Year: 1876

She is not that erect, gray-halred matrOn
who is Chairman of the Centennial Committee
| in her own State, and of dozen other soci-
eties besides, useful and reformatory; she is
not the pretty, wide-awake little NJ D. who is
fighting her way to work and wages in the
next street; she is not the rapt but very self
conscious poetess beating up scenery and ho-
tells from Maine to California for materials for
her muse, subscriptions to her book, and
chances to lecture; least of all is she the faded
clever beauty, whose woes and experiments in
marriage and divorce have so long furnished
gossip for the country. These are the people
who, like the stage Yankee, represent us to
other nations; and verify in 50 doing they have
their reward. The typical American girl rep
resents US nowhere. She is one of those un-
picturesque and commonplace people born to
be the confusion of artists. Anybody can take
likeness or point an argument or joke with
high-featured, pronounced woman, such as
the clever chairman or the little hobby-riding
NJ. D., as a subject; but what can you do with
the wholesome, insignificant farmers daught-
er, reduplicated in days journey thousand
times?


This obscure member of society is yer busy
just now. In May Ito come down to the COM
monplace surroundings of her commonplace
life) the dairy work presses heavily; she al
ways works out the butter for market herself
then there are new hands brought in for the
Spring planting; she is baker and cook for the
whole establishment, and not only father and
the boys but the black plowman will grumble
if bread and pies are not to their liking She
knows just how long the canned tomatoes and
the preserves and the salted meat will last, for
it was she who superintended canning and
salting them, if she did not do it with her
own hands. Then there is the Spring sewing;
what with her own pretty chintzes and shirts
for the boys at college and little tailoring for
father, her machine buzzes late into the night;
and soon, too, the house is to be cleaned. She
will scrub, paint, and tack carpets and hang
the new paper on the parlor all day, and in the
evening put on her one silk and dance until
midnight, or sit cozily at home to read The
dtLantic or Scri6ner's aloud to the old folks
There is a change in the furnishing of the
the boys from college. Youatt on the Horse,
and the calf bound rows of sermons by emil
nent Presbyterian divines, have been elevated
to the upper shelves, and new comers in perish
able cloth are in their places. You do not find
a single rare edition among them. Our farm
er's daughter would ask, with her shrewd
sense, "What did she care for the clothes of
book ?' or "Why should she value a thing
simply because other people could not get it z"
Nor is there solitary volume of popular sci
ence, such as the lady lecturer skins over to
find ''telling points," our little country girl
classes Huxley and Darwin with Voltaire and
Tom Paine; labels them all ''Poison" and puts
a like deaths head and cross-bones on each.
She taught the district school two Winters Ito
help send her brother to college.) You will
find her therefore well informed as to cube
zoos and mountains in Africa; she studied
La in Ito help her brother with his lessons at
night, can read Horace with dictionary, but
never does it; Ruskin is her high-priest of lit
erature; she has no patience with Emerson's
''transcendental stuff" she knows Longfellow
by heart, and appeases all other intellectual
hunger by unlimited supplies of harmless re-
ligious novels. The hunger of soul or life,
which clever women complain of, she never
felt she has no longings Tor career, other
than that which lies in the snug brickshouse
at the end of the lane, where the young doc
tor lives alone. She does not admit that wish
to herself without blush even when alone
This hare, at least, will not hunt the hounds
The pink-cheeked little girl, who has saucy
wit of her own, grows painfully stiffsand ST.
lent when the awkward young doctor is near.
When the story went about that he was bring
ing wife from town, or when her father lay
dying, as she thought, or when any other pain
or loss has touched her, she has but one re-
source, the worn old Bible which she has read
night and morning since she was child. He
who speaks to her there is no vague abstrac-
ton, but the Friend whom she knows best.
There is every probability that she will marry
the doctor some day, and can vegetables, and
sew, and bear children, just as her mother did
before her. There will be no great ambition
satisfied, no tragedy, divorce, or public de-
noument of any sort in her life. If husband
or children should need great sacrifices, she
will make them; If one of them should ever be
chosen to the first station in the land, she
will bear her place in the White House with