The Osceola times., 1882-10-28
Farmers Daughters.

! vas talking 20 farmers daugh-
ter the other day, and naturally, It
seered, we dropped INTO complain
ings, and we each revealed the fact
that she was discontcnted. asked
her what she intended to do for a
living, and she answered, "Oh, /
don't know; | want to get away and
make money somehow. If ! could
90 to school little more | could
teach; but they can't spare me.n
knew that all her life had been
one round of cooking and milking
and churning; of washing and scrub
ing and ironing. l knew that her
father was quite a wealthy farmer, a
granger, and a leading church mem
Der. He has a good farm and coy
barn-such a coy barn,-and mon
ey in bank. And when | looked at
the ugly old farm house, with its
black door and small windows, its
calves and pigs and chickens running
in undisturbed tranquility over the
yard, did not wonder that she found
it unattractive, and that she wanted
to get away. The finer sensibilltles
of her woman nature were awaken
ing, and they called for something
better. /, for one DO not blame ihe
farmers daughters for being dissat-
ished. ] know how much they have
to make them so. When will these
farmers learn that the "life is more
than meat and the body more than
raiment;' When will they cease
considering 1t waste of time to
send their children to school, or a
waste Of money to pay for books or
magazines? Why will they spend
their money giving the heather Il
chance to be lost, when their daugh-
ters are dying for something to read?
They toll and sweat, wasting the best
earnings in providing for the poor
frail body, that, were it not that it is
the temple of the soul, would be wood
or stone. They reverse the positions
and make the rightful master SER
want. Their time is wholly occupied
for temporal wants.
| Holland tells us that farmers are
afraid to be refined, or to cultivate
the beauties of nature, lest they be
thought " stuck up" He says their
finer nature being neglected becomes
sluggish and dormant. When they
go to sleep they merely go to roost
when they eat they stuck away
grub" that they "surprise their backs
with clean shirts,n and when they
marry they" hitch on" In all these
we recognize more trnth than poetry
Perhaps it is true that the world is
what we make it; but the sad part OF
the truth is, that some OF us cannot
make it what it ought to be or what
we wish 1t to be. lfthe natures that
are given us with the existence that
is thrust upon us, are sluggish and
stolid, we must suffer the consequen-
ces through time and eternity.
No matter what we may do tC
eradicate the baser bart, we can new
or attain the higher standard We
might have reached, if loving parents
, had helped to prepare the way for us
We hear a great deal said about the
dignity and nobility of labor; we see
the truth Of this in the results of the
lives Of such men as Hugh Miller
, Agassiz and our old time patriots
, But labor having no good end in
view, labor that is merely muscular
expansion and contraction for the
, sake of making and keeping money
is only method Of soul murder, We
need never be afraid OF labor, provi.
ded we work with the right spirit
Anne Dickinson used TO clean street
crossings to earn money to pay fol
, books.