Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1891-04-10
A SERMON ON MUD.
Why Good Roads Would Make Life in the
Country Much Pleesanter.

country Dlucn fIeesSanCer.
In long prayer at a Wednesday even
ing meeting a lady addressed the AL
mighty, offering, as we are prone to do
various criticisms. Among the counts
in her indictment was one upon which
she arraigned Providence with grea
severity. It was that he saw fit to infic
upon the community so much mud. He
words ran something like this: ''Nt
matter how much I may clean, my house
is continually tracked with mud; my
porches are kept in d filthy condition
my carpets are filed with dust that spoils
them and I can't keep my house neat
It's nothing but mud, mud, mudr Wher
she had finished several other of the gool
ladies' present gave voice to ferven1
''Amens!" But before the meeting was
dismissed the pastor rose and remarked
81 cannot close this meeting without
saying that God is notresponsible for the
mud. IF there were 10 men there would
be no mud and there need be none ever
now that there are men. In Portland
Ore. where it rains six months in the
year, there is no mud, for the simple
reason that the men who live there know
enough to use the intelligence God has
given them in building good roads,"
That pastor was right. 1t is man an6
not God that makes the mud. The sooner
the women whose houses are kept in g
filthy condition and whose backs always
ache from constant but futile efforts to
keep those houses tidy, realize this fact
the sooner will the remedy be applied
If the wives, instead of asking the LORD
at the Wednesday night prayer meetings
to dry up the mud, would hold a little
meeting in the family sitting room every
night, and preach a short sermon to theil
husbands on the necessities of road inn
provenent and Che evils of mud, results
would soon begin to appear. The Lord
helps those who help themselves!
Mud ''grinded in" the carpets does
moro to wear those carpets out than the
patter of u dozen generations of tiny
feet. And it wears out the patience and
health of the housewife quicker than it
does the carpets. She may sweep and
brush and scrub until she sweeps holes
in the carpets, scrubs the paint off the
floors, and alas! sweeps and brushes and
scrubs the bloom off her cheeks, the
brightness out of her eyes and the hap
piness out of her heart, but she will
never get that mud out of the carpet I'M
til she puts a shovel into her husbands
hands and makes him go and use it on
the roads, and by intelligent work strike
at the root of the evil by making them
SO hard and smooth that they won't gen
crate the mud in the first place.
Nor is the house the only place where
mud engulfs the happiness of the farm
er's wife. She is as much interested
in it's adjustment from the roads as she
is in it's exile from the parlor, and would
be, even if the two were not connected
by an endless chain of footsteps. 'sFor
four months in the year a woman living
in the country might as well be locked
ia a prison with her family, so far as
seeing new faces or having any social
intercourse is concerned" said one. And
it is true. Who is the jailer? Mud.
What woman, after a trying days work
at the countless things which keep the
country housewife busy, would not be
glad for an opportunity to drive to q
neighbours or to an entertainment In the
nearest village. tt would certainly be a
welcome relaxation and beneficial va
ration of the grinding monotony of life in
a farm house kitchen. But what woman
would not rather do without the relaxa-
ton and allow the monotony to go I'M
broken than to feel that when she asked
her husband to crafty her wish she was
asking him to undertake q really fformi-
dable task.
10 ':harness up" and drive for mile
or two on pleasant spring evening over
clean, hard roads would be a pleasure to
both husband and wife. But when the
roads are SO muddy that the jaded horses
can barely pull the wagon along; when
with every step the horses take their
hoofs go splash into a river Of mud and
send blotches of it flying over everything
in the vicinity, including the people they
are drawing with SO much difficulty, and
when a drive Of a few miles means an
hour or two on the road instead of a few
minutes, then the experience is robbed
of it's pleasure. The chances are that
by the time the farmer and his wife
have arrived at their destination they
will be exasperated with the roads, with
themselves and with life. The con-
versation with host and hostess will
be half hearted. When the time comes
to return home, and the farmer thinks
of the half hour OF hour he will
have to spend rubbing the dirt off his
horses before he can go to bed, and the
wife, more tired than cheered by the
visit, thinks OF her life in sea of mud, it
Is moro than probable that they who re-
ally love and honor each other will not
try very hard to keep back the i'll natured
words suggested by their general depres
sion, Mud is a great promoter Of family
jars,
But if instead of quarreling with each
other because the roads were muddy, the
farmer and his wife would logically look
into the situation, they would soon see
the real state of affairs. They would see
that if the money and labor expended on
the roads to make them muddy were in
diligently applied, with the object in
view Of making them dry, the object
could be very easily accomplished and
the quarrels avoided. And they would
see that not only would the quarrels be
but that the farmer would be
ableto haul more produce to market With
fewer horses and less wear and tear on
wagons and harness; that the farm could
be better worked with fewer men, and
that it would therefore increase rapidly
In value; that social evening calls and
trips to the nearby village or city would
be easy and pleasurable, instead Of hard
and tiresome. In short, they would see
that good roads would change the whole
of life in the rural districts,
and change it decidedly and undoubted
" for the better,
And they would see, moreover, that
the Portland preacher was right when he
said that the Lord is not responsible for
the mud! EDWARD MARSHALL.
A Diet for Rheumatic Gout.
DR.. John Cutter, of New York, tells of
woman who had been three summers at
me of the large sanitariums, but re-