FARMERS' WIVES.

By Mrs. CLARA BEWICK COLBY, Beatrice, Nebraska.

We are all the children of a farmer's wife. When the voice of God drove our first parents from Paradise, pioneer life began. Doomed henceforth to sorrow and sweat,

'They hand in hand, with wandering step and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way."

Having reached the frontier they took up a homestead, and then began a life which epitomizes, under changed conditions, the life of farmers' wives from that day to this. Eve was poor. Her education was limited. Her nearest neighbor was far away. Of her numerous children, some turned out very bad; and her husband, no doubt, often told her he should never have gone west if it had not been for her.

Given a certain amount of education, wealth and nearness to a town, and the farmer's wife is envied and enviable. You know her. She comes to your church, and attends your lectures, exhibitions and social gatherings. She is well dressed, and as refined, intelligent and happy as any woman in the land. You visit her and admire the comfort of her home, the sweet shyness of her children, and all the picturesque and charming accessories of her rural life. She is frequently found in the wealthy and populous east, often in the middle west, and occasionally, lacking only the perfection of surroundings, she appears in the pioneer states even to the far frontier. Like the Roman candle which, thrown up at intervals in the Mammoth cave, reveals to travelers the wondrous grandeur of arch and vault, the brightness of her life displays the beautiful possibilities of her position. But she is the exceptional and not the representative of her class.

In the Norse heaven, Thor's house had 540 floors. Quite as many grades are there in the condition of farmers' wives. But, leaving out the extremes, let us consider them generally, first premising that no statement can be made to which there may not be numerous exceptions.

Farmers' wives are as happy on an average as the women of

most other classes. Some, from their favorable surroundings; others, because of a healthful contentment which would make them happy in any state; some, from the fact that their sensibilities have never been awakened and they know not that they are lacking; others again, because of a patient resignation born of experience. They have their joys and sorrows in common with the race. Like every other class, they have their own peculiar discomforts and advantages. Still there prevails an idea both among themselves and others that their life is unfortunate, and certainly it falls far short of possessing that ideal happiness which is both desirable and possible.

The troubles and discomforts of farmers' wives as a class have many causes.

One of these is early marriage. Rural life is favorable to matrimony. Having little study and few enterprises to occupy the mind, the attention of the young is early directed in settling in life. Their conversation and amusement are on a sexual plane. The happy, innocent mingling of the youth which in the town life means good fellowship, in the country, usually has reference to marriage. At an age when the girls of cities and villages are at school, or engaged in some labor marked out for them by a guiding hand, the country girl undertakes the responsibilities of housekeeping, often under the most trying circumstances, and assumes the most important duties of womanhood. The complete physical changes incident to a wife and mother, experienced at her immature age, often break down her health and lay the foundation of nervous disorders which cause her life-long sufferings. Development of mind and body are arrested; the judgment is warped, cheerfulness gives way to complaint, or silent endurance increases the strain on the nerves. Her means will not allow her the rest or attendance necessary for a cure, nor does she know what is the matter, save that for some reason or other life is a burden. She grows old prematurely, or breaking down entirely under the stress of adverse circumstances, her nervous system gives way, and she adds another to the long list of farmers' wives who are found in our insane asylums.

Another cause pregnant with trouble is poverty. In fact, the

want of " money is the root of all evil" to the farmer's wife. Country girls are seldom influenced by worldly considerations in their choice of a husband. The country boy cares little for gold or lands; all he wants is a wife. He is the original hero of the story told of the youth who married with only sixpence in his pocket, and then tried to have his father take the sixpence, as he had got all he should ever want in this world. It is a common custom to give a girl a cow and a feather bed when she marries, and the youth who works for his father until he is twenty-one usually receives a team. With these and little more they begin the labor of housekeeping on a rented farm, one-third of the produce of which comes to them for their toil. It must be an exceptionally good year, or prices must be very high, owing to wars or complete failure of crops in other parts (in which calamities farmers learn to take a ghastly comfort), if the farm affords much more than a bare subsistence. A few buy land on easy terms of

their parents. In the East the oldest, and in the West the youngest son generally stays on the old homestead, but he looks with envy on the brothers who were free to choose, and his wife undergoes trials, different indeed, but quite equal to those of the pioneer. Their eyes turn longingly towards that country which their fancy paints as

"The land of mighty rivers,

Running over sands of gold."

As a rule, the longer they stay in their native country the poorer they become, until, sooner or later, they pluck up courage, and in a covered wagon, or as they call it, a prairie schooner, they start for the West. The most eastern states for these pioneers are Iowa and Minnesota. The next are Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas, which are now the chief objective points. After the land is selected, the work of house-building falls on the man, and must be done from such materials as are cheapest. Stone, logs, adobe and sods are used, according to the locality, but in the very states where nature holds out her hand most cordially to the immigrant, the soil and climate render it possible that man may simulate the habits of the lower orders of animals and burrow in

the ground. The dug out, to be known, must be seen. I remember standing in one just twice the size of an ordinary bed. One end was not dug as low as the rest, and on this earth lay a woman dying of pneumonia. But they are not all like this. As a temporary shelter they may be made comfortable, are frequently plastered, have glass windows in front and ventilation above; and it is no uncommon thing to find books, music and refined people in them. Let me give you an extreme but authentic instance of this. A superintendent of schools had occasion to stop at a Nebraska dug-out. He found to his astonishment a silver bell and plate on the door. In answer to his ring the door was opened by a neatly-dressed lady, and when he entered the room he found there a Chickering piano, elegant furniture and every indication of refinement. She told him that her husband was a merchant from Philadelphia who had come west to retrieve his fortune by farming. He sent for his wife when his home, as he called it, was ready, and she, not knowing what she was coming to, had brought the best of her furniture with her. Some of the most prominent citizens and many of the wealthiest farmers have lived in the dug-outs and sod houses in the first days of their poverty, but as the native gophers and ground squirrels leave their burrows in the budding spring, such people always come up into the free air and sunshine in the earliest dawn of a brightening prosperity. These places, unhealthy and gloomy at the best, are ruinous to mind and body if long inhabited. Yet there are men and women, degenerated into mere animals, who dwell in these holes after they are infested with mice and vermin, and who even learn to like them and to be like them.

One familiar only with the comfortable homesteads of the east can form no conception of what farming is to the western woman. The houses are small, inconvenient, and finished only by degrees. She has few facilities to make easy her care for her household, her cows and poultry. The fuel is not under cover, the water is hard to draw. Her work is heavy through lack of conveniences. The extensive farms of the west are often an injury to the woman. in many ways. The farmer is so busy that he has no time to do the needed jobs around the house and yard. To harvest the

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large amount of grain, the farmer needs much machinery and help, and to obtain these the stinting is done in the house. Too often the farmer makes household economy so much the more necessary by his carelessness. The farm machinery is not properly housed. An expensive harvester or threshing machine, that will cramp the family long to pay for, is exposed to the weather the year round. Then it wears out quickly, and giving way when most needed, causes delay and expense. This is one of the many avoidable reasons why poverty is so severe and continued in many farmers' homes. When the land is bought and not homesteaded, there are the payments to be met, and until the land is clear, the farmer feels that nothing must be expended for comfort. in the house.

Debt and poverty demand many sacrifices. I have known del icately nurtured women to part with their relics of former times, and even their superfluous clothing, to procure the necessaries of life. I have known them, when sickness has laid its hand on the husband, take his place in looking after the stock and outside interests, while caring for him and the little family, alone and unhelped. I have known them endure discomforts aud privations of every sort, and still keep heart under the daily round of toil and self-denial, because it was done for home, the children and the better time coming.

But many have not this courage and strength, and as the years go by, they lose hope and affection. There is an old adage that "When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window," and this is too often the case with the farmer's wife. Sometimes the girlish preference she thought was love fails to stand these trying tests, and separation ensues. Divorces are frightfully common among the farmers of the west.

Another cause of unhappiness is overwork. This ill pertains chiefly to the transition state between poverty and plenty. Given certain stages of prosperity, and the woman's work is largely increased. More stock, more grain and fruit, more help to the farmer; all these mean more work to the farmer's wife. She She can seldom procure help, for such as there is, naturally seeks the town.

If a girl goes to a country neighbor