Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1882-06-29
How New Hampshire Woman Lived

How New Hampshire Woman Lived
on Forty Dollars a Year.
In The Woman's Journal "T. w. H.
relates the story of New Hampshire
woman, who. by the sudden loss of her
invested property had remaining on
y an old farmhouse and some land.
The sufferer was wholly alone in the
world, had a paralyzed arm and was
threatened with blindness. The only
work which her enfeebled condition
permitted 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 one-fourth of it for
reading. In her own interesting &C
count of her life she says:
"In very cold spells took a warm
freestonc and crawled into bed. / was
too i'll to work, and thus to do saved
tirewood. l 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 I had read.
This saved me in degree from ener-
waiting myself still further by fruitless
porting over poverty and privations."
AS for food: "One-fourth pound of
meal, one cent; one-fourth pound of
dried beans. one and half cents; two
cents worth of salt pork-four and a
half cents in all-wOuld support me q
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, nour-
ishing food for two days and go long
way toward supporting existence. l
made considerable use of rice and
boiled fish. In cold weather a pound
of oatmeal cooked Monday would serve
as desert through the week. Some
times had gift of milk, and then 1
Toasted like an epicure. Now and then
L had some kind of vegetable, as a
beet or turnip, and from time to time
bought few cents worth of butchers
scraps, more to season food than to be
food. Once a month I in
dulged in a baking of doughnuts, or
got pound of lard and fried an eating
OF dOughnuts, about six, one at time,
in tin cup over my oil-stove." The
contrivances for clothing were curious.
The writer says: There could be no
reductions beyond hers, for she literal
ly bought nothing in the way of cloth
ing 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 frag-
ments of a pair of the drilling overalls
that some workmen had left on the
premises; these she cut into strips, and
made, she declares, very stylish trim
ming. She unraveled old, WORKOUT.
homespun undergarments, and made
yarn which she knit into stockings.
She had fifteen notices in the house
made on white muslin and cotton fan
mel; these she boiled clean and has a
supply of material for undergarments,
being the first person, probably, who
discovered real use for notices. She
found behind closet-d door an old over
coat of her fathers out of whose quilt
ed lining of black lasting she made for
herself cloak that looked like quilted
satin. The question of hats or bonnets
was easily settled; she wore none for
three years. AS for shoes, the mex.
haustiblA lining of the fathers over.
coat provided her with slippers which
wore better than leather"