Omaha daily bee., 1909-01-10

-ARITINg Of the home life OF the
VAT wives Of western farmers as Il
" was yesterday and is today.
- Sarah Comstock relates in
IsClyeSI Golfers Weekly how the dis
49, comforts and inconvenience OF
the struggling days have changed their
form without greatly relieving the mental
and physical strain on the usekeep
The old and the new ways, and the
troubles OF both arc thus pictured:
II was somewhere before that first set
ting back OF the watch which marks the
beginning Of Westerward-Ho that 1 caught
my last glimpse of the farmers wife Of
yesterday. The train slackened: for mo-
mentB the picture hung still, singled out
from all the whizzing theatorlum past and
20 come. 1t was in that first clammy dawn
when there is barely enough light to work
by; a tall, lean house, devoid Of temper
ament and paint. stood at the top OF a
sloping patch, and below. In the patch,
was a woman at work with a hoe. The
sky was gray and the house was gray and
the woman was gray. She stopped; not
with her shoulders alone, but there was
apparent in her that stoop Of the spirit
which 1t takes many flogging years to
produce. Both woman and patch were
Jaded as IL they had borne to exhaustion,
according to ancient lights regarding the
woman and the patch, There were chugs
and wheezes and the theatorium began
again A day and a night more brought
me to the farmers wife Of today.
Everywhere the mistress of the modern
farm house is found in the midst OF such
luNuries as she never dared dream OF in
those years when she was fighting her
way through the vests anime. Piped hot
wafer, gas, hot water heaters equip her
house-she used to break the ice in the
pitcher for her bath, to read by a shade
less oil lamp or a candle thrust into a
potato, to warm her hands over a rickety
stove. Now she gossips over her own tele-
phone; she rides fo~rth-sometimes yelled in
blue chiffon, sometimes sunbonneted-in
her motor car; she travels from Mexico to
Maine and often to Europe. She telephones
ABOUT to the town and country people to
come TO an Informal little affair; she sends
out engraved invitations when Lizzie comes
home for the winter. But with living
tun d to this higher pitch she is enduring
a strain such as that one-time struggle
never caused Confronted by the servant
problem. her prosperity threatens to break
her down where poverty failed to do so.
Its my nerves ache the worst now" one
OF them said. 1T used to be nothing but
my bones.
Il sometimes think 1t was easy times
back in the little old shack kitchen where
there wasn't hardly any cooking to do be-
cause there wasn't hardly anything to
cook, and where l didn't have to SPILL elbow
grease keeping a sink and a fancy range
shined up, and where the washing was
light because we wore dark blue calico six
days of the week. It's all very well 10
talk about our prosperity and the way us
farm folks live in such fine houses: but
I'm here to tell you a fine house is a white
elephant without you've got help to keen
It.
Now wouldn't you think a girl would
rather share this work with me than TO
stand on her feet all day selling hooks and
Eyes and hairpins in a hot store? Or hold
Ing buckets under the lard spout in a pack
ing house till she was ready to drop? Now
wouldn't you?
Shifting to wheat-laden breeze which
sucked through the clean kitchen. l as
scented with fervor.
There amt a girls willing to do It,
though. Now and then one comes to try it,
and she stays quiet about a week. Then
she commences to fidget around and stand
at the door and look out, and l know the
signs, The last one stood gazing out that
very door while the pics were burning
and at last she groaned and she said: 4
place where there's something doing fol
mine!' Her name was M-a-y-m-e, and she
was mighty particular about that ".
Something DOING | said. Strikes me you
can see plenty Of excitement hereabouts
with those eleven calves all hollering for
this skim milk at once and the separator
nearly busting itself trying to keep up witt
their appetites, and the hogs being fed ant
the chickens and turkeys being shut up.
never thought the farm lacked something
doing You ought to have seen her looI
at me- our tastes diffah,' she said, witt
her chin pointing up like that. When
speak Of excitement | refer TO such little