Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-11-25
w. c. T. u. COLUMN.
metto: "God and Home and Native Land. -
YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY.

fortune 1t is to SponQ Uno NdcdIiOh,
long or short, in an old New England
village off the beaten track, turns FOR
part of the days amusement to the
old graveyard, wherein history ana
poetry are both embalmed. Now and
then really old one, as age goes In
this country, is discovered, stones al
most two hundred years old yielding
up their inscriptions only after much
clearing away of grass and digging out
of half obliterate letters. 1t is worth
the trouble, most of all in the strange
food for thought, not on ones latter
end or any of the terrors urged upon
the reader by the ancient epitaphs.
1t is not all the art of dying that be-
comes the question. Thatpasses quite
out of sight, and living and it's meth
DDS take its place.
Nothing could be more natural. The
oldest memorials are the most sug-
gestive ones, and the student of them
at once formulates statement as to
colonial tendencies. 1t is plain that
most men had many wives. They
married early and they married often.
Mercy, wife of Aaron Small" dies at
twenty five, leaving six small children
to mourn her loss. Phoebe follows,
and goes to her rest at forty, leaving
also six; and Mehitable, who takes
her turn and manages to survive Aa-
ron, finds the twelve so hard a task
that her own babies have no chance
whatever, and make a little row of
graves near the other mothers, who,
it is to be hoped, paid them proper
attention on their arrival in that
country from which they had so late
ly come.
Two, three, even four wives, one,
the youngest of all, dying at eighteen.
The men live long, seventy, eighty,
more than one ninety years, bat each
and all would seem to have planned
for as speedy a filling of the family
plot as could be brought about by any
and all means save actual murder
How did they do it? Why did they do
it? Was it all ''providential interpo-
sition'as they record upon the stones,
or did it dawn upon any of them that
under these pines was the sole resting
place Mercy and Jane and many
Marys bad ever known?
1t is at this point that speculation
begins. We are told that the modern
woman is discontinued, unruly, reck-
less; that the old days knew no such
characteristics; that the women who
were our grandmothers, and great
grandmothers, went their quiet round
untroubled by the questions the wo-
man OF day persists in asking. In
short that content was the rule for
! those ''good old times" that filed the
graveyard, and that America can
know neither peace nor further prog
ress till her women return to the same
mind In the meantime there they
lie, those women who might tell us
the truth, and never one comes back
to make the way palmer for this "new
woman" fumbliDg out toward light,
and dimly questioning if the grand
mothers were not in the right in re-
nouncing the struggle before it had
we'll begun.
Were they content? That is the
question which can find answer only
in old records of occasional insubor-
dination, like that of Anne Hutchin-
son, for instance. The diaries that
remain to us of one and another dis
tinguished Puritan woman are no clue
to the real feelings. Duty in its stern
est aspect ruled, land the thing record
ed was what one ought to feel, never
what one actually felt. But with the
birth of the factory movement in
New England, the rush of farmers
daughters towards the mills, and a
day of fourteen hours of work joyful
ly accepted, is the only answer need
ed. Lucy Larcom tells the story in
her GA New England Girlhood," and
gives a picture of the life, which, hard
as it was, seemed easy compared with
that from which they had fed.
The colonial family was prtriarchal
in it's nature as to numbers and neces-
stiles, and the industries of the patri-
archal time were still retained under
every roof. Even with servants the
mistress must arise by daylight and
work well into the night if tasks were
not to overlap They did their work
and did it faultlessly well, but it is
easy to see why each household, in
old Linborough, for instance, had three
mistresses, two in the graveyard and
one presiding in their place.
Remember! 1 should think SOP"
said an energetic old lady the other
day when asked as to her own opin-