cold for this, cover all
up and think over what 1 had read.
This saved me in degree from ener-
waiting myself still further by fruitlessly
por1ng over poverty and privations. !"
AS for food: "One-fourth pound of
meal, one cent; one-fourth pound of
dried beans, one ami a half cents two
cents worth of salt pork -four and half
cents in ELY would support me day
and half very well. This was my
usual fare three days out of seven.
Three cents worth of barley boiled with
two cents worth of butchers trimmings
and three cents worth of potatoes,
would make wholesome, nourishing
fooo for two days and go long way
toward supporting existence. l
made a considerable use of rice and
baked fish. In cold weather, a pound
OF oatmeal cooked on Monday would
serve as dessert through the week.
Sometimes l had gift of milk, and
then L feasted like an epicure. Now
and then had some kind of vege-
table, as beet or turnip, and from
time to time bought few cents worth
of butch Ars' scraps, more to season food
than to be food. = Once a month
I indulged in baking of aoughnuts, or
got lo1nd of lard and fried an eat
ing of doughnuts, about six, one at a
time, in tin cup over my oil-stove P"
The contrivances for clothing were curl
GUS. The writer says "There could
be no reductions beyond hers, for she
literally bought nothing in the way of
clothing, whatever. So she lived, so to
speak, on the past-on the wrecks of
her own clothing and other peoples.
She made whole suit out of an old
straw bed ticking, combined with the
fragments of pair of the drilling over
alls that some workmen had left on the
premises these she cut into strips, and
made, she declared, very stylish trim
ming. S,Is unraveled old, worn out,
homespun undergarments, and made
yarn, which she knit into stockings. She
had fifteen notices in the house made
on white muslin and cotton flannel
these she boiled clean and had supply
OF material for undergarments, being
the first person probably who discov.
cred real use for tmottoes.' She found
behind closet-door an old overcoat OF
her fathers, out of whose quilted lining
OF black lasting she made for herself q
cloak that looked like quilted satin.
The question CT hats or bonnets was
easily settled she wore none for three
years. As for shoes, the inexhaustible
lining of her fathers overcoat provided
her with slippers which wore better
than leather"