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IN THE SBUMMERG OF MY GHILOHOOO,AND ITS CHARM
ANO MYSTERY LINGER STILL”
THE JOURNAL OF A
COUNTRY WOMAN
BY
EMMA WINNER ROGERS
$3
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NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
Copyright, to12, by
-EMMA WINNER ROGERS
To
Henry Wade Rogers
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Tue Woop Lot—PHOTOGRAVURE.............+++++.-Frontispiece ~
Factnc PAGE
DHE GREEN) SIDE) OF THE (PALISADES Ja; shccs cas ce cess Soe cee, MTOM
“THE Otp HomMeEstEaAD—Was BUILT ABOUT 1758”.......... I9V
A DutcH CoLoNIAL FARMHOUSE IN OuR NEIGHBORHOOD.... 29
THE ROAD TO THE STATION..... Stans Octal oval Core ae oS ae 30 4
ACNE wo MEMBER OF: THE ANIL .\....5. siccs ics os oe cinienieenleas 43 |
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THe END oF THE ROAD........ Stress orale ysis vette ia tehataevonne &o
Tue O.upest Houses IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.............. 85
Partor CUPBOARD OF AN OLp DuicH FARMHOUSE IN THE
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Hp, CENTURY-AND-A-HALF OLD: TWN. oc ee. ee clénn cece se 103 t
FOREWORD
THE delight of living near to nature, among
green and growing things, sunrise and sunset
within our horizon, is an end sufficient in itself.
There is an added happiness and value in the
founding of a country home which shall pass
from generation to generation of our successors.
It must appeal to thoughtful men and women
now that the search for physical and mental
health has become a nation’s business.
The restlessness of the average family, moy-
ing from house to house or apartment to apart-
ment, always dissatisfied but ever hopeful of
better and healthier environment, is proof of the
need of a permanent foothold in the country as
the abiding place of the family, where all go-
ings forth ‘‘to see life,” as Bunty’s brother puts
it, may end happily and safely.
While the world revolves we can never escape
toil and trouble, cares and fears, but we can get
strong and free and joyful in the country, ready
to bear our burdens with smiling faces and
steady nerves. With our children, our friends,
our dogs, our kindly domestic animals, and our
household treasures about us we can grow into
5
FOREWORD
the likeness of the ideal man and help on the
material and moral welfare of the race.
I am indebted for several of the photographs
to Mr. George Taylor, Miss Matilda L. Haring,
and Mrs. Tallman, all neighbors of the Old
Homestead and descendants of the earliest
settlers. E. W. R.
THE JOURNAL OF A
COUNTRY WOMAN
Allons! Whoever you are, come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first;
Nature is incomprehensible at first.
Be not discouraged; keep on; there are divine things
well enveloped,
swear to you there are divine things more beautiful
than words can tell. —Whitman.
Marcu First. If I were to the manner born,
keeping a journal would never occur to me, I
suppose, for all these brimming country days
would be second nature and not take hold as
they do of my inner consciousness and photo-
graph themselves there as red-letter days, too
fair to be forgotten. No, I belong to that in-
creasing company who are the country’s by
adoption, and have come back to it after a few
generations of tasting the fruit outside the
Garden of Eden. To tell the truth, getting
back has been pretty nearly as hard as if real
cherubim with real flaming swords—whatever
they may be—stood on guard to prevent a re-
turn. The true tug of war is that one realizes
so fully—at least I do—the tremendous allure-
ment of the city, the joy of its constant human
fellowship and codperation, the stimulus of all
7
THE JOURNAL OF;
the spiritual and intellectual forces of the city.
Multitudes in the country are continually re-
sponding to this appeal and to the city’s more
material attractions, and leaving the country,
until where we have come, as in every real
country neighborhood, the signs are unmis-
takable of the countryside missing its native
fostering children.
I remember Lester F. Ward said a few years
ago about this ruralization of the city popula-
tions and urbanization of the country popu-
lations that both were due to the general fact
that rural conditions can only be appreciated
through culture, while in the present state of
society, culture can only be acquired at centers
of population. He would admit, of course, how
everything has wrought in the past few years
to stimulate and broaden country life, how
closely it has come into touch with the city’s
progressive life, and the city with the country’s
boundless gifts of health and beauty and wisdom.
Yet his words are not so far from the truth even
now. ‘The country dweller seeks the keener life
and fuller opportunities of the town by a law
as" instinctive as that which draws the over-
stimulated urbanite to an atmosphere where
he can invite his soul and renew his relations
with nature and with animal life.
8
A COUNTRY WOMAN
Perhaps the sound and sane way of life is
the old-world one of making the real home, the
permanent family home, in the country, and
going to the town a few weeks or months of the
year. This has always had followers here
among those having an opportunity of choice.
I was not venturesome enough to cut myself
off completely from the complex life that is
second nature to me. I hear people talk of
burning their bridges behind them, and it has
its advantages, but I am not made up on that
plan. I am no “plunger,” to use a board of
trade euphemism. I like to see my way out—
or perhaps I ought to say more justly, I want
the earth—the joy and health and loveliness of
the blessed country, and a little share in the
city’s inspirations and intimate fellowships. I
have simply turned about my usual method of
life and shall live the greater part of the year
in the country, making it a permanent home,
and if the work and the animals permit, shall
stay in town two or three months in mid-
winter.
The things I wanted to do and never found
time for I mean to do now, and one of them is
to keep a journal of events and impressions of
daily life, a little record of the passing show we
call living; and living is so real and vital in the
9
THE JOURNAL OF
country! We are in touch with elemental
things. Brief, bare record of events I tried to
keep, but there are long intervals when life
was fullest that are all blank pages. To keep
a calendar of engagements, and the household
accounts tolerably straight, was nearly all that
swift-flying time permitted in the day’s work.
Here there is time for an occasional peaceful
hour in which to put down in this journal some-
thing about our daily living and thinking in
this new environment. Country days are so
much longer than elsewhere. My frequent so-
journs there had impressed this upon me, and
it was one of the many reasons why I came
“‘back to the soil.’’ I can’t explain the marvel
of it, but just take it blissfully. I have come
where being is more than knowing, and I en-
joy my limitations. I rise in good season, but
the sun is already rejoicing on its way, and the
four-o’clock bird chorus is over and done. The
trees are discoursing gently with the morning
breeze when I go out of doors. The cows have
been in the pasture long enough to be now only
browsing calmly or standing, mild-eyed, chew-
ing their cud and gazing on the green loveliness
of the morning. After breakfast is over and I
have been at work indoors and out a long time,
I glance at the clock to satisfy my conscience
10
A COUNTRY WOMAN
in quitting work now, and lo! it is only ten
o'clock! Two long beautiful hours yet to noon.
And afternoon seems like a lifetime to be lived
through.
Hurried and harried by the rushing days of
the city, here I hug myself in the huge content
that life is long, that there is plenty of time
and I shall catch up with myself and feel the
ease and restfulness which one dreams of or
remembers from the times of childhood.
In the town the hours are winged, as if you
put out your hand to catch a flitting bird and
felt his downy plumage brush your hand as he
slipped away into the distance. It is noon
before one’s work seems well begun. Night
comes down with you breathless from the
effort to get tolerably through the day’s work
and to have a breath and sight of sunlight on
the quieter streets or in the park. Dear coun-
try days—with time enough for everything, how
I rejoice in the endless hours between dawn
and soft darkness!
Marcu EicHtH. We moved to the country
very early, about the middle of February, for
so much needed to be done in settling the home
and adjusting ourselves to the new environment
before the busy season really opens. The coun-
try is wonderful in winter—more solemn and
II
THE JOURNAL OF
still than in spring and summer, but there are
sights and sounds in the skies and forests and
fields that thrill one, and hints of spring come
with the lengthening days of late winter. No
matter how snowbound the lawns and meadows,
or icebound the streams and ditches, the earlier
dawns and longer twilights and other cheering
signs sound the note of joyful anticipation to
the nature lover’s heart that the eternal miracle
is brooding within the ancient earth and in due
season will greet us in song and leaf and blos-
som. We sense
The infant harvest breathing soft below
Its eider coverlet of snow.
The bare trees show their strength and grace
and make poignant music with the winter
winds. The dull browns and greens of the
fields contrast with the brilliant skies and crisp
air to make glad one’s heart; or if a soft gray
pall hangs over meadows and woods, it meets
our rainy-day mood and emphasizes our har-
mony with external nature.
“Live thou in nature!’’ sang our people’s
poet, Richard Watson Gilder:
Let the hushed heart take its fill
Of the manifold voice of the trees,
When leafless winter crowns the hill
And shallow waters freeze.
I2
A COUNTRY WOMAN
* Let not one full hour pass
Fruitless for thee, in all its varied length;
Take sweetness from the grass,
Take from the storm its strength.
It was last year’s winter visit to the country
when a fierce February storm worked its wild
will in fields and woods and orchards and on
the highways, snapping off telegraph poles and
great tree limbs, filling the roads with high
drifted snow and hanging twig and branch with
icicles, that suddenly revealed to me the neces-
sity of living in the country and decided me to
go back to the soil before I must go finally to
mingle with and become a part of it.
If the storm had not settled it for me, the
glory and shining beauty of the day after would
inevitably have done so. That next morning
was as we dream the celestial country may be.
It was marvelous Nature in her wedding gar-
ments when the sun began to touch the ice-
laden trees and bushes and the white beauty
of the fields.
The air was crystalline, the skies clear winter
morning blue, the trees weighted and broken
with their burden of glinting, opalescent ice,
reflecting every beam of sunlight, each twig
sparkling in rainbow colors. One breathed in
from that keen, untainted, sun-pierced atmos-
phere a new delight in mere living and breath-
13
THE JOURNAL OF
ing; a high joy mingled with praises for soul
and sense to feel the divine beauty of life as a
whole.
Yet I confess the storm and its sequence
were but the occasion of my decision, for the
thought of making a country home had been
revolving in my mind a long time, growing
apace and fostered by the possibility and hope
of sometime getting possession of my grand-
father’s old homestead, so full of childhood’s
memories of long summer visits year after year
and of outdoor delights.
It is amazing strange how our lives are in-
fluenced by haunting early memories which
build themselves into our mature plans and
purposes. The man of large affairs, appar-
ently guiltless of sentiment, dreams of boyhood
days in the country, of green lanes and running
brooks and woods paths and resolves to live
again in his boyhood happy land. The sim-
plicity and sincerity of his country life, with
its environment of natural beauty, its intimate
relations with animal life, its touch of mystery
from being at the source of things, stay with
him as an ideal of the true life to which all his
work and ambition will pay the tribute of sur-
render some sane day.
The child determines the man in many
14
A COUNTRY WOMAN
subtle ways, and it is by no chance that much
of the world’s creative work is done by those
who have lived their early life close to nature
and amid simple conditions. It is every child’s
right to be born and raised in the country, and
failing this, to live there as much as possible
during the earliest years. Other environing
impressions fade .or exert comparatively small
leavening power, but the purling of a shallow
brook over shining stones and through sedgy
grasses will sing forever in his memory. The
odor of newly turned sod or of the clover-
scented hay in the fields will remain and stir
a whole world of glad and simple memories.
And the beauty and reality of a world with
flowers, and trees, and birds, and green hills,
and low-lying pastures with brown browsing
cattle, will live on in the child and the man as
voices from the kingdom of God.
Finding a country home is one of the diffi-
culties which discourage a good many people
who want to make their homes in the country
for all or part of the year. Mine was ready to
hand, and none of the finer country houses,
larger acreages or more beautiful views or en-
vironments made me swerve a hair’s breadth
in my choice. I could afford to smile at the
tribulations of my farm-hunting friends, at
15
THE JOURNAL OF
their disappointments and disillusionments, for
my country home held all of the past for me,
and all its timbers and its very soil were
precious—the quaint old well, the great walnut
trees on the lawn, the back brook with its
wobbly bridge, the butternut tree by the front
brook—yes, and all the neighborhood, with its
picturesque Dutch colonial homes, its nearby
unspoiled and unchanged villages, and the
green side of the Palisades looming up in front.
To settle anywhere in the country hasn’t
half the charm or the chance of success as to
have some sentimental or practical reasons for
choosing a certain locality and environment.
Not being farmers or gardeners by inheritance
or training, the pure cultivation of the soil by
greenhorns is likely to be disappointing and
expensive, and the primitive conditions and
comparative isolation are more than likely to
be the undoing of the new country dweller. It
is much the wiser to choose a region which has
some associations for one, if that is possible,
even if no old homestead opens its welcoming
doors, or to go near where a few congenial
friends have gone. Above all, it is wisdom to
go with a lot of sentiment, a big supply of con-
tent, and an abiding determination to fit into
the life joyfully and resourcefully.
16
GREEN SIDE OF THE PALISADES
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-‘2 er :
A COUNTRY WOMAN
Everything seemed to combine finally to
make my dreams of country life come true.
My lord and master found his work would
permit of several months of country life with-
out let or hindrance and going back and forth
in other months would not be too burdensome.
The quiet of the country would be a boon to
me in my own work and leave some time for
me to farm besides. Then we both realized we
should get enough of joy and health and length
of days from the change to much more than
compensate for minor inconveniences and even
the surrendering of some ties and associations.
Our two nieces, Amelia and Angelica, who
spend much time with us, adore the country,
and while they are both in college now, will be
factors in making the country home festive and
in sharing, too, its work and responsibilities,
being girls with sensible training. I have tried
to impress them with the value, not only of a
sound general education, and of the minor
graces and accomplishments, but also with the
wisdom of fitting for definite work in the world
in addition to being good housekeepers. Every
girl who isn’t stupid and who has proper home
training can be a reasonably good housekeeper
by the time she is eighteen, or before she enters
college. Amelia is taking the full college course
17
THE JOURNAL OF
in agriculture at Cornell University, and An-
gelica is at Dickinson College and expects to
go into Settlement work.
One of our house servants, a faithful colored
man who has been with us twenty years, needed
the country for health reasons and has come
with us. He can’t adapt himself easily to
changed conditions, but time will help, and so
our household is sure of not being entirely
servantless. For just this is held up as the ter-
ror of country life, and we are prepared for the
worst, but willing to run the risk.
The Old Homestead was the home of my
maternal grandfather and is in Jersey’s lovely
Hudson valley, not too remote from the great
city. My grandfather had lived the city life
of his day, and had been drawn to make a
summer home in this quiet valley by his child-
hood memories of it when his parents had fled
there from New York during the Revolutionary
War and made it a temporary home. In middle
life he quitted business and city life after a
successful and satisfying career and made his
permanent home here to the end of his long
and serene life. He had purchased “all that
Messuage and Dwelling or Mansion house and
three lots of land,’ as the old deed has it, of a
descendant of one of the old Dutch settlers.
18
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«Qo41 LNOIV LTING SVM—dVAISAWOH ATO AHL,,
A COUNTRY WOMAN
The tract of land of which this was a part had
been granted by Governor Dongan in 1687, to
Dr. George Lockhart, a London physician, and
covered over three thousand acres. A few years
later this great tract was sold to a group of well-
to-do Dutch and Huguenot settlers, who di-
vided it, established substantial homes and
fruitful farms, and whose descendants still
occupy a large part of it. If one thing in this
changing world is more helpful and delightful
than another, it is to see and to live among
such evidences of permanence as this. The
neighboring townships for miles around were
all settled at the same or an earlier date by
the Dutch and Huguenot colonists, to whom
were patented tracts of land of from one to
three thousand acres, which they divided ami-
cably among themselves and proceeded to lay
out in farms and gardens, and to build of en-
during stone their comfortable Dutch colonial
farmhouses. On both sides of my grand-
father’s place houses of just this type stand,
and in the one on our right live the descendants
of the fine old Dutch settler from whom he
bought his ‘Mansion house and three lots of
land.”
The Old Homestead was built about 1758,
and is in the Dutch Colonial style with some
19
THE JOURNAL OF
changes of later years. The first story is of
stone covered with stucco, and the second
of frame with overhanging roof and dormer
windows. My grandfather added a wing to
the house, and the old stone separate kitchen
was taken down at that time, but a big brick
oven was built out from the more modern
kitchen, and as a child I remember seeing the
bread and pies and cakes drawn out from this
oven by a long-handled wooden implement not
unlike the wooden snow-shovel of to-day.
The kitchen fireplace is immense; a smaller
one is in the big dining room and there are
great fireplaces in the sitting room and the
parlor. Everything is simple, strong, and sub-
stantial, and the house is set upon a gentle rise
some distance from the road, as the Dutch loved
to place their homes with a sloping lawn and a
large garden to the south. About twelve acres
of land surround it, running back to a wood
lot.
Here my grandfather founded a real home
and lived a real and joyful and _ beneficent
life. In the mountain cemetery of the nearby
beautiful river village his ashes repose and my
great-grandfather’s, with many of their chil-
dren and grandchildren.
The inviolability of the home and the sacred-
20
A COUNTRY WOMAN
ness of the family hearth-fire are among the
traditions we need especially to cherish in our
modern life. The vast old Dutch-tiled fire-
places in this old home seem to call me to keep
the hearth-fires burning, and to-night the big
back-log in the fireplace reddens with the fire-
light around which the same family has gath-
ered for a hundred years.
“In the country,” writes Charles W. Eliot,
‘St is quite possible that a permanent family
should have a permanent dwelling. To pro-
cure, keep, and transmit such a homestead is a
laudable ambition.’”’ And this country life in
a permanent home he names as a most im-
portant means of perpetuating good family
stocks in a democracy.
Marcu TWELFTH. We are having fine sunny
days and I have taken the opportunity to
tramp all over the place, and make some plans
about its division into fields for certain crops
and to decide what needs to be done in the way
of repairing fences, opening ditches, and clear-
ing up the wood lot. A lovely wide brook runs
across the entire place back from the house
about two fields. There are deep, dark places
in the brook, and old trees line its banks and a
wagon bridge crosses it. A few trout flourish in
it, and as I know the State furnishes fish for
2I
THE JOURNAL OF
stocking streams, I shall apply and stock our
brook. I remember catching an eel in the
brook when I was about six years old, and being
so scared with its weight and appearance that I
handed the pole and line very unceremoniously
to an older cousin, who succeeded in landing
the catch.
We have had temporary outdoor help since
we came to the country, but yesterday I en-
gaged a Slav who claims to know how to farm
and garden, and who looks sturdy and clean.
His name is George—I can’t remember the rest
of it on account of the over-numerous conso-
nants. I am to pay him twenty dollars a month
and board and lodge him. There is a frame
kitchen separate from the house with a good
room above, and here George will be lodged.
He is over forty, I should think, and has been
in this country five years, leaving a wife and
three half-grown children in the old country.
He told me with a good deal of pride that he
had sent home over eight hundred dollars to
his family.
I am to be the farmer and the Slav will work
under my direction, and I only hope he has
the disposition and intelligence to carry out
orders faithfully. I am prepared for almost
anything in the way of disappointment, for
22
A COUNTRY WOMAN
every farmer has his tale of woe about farm
labor. We shall probably need another man
through the busy season, and I hope to find an
intelligent young German-American who will be
specially good in the care of the stock and
chickens.
I believe the detailed care which women
are accustomed to give to their usual work
is just what is needed to bring up toa high state
of cultivation the so-called worn-out farms of
the East, and farming seems to me a peculiarly
fitting occupation for women. It is not a new
thing, either, for there have been successful
women farmers and ranchers for a long time, as
well as many women gardeners. I was reading
recently of Henry Clay’s estate at Ashland, Ken-
tucky, of six hundred acres, and the writer said
Clay’s wife was the better farmer of the two and
took entire charge of the estate while Clay was
in public life, and showed a good profit from the
raising of fine stock and the sale of butter, eggs,
and poultry. The United States census of 1900
showed over three hundred thousand women
farmers and gardeners, and I am sure the
number has nearly doubled since, for schools
and colleges in nearly every State in the Union
have in the few years past been training young
women as well as young men for agriculturists.
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THE JOURNAL OF
My summer observations and experiences,
with considerable reading on the subject, have
prepared me fairly well to be the farmer with a
reasonable chance of success. Hired farmers,
as a rule, are a delusion anda snare. The really
well-trained and reliable men turned out by
the agricultural colleges must either go to
farming for themselves or else are snapped up
at high salaries by the owners of big estates,
for they are not to be had by the average well-
to-do farmer. So that unless one of the family
can undertake the farming, and risk learning
how to do it by experimenting, I would strongly
advise keeping away from the country, or from
ownership there. No matter whether your
farm has seven or seventy acres, hiring a farmer
will spoil all your comfort, eat up your profits,
and cause you to beat a hasty retreat cityward.
Besides all the small experiments I had known
of and their failure, friends who owned large
estates and went in for fancy stock and all
kinds of high farming warned me never to try
farming with a hired farmer at the helm. The
only way if one wants some comfort and pleas-
ure, and not too much loss in their country
home investment, is to be your own farmer.
This isn’t much of a farm when it comes to
size, but enough to tax my knowledge and skill,
24
A COUNTRY WOMAN
for I am going to do intensive farming and try
to bring every foot of land finally to a high
state of cultivation, which for me will be more
practical and profitable than to attempt half-
way cultivation of a hundred acres. This plan
has its good citizenship side also, for I shall be
helping to solve the problem of how to furnish
a more abundant food supply for the people at
reasonable prices. Everywhere one hears some
measure of the hard times and high prices laid
to slovenly farming, to growing sixty bushels
of potatoes on an acre which should produce
two hundred, and it is all too true. It is true
also that the farmers are generally too poor to
carry out high cultivation, and alas! if they
don’t carry it out, they as well as the country
are sure to be poorer still.
March 28TH. A real March storm to-day
and no promise of clearing for some time. I
think of the stored-up water in the soil which
this long, cold rain means, and of how it will be
drunk up from below later by the rootlets of
all the plants. This makes the rather dreary
storm seem a cheering event after all, and it is
giving me a chance to adjust myself to the new
environment and new plans, and to realize the
new riches of time for thought and feeling—
for living indeed.
25
THE JOURNAL OF
I begin to realize, too, with some definiteness,
the mental and physical stress and strain under
which I had been living for so long. Yet it was
a life crammed full of real work, and real pleas-
ures and heart-warming friendships. But to
achieve any definite good or usefulness in it
meant a strenuousness of living not compatible
with one’s ideals. Most of the work seemed to
lead nowhere, the pleasures were crowded in
and hurried through breathlessly, and the
friendships were suffering for the refreshment
of renewal by leisure and thought and contact.
They lived on famishingly, but seemed to say,
“We would be a source of upspringing joy and
inspiration were there but time.”
I have a real admiration and respect for
one of my city circle who said she long ago
made up her mind to live for and with her
friends. And she does this and is apparently a
happy woman and a joy and comfort to her
friends.
But not all of us could settle on something
wise and delightful and say, “This one thing I
do.”” She is unmarried and has a competence.
Then she must have great singleness of pur-
pose and force of character to choose and stick
to a single purpose in life amid such a bewilder-
ment of paths appealing to us to walk therein.
\ 26
A COUNTRY WOMAN
For most of our circle the home, society,
philanthropy and social reform, church life and
work, and some chosen individual work or
career for ourselves, all made such insistent
demands in our lives that we compromised by
trying to respond to all or most of these de-
mands as well as we could, and flesh and spirit
were inadequate to it.
This reminds me of an English critic’s recent
estimate of our American life, G. Lowes Dickin-
son. To soften the blow he relates it as a sort
of vision appearing to him when, after seeing
the wonders of Niagara and while sitting on a
bench by the swift-running river, a voice re-
peated over and over—he could see no face—
“All America is Niagara. Force without direc-
tion, noise without significance, speed without
accomplishment!’ Which dream, of course,
needs a spiritual interpretation.
The inner circle of like-minded souls among
us understand that we are in a transition stage
for all highly civilized humans, and especially
for womankind, who must manage and adjust
the complex business of the home and social
life and share largely also in the broad thought
and work of the outside world.
To simplify one’s life so that the best is pos-
sible, both in the making of a home and in
27
THE JOURNAL OF
sharing the work and uplift of the world life, is
the problem we are to work out. I think it is
Bliss Carmen who says, ‘‘Simplicity consists in
freedom from overmuch possession,’’ and adds:
“It is not good for you to live richly in cities,
because it is hard to deny yourself. . . . You
must think of the luxury of freedom, so you will
enter into possession of yourselves; and you
will be glad and free and creative and strong.”
We can do away with half the problems, so
called, of modern life by going back to the
country, taking with us the real gold of modern
life and leaving the dross. What a brainless
thing for everybody to crowd into the cities,
thereby making the social and civic problems
of city life, and then stay there spending much
of their lives in trying to help solve them!
Better lead the way back to the country and
solve in this way a real part of our own and the
city’s problems.
Aprit Firtn. The daffodils have poked their
flat green shoots far above ground, and to my
delight they are in clumps half-way down one
side of the lawn as they used to be when I came
here as a child. The look and odor of those
daffodils stand out as clearly to me as when
they bloomed afresh here. To me there is no
flower more bewitching and suggestive. No
28
7 ‘
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‘
Se
ble wat FM
FARMHOUSE IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD
A DUTCH COLONIAL
A COUNTRY WOMAN
color or odor of flowers ever seems so pure and
perfect. They come so early and seem so hardy
and joyful, with the promise of the summer in
their lovely fragrance and color. The old
garden has a bed of them too and of tulips and
hyacinths. The stored-up sweetness of mother
earth is in the odors of these early flowers, so
rich and wonderful in color and form. The
blessed things do not need to be pampered like
frailer flowers, but make their way up through
the rich loam of old gardens in strong, swaying
bunches or on old-fashioned lawns, seeming re-
lated to and harmonious with the green grass
beside them.
There are no crocuses about, but I shall plant
the bulbs in the best cleared part of the wood
lot, and lily bulbs too. The land there is rather
low and moist, and it is almost a woods garden
now with quantities of ferns, native orchids,
and other wonderful woods and swamp flowers.
When all this region was owned by the early
Dutch settlers I can fancy that their orderly
gardens were gay with the blooms of fine Dutch
bulbs brought or sent over from the mother
country, the land of famous bulbs. And I want
to have as nearly as I can what the Dutch
settlers and their earliest successors had, and
to live much as they did, continuing newer
29
THE JOURNAL OF
customs only where they are greatly superior
to the old ones. We have given up so much
in our modern hurry and worry which we
should always have kept, and which people
with souls are gradually getting back to.
The old garden is much as it was long ago,
lying on a gentle slope toward the south. A
long pathway leads down the middle to the very
end, with a grape arbor over some distance of
the middle of the path and borders for flowers
on both sides. A great walnut tree stands in
the lower left-hand corner of the garden, and as
nothing would grow in the shade of this tree,
we children made it one of our play spots and
also a burying ground for unfortunate birds.
Not far from this we had tiny gardens of our
own, and there was much rivalry as to the
products of these gardens.
The hotbed was in the upper left-hand
corner of the garden, and there we shall have it
again, and grow the plants to set out in the
garden. There is a greenhouse iess than two
miles away, where one can go to piece out
failures, and we shall doubtless need to pat-
ronize it. Wonderful rhubarb, the big kind,
used to grow in the garden, and thick-stalked
asparagus, peas tender and sweet as we never
get them from the markets, and many other
30
A COUNTRY WOMAN
vegetables, besides luscious strawberries and
raspberries and blackberries, and currants and
gooseberries. The garden has been fairly well
kept, and by setting out and renewing certain
things we shall have a fine and fruitful garden
after a year or two, and a very good one even
this season.
The flower beds were along the front fence
of the garden as borders, and the only flowers
I remember in these are the old-fashioned ones,
peonies, tall phlox, johnnie-jump-ups, pinks, and
roses, especially a lovely moss rose. A great
lilac bush grew by the garden fence on the lawn
and there it is still, only taller and more spread-
ing. Near the house were bushes of exquisite
yellow roses that seemed to bloom all the sum-
mer long, and a climbing single red rose went
up to the second story windows on the garden
side of the house. Such roses are still found in
neighboring old gardens, and I shall plant them
where they used to grow. The stone walls of
the north side of the house are grown over
with English ivy.
I have had George the Slav plow the left
side of the garden and the lower half of the
right side and break up the clods with the spade
and then rake it all over until the ground is
smooth and the soil fine enough to rub through
31
THE JOURNAL OF
one’s hands and find no big lumps. This has
taken several days and was preceded by put-
ting on a thick layer of fine barnyard manure.
The success of the garden depends so much
on this preliminary work. The rest will have
to be spaded up, as there are many roots and
plants which must not be disturbed. This part
of the garden was heavily mulched in the
autumn, and when the coarser mulch is raked
off and the roots and berry bushes dug around,
it will be in order, and as the days pass the
rhubarb will be spreading its pale green, curled-
up leaves on the soft ground, preparatory to
shooting up big pink-lined stalks, and later the
asparagus tips coming up swiftly out of the
earth, the strawberry leaves putting on a
brighter green, and all the bushes and roots
busy day by day with the task of putting on
their beautiful spring garments, and maturing
blossoms and fruit. This is the part of the
garden which seems almost human in its
helpfulness, and gives joy and fruitage while
we are toiling and moiling over the planting
and tending of tiny seeds elsewhere in the
garden.
APRIL FIFTEENTH. There is a lot in heredity
when it comes to plant life, whatever may be
the case with humans. It is economy to buy
32
A COUNTRY WOMAN
your garden seed from trustworthy seedsmen.
I have studied the catalogues of two of the
best houses and selected what I believe we can
grow satisfactorily in this particular garden. I
shall have it planted in long rows, instead of
beds, and about eighteen inches to two feet
apart, so that the hand or horse cultivator can
do most of the cultivating. Otherwise it would
take the whole time of one man to take care of
the garden. A week ago I had George the Slav
sow long rows of spinach in the mellow earth,
and to-day radishes, lettuce, and early beets,
and put out a row of little onion sets. Later he
will plant beans, peas, and corn, and then later
still will come the setting out of early cabbage,
tomatoes, peppers, and cauliflower and cucum-
ber plants which are now well started in the
hotbeds. Then will come the daily endless
cares of the garden, a delight as well as a task,
and a task adapted to the abilities of every
member of the family and warranted to renew
the health of the fortunate laborers.
George the Slav might be a good deal worse
than he is, and I try to bear this in mind while
I watch and direct him. He has the will of a
mule, and it takes tact and moral force to per-
suade him to do things my way rather than his
own. He thinks he knows how, and pretends
33
THE JOURNAL OF
he doesn’t understand my orders, but by fol-
lowing him up and persisting and insisting on
his doing as I direct, he finally yields. He is
very quick, strong, and quite thorough, so
much so that there was danger of things being
dug up by the roots, rather than gently spaded
among; but he is learning, and if we can spend
much time telling and watching him, he will do
very well. He knows a good deal about farming,
and has plowed and harrowed anacreof ground
and sowed it to oats and cow-peas for an early
fodder crop.
May TENTH. It is amazing and refreshing to
notice the general exodus of city people to
make their homes in the country. No doubt the
movement is accelerated this year by the early
spring and the very high cost of living in town.
But the same thing has been going on for
years among increasing numbers—the giving up
of restricted and expensive quarters in the city
and choosing a home with few or many acres
in the country. The suburban movement pre-
ceded it and continues unabated. But going to
the real country is infinitely more interesting,
wholesome, and economical. Suburban life lacks
the stimulus of city life and is generally incon-
venient and expensive. It is real wisdom for
the overcrowded tenement dweller to get a little
34
A COUNTRY WOMAN
home in a suburb, but a country home with at
least a few acres is far more satisfactory for the
well-to-do city dweller.
This general movement back to the soil is
not a mere fad or passing sentiment. It is a
return to normal life which has been largely
eclipsed in the last few decades by the mad
rush for material gain, by the marvelous inven-
tions in machinery, causing a revolution in
manufacturing, through which labor was drawn
out of the homes and small shops into great
factories. A reaction was sure to come. This
love for the soil, for nearness to nature and
animal life is a too deeply rooted instinct to be
permanently lost. And the new recognition of
the health, long life, and serenity of soul which
follows living near to nature and breathing un-
tainted air has hastened the return to the
country and renewed the interest of the wise
in the pursuit of agriculture. It is a return, in
a sense, to the faith of the fathers, and to their
practice, too. It was Thomas Jefferson who
said, ‘‘Those who labor in the earth are the
chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen
people.”” And Washington went joyfully from
the presidency of the United States to the re-
tirement of his great Virginia estate with the
desire to spend his remaining days there in farm-
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THE JOURNAL OF
ing. He accepted the Presidency as a stern and
necessary duty, but his expressed ambition was
to be the leading farmer of America. Washing-
ton Irving says of him, ““Throughout the whole
existence of his career, agricultural life appears
to have been his beau ideal of existence, which
haunted his thoughts even amid the stern
duties of the field, and to which he recurred with
unflagging interest whenever enabled to indulge
his natural bias.’”’ What an uplift in our public
life it would mean if its leaders to-day had
something of Washington’s poise, serene dig-
nity, and sound appreciation of the true relative
values of things!
Those were the days when the large majority
of our people lived and worked in the country.
We were an agricultural people with the growing
power to supply ourselves and most of the world
with the chief essentials of life. For fifty years
past the trend has been constantly cityward
and factoryward. The growth of manufac-
tures has not been left to develop according to
need and to our superior natural advantages,
but a high tariff policy against foreign manu-
factures has hastened us into a great manufac-
turing people with the working people shut up
in factories, foundries, and shops, and the
managers, superintendents, and capitalists in
36
A COUNTRY WOMAN
offices, shops, and city homes. The workers
are huddled together in dreary, unsanitary tene-
ments under the shadow of the factories and
foundries, and a ceaseless tide of poverty-
stricken though energetic foreigners have by
millions recruited our labor class, and compli-
cated our social problem.
We are now an amalgamated nation of ‘‘all
sorts and conditions of men” from every land,
and our cities are the despair of publicists.
With the increasing struggle for life, and
with the growth of this renewed love of
nature and appreciation of the freedom and
health of country life, the tide seems to be
turning toward this sane and normal life. But
not on the part of the people who need it most.
The overcrowded tenement dweller with his big
family is held by stern conditions, or often by
preference, to his city environment. It is the
educated, the professional and business classes
which chiefly are returning to the country.
This last fact begins to complicate pretty
seriously the farmers’ trying problem of farm
help. This is the country’s problem now, how
to secure an adequate supply of trained labor
to cultivate the land. Science applied to farm-
ing makes a certain skill and training necessary
for the farm laborer, and the lack of such help
37
THE JOURNAL OF
sends many farmers back to the towns dis-
couraged.
The present high prices are credited partly
to our defective agricultural conditions. Mr.
James J. Hill says they are due to a shortage of
farm products, and that this is caused by the
lack of scientific and progressive methods of
farming. Secretary of Agriculture Wilson says
too many people are trying to get along without
working, and there are not enough in the busi-
ness of producing something; that there are not
enough farmers and too many agents for the
distribution of food products, and that there
are too few farm laborers because of this class
of men flocking to the cities. It is absolutely
certain that scarcity of farm labor curtails
largely the production of the farms, and that
little of the labor to be had is intelligent and
skillful enough for modern farming.
So we have come into a world of activity
which has its own problems and needs just as
the city has, and even more vital and interest-
ing. It is highly important that intelligent
people should come back to the land and help
to solve some of these problems. I believe too
that the great development of agricultural
schools in many universities, the teaching along
these lines in elementary schools, the growth of
38
ee
NOILVIS FHL OL dvou AHL
A COUNTRY WOMAN
farmers’ institutes and granges, and especially
the government’s activity through the Depart-
ment of Agriculture, will speedily help to im-
prove conditions in the country and bring up
the products per acre to somewhere near the
standards of England, Holland, France, and
other lands now so far ahead of us.
May TWENTIETH. There are charming drives
in this region, and none more so than the road
to the station. This is especially fortunate, for
I frequently take this drive twice daily in tak-
ing my lord and master to the station and
bringing him home. It is less than two miles,
and is more like a natural park than a simple
country road. The fences are covered for long
distances with wild honeysuckle and other
vines, and the air is laden with delicious fra-
grance. In the early morning, when we go to
make the seven-thirty train, the world is in-
describably lovely, the trees in their first pale
green verdure, the apple blossoms making a
pink and white glory in the old roadside or-
chards, the nearby fields so green and velvety,
and the distant hills just coming out clearly
from the blue mists of the early morning. And
the late afternoon drive has charms of its own
almost as moving.
' May TwWENTY-FIFTH. The stocking and
39
THE JOURNAL OF
equipping of even a little farm is a very im-
portant matter if success in farming is one’s
aim, and it is an expensive undertaking, too,
in these days of soaring prices. In spite of the
vogue of motor cars for both business and
pleasure, the prices for horses have steadily
advanced, and horses are indispensable for the
farm.
I have bought a substantial team of young
work horses and a good driving horse, not a
fancy one. I shall indulge in no extravagances,
but the essentials will cost a considerable pile
of money, and it remains to be seen whether
my farming and gardening will pay a reason-
able interest on the cost of the plant. It is
quite stirring to think about this home in the
country being a business venture, and I am
spurred to get up mornings at daybreak hours
to speed on the good work. I am beginning to
think the life here not so much less strenuous
than in the city, only so much more worth
while and physically stimulating.
I want a team of oxen very much, for old
times’ sake, and because they are such gentle,
friendly creatures, and strong, moving as if
there were plenty of time to live and work.
But it seemed wiser to postpone indulging this
desire until I was well started in farming, or
40
A COUNTRY WOMAN
at least until I had time to look up the practi-
cal value of these poetic creatures.
A farm wagon, station wagon, and a run-
about, a plow, harrow, cream separator, small
gasoline engine, harnesses, and varieties of
farm and garden tools, are some of the many
things I have had to buy, and every day de-
velops a new need. Instead of “shopping,” I
make weekly pilgrimages to the agricultural
implement store in the neighboring town and
feel very much at home among the polished
plows and hanging rakes and hoes, and the
multitude of solid and attractive tools and
machines in the big store. I am thinking of
having this motto hung up in the barn: ‘‘Take
care of the tools and the tools will take care
of you.”’” Farm machinery and tools are shame-
fully abused on the average farm; left to dry
out or rust or get broken, and their usefulness
sadly damaged by this carelessness, not to speak
of the loss of their beauty. I have had put up
by our village carpenter a model machine and
tool house, after my own design, with hooks
and shelves and every convenience for all the
machinery and tools likely to be needed on this
small place, and have made a rule that every
machine must be kept in its place and every
hoe, rake, spade, shovel, scythe, sickle, or any
41
THE JOURNAL OF
tool whatsoever, must be properly cleaned and
hung on its own particular hook. George the
Slav is not very orderly, but by repeated telling
and showing he is beginning to put things in
their places once in a while. Andreas, the
sixteen-year-old Italian boy whom I have hired
for the busy season, is a marvel of orderliness
and has taken the tool house under his especial
care. He will not go to bed nights until every-
thing is in its place in the tool house and the
door locked. Last night he was wandering
around with his lantern trying to find a miss-
ing hoe, and finally found it on the ground in
the garden where George had left it.
Buying the cows I felt was too important to
trust to my own judgment, for these were to be
the chief maintenance of the farm. So I com-
missioned the expert at the State Agricultural
College to select five Jersey cows for me, two
thoroughbreds, registered, and three high grades,
all to be guaranteed to give thirty pounds or
more of milk daily, testing five and a half per
cent butter fat. These he selected in New York
State on one of the great stock farms. So far the
result is very satisfactory. ‘The cows are beauti-
ful and promise to pay for their board and make
a nice profit besides. They are a continual
source of interest and pleasure. Their feeding
42
MEMBER OF THE FAMILY
A NEW
A COUNTRY WOMAN
is a fine art in a way, with a view to keeping
them slick and healthy while giving an enormous
yield of rich milk. They have nice, comfortable
stalls, well ventilated, plenty of salt and good
water to drink, and twice a day a generous feed
of corn-on-the-cob meal, gluten meal, and wheat
bran, mixed and fed dry, and varied half the
time with cotton-seed meal in place of gluten.
Then all the ‘roughage’ they will eat up clean,
which means hay or cornstalks. We have no
silo as yet, but must build one if I succeed
fairly well with the little farm. A dairy farmer
would say I couldn’t succeed without one.
I find caring for animals is almost like caring
for one’s family. They need comfort and nour-
ishing food, gentle treatment, and considerable
affection and interest if they are to be at their
best. Now that Princess Georgie has a fine
little calf I feel that a new member of the
family has arrived, and many calls and much
attention has greeted the proud mother and
her newborn offspring.
This is the continual miracle of the farm
and the country life, nature’s annual renewal
of the garb of youth, and animal life bringing
forth after its kind with such pride and re-
joicing. Besides the sturdy little calf there are
fifty downy little chicks playing about their
43
THE JOURNAL OF
white-washed coops, and answering to the
clucking of their proud mothers, and half that
number of fluffy, yellow ducklings waddling
about their home inclosure. Then the garden
is a perpetual delight and has been prolific in
asparagus, spinach, and rhubarb, with the
promise of a bountiful supply of good things
as the season advances, and the planted fields
are greened over where a few weeks ago tiny
dry, gray seeds were sown in the dull-brown
earth. In the country we live in the midst of
miracles and there is such an inspiration for
praise and thanksgiving. One seems to have
come into closer contact with realities and
with the Eternal Creator and renewer of life.
JUNE SECOND. The wood lot is now in its
full glory and a treasure house of solitude, quiet
beauty, and perennial joy. The approach to
it is fairly high and dry ground, with scat-
tered trees and a lively growth of the graceful
wild carrot. As you enter its denser growths
your feet must tread on countless wild flowers,
and farther in it is somewhat swampy and the
flowers change to bog grasses, ferns, and water-
loving wild orchids and like-natured plants.
Small as the wood lot is, there is poetry and
peace in it, and I come almost daily to get the
refreshment of it. A wonderful little glade with
44
A COUNTRY WOMAN
a deep, dark spring attracts me oftenest, and as
I cross the brook on the well-worn bridge and
walk up the green slope and down its other
side on the tree-shadowed turf to the spring a
tide of charmed memories rise. For this was
my favorite spot in the summers of my child-
hood, and its charm and mystery linger still.
Then the path from the brook diverged, that
to the right leading to the spring with its
overhanging trees, while the other led to ‘‘the
little red house,’’ a small, deserted house which
took firm hold on my childish imagination and
became the center of interest.
We were never tired of entering the house
by the small front door, or the back door or
through the cellar, and exploring its very
limited interior, and of trying to find out who
had lived here and why it was forsaken. It
was on the edge of the wood and near no road,
but the spring and the brook and the green
glade with near-by woods made it a spot to
weave romances around and stir wonder in
childish minds. The green slopes and the
wood lot are just the same, and the spring and
the brook have lost none of their charm, but
the little red house is gone, and only the foun-
dation stones and shallow cellar mark where
it stood.
45
THE JOURNAL OF
I have some interesting plans for this pic-
turesque spot, but not to be revealed now, for
talking about one’s dreams and plans seems to
prevent their realization. The charm vanishes,
and the energy to bring things to pass fails in
the face of discussion and criticism. My lord
and master, while the most amiable of men
and a joy to live with, is yet somewhat averse
to getting off the beaten track, so if I have any
vagrant plans I develop them quietly, other-
wise his discouraging assumption that it isn’t
worth while might bring them to an untimely
end. If we only undertake what is really and
fundamentally worth while our activities will be
very limited; and then who can say beforehand
what is surely worth while? I have always
longed to be a Quaker and follow “the inner
light.” To do what the spirit moves one to do
is perhaps the nearest intimation one has of the
wisdom of a given way.
JUNE SEVENTH. Coming to live in the coun-
try, one of the first questions to ask oneself is,
What am I going to do for the common life of
the community where I hope to gain so much
for myself? The country needs us far more
than the city we leave, for there are fewer who
can help here and harder conditions have made
people more self-centered. Country life merely
46
A COUNTRY WOMAN
through its comparative isolation is likely to be
more self-centered. Among real country peo-
ple, with the incessant industry of the life
where one thing seems pressing on the heels of
another to be done, neighborliness and com-
munity interests give way before the urgency
of work and need on the farm itself and in the
farm family of humans and animals. I had
noted in my country sojourns how this narrows
the life, and in a sense had seen readily enough
its inevitableness. But I came to the country
determined not to grow so absorbed in my own
affairs as to forget my duty to my neighbor
and community, and I really have no such
excuse for it as the native farmer has.
The city, whether you will or no, trains its
children, save the hopelessly selfish, in co-
operative efforts for the common good. We
leave our personal work to share in the work of
betterment for the city, its schools, playgrounds,
tenements, reformatories, orphanages, settle-
ments, and a score of other helpful agencies, in
one or more of which every good citizen is
enrolled as a helper. Far less of such co-
operative work is needed in the country, and
much less time can be afforded for social and
community interests, for there is no leisure class
in the country. All are at work in one depart-
47
THE JOURNAL OF
ment or another of the farm factory—shall we
call it? And there is no putting off gathering the
harvest when it is ripe, picking the apples before
the windstorm shakes them down, banking the
celery in season, setting out trees or plants when
the soil is right, feeding the stock and poultry
daily, and a hundred other insistent duties of
the country life.
The country needs the development of the
human side, a broader and more stimulating
social life, neighborliness, community interest,
and helpfulness. And it is coming in these
modern days. The true joy of living is to
share in the common life and to be broadened
and uplifted by it. This was the philosophy
and the religion we brought with us to the
country, and it will fit as well here as in the
city.
Now that we are fairly settled and our re-
joicings and congratulations have become more
subdued, my curiosity and conscience are both
awakening to the environment and what it
shall mean to us and we to it. I want to know
all my neighbors and many of the people in
the villages nearest me, especially the people
who may need me, to whom my coming and my
home as a kind of social center shall mean
some help and cheer, an opportunity for real
48
RIVER
THE
AND
PALISADES
THE
_A COUNTRY WOMAN
human relationships. In turn I need their
friendship and experience.
The nearest village is almost entirely Italian,
and made up of agriculturists and a few people
who work in very small artificial flower and
cigar factories right in the little village. The
station master is an intelligent Italian, and the
two or three stores and shops are conducted by
them. There is a small Italian Catholic church,
and a public school full of bright-eyed Italian
children.
Stretching out from the village are tiny
farms of a few acres each, all well cultivated and
with gardens and vineyards about the little
houses. It is a very interesting settlement and
points a way of adopting the Italians into our
civilization without herding them in the tene-
ments of cities. This village is builded where a
few years ago were only level fields and trees
and underbrush.
Another nearby village, and one full of
pleasant childhood associations for me, is a
mile and a half distant, on the winding, park-
like road leading toward the Palisades and the
river. This is pre-Revolutionary and very
quaint, attractive, and unspoiled. Here is our
post office and the village churches, one of
which my grandfather built and worshiped in
49
THE JOURNAL OF
for many years. A beautiful hilly country lies
all about, and among these hills are some fine
estates, but much the same type of people live
in the village as made their homes there of old,
and that is a cause of rejoicing. Itis so good to
have a few unchanged spots, and here the
changes have not been revolutionary, but
merged into the quiet life of the people with-
out transforming the village into a common-
place, up-to-date small town.
My immediate neighbors are the farmers
living on the old places, in quaint, attractive
homes where generations of their ancestors
have lived and worked. Here and there Ger-
man farmers or gardeners have taken the
places of the old settlers, or a city family has
come to the old-time region. No one is rich or
anywhere near it, or likely to be, but there
is an atmosphere about the places and in the
few homes I have come to know that refreshes
one, and speaks of peace and modest plenty,
and of cheer and industry. Good roads and
electric lighting and telephone service have
slipped in quietly but not obtrusively, and one
can go about with the feeling and realization
that the magic chain with the past is not
broken.
“TIME, which changes all things, is but
50
AWOH SNOdHOIEN YOOd-LXUN YANO
A COUNTRY WOMAN
slow in its operations upon a Dutchman’s
dwelling,’”’ says Washington Irving, and his
alluring picture of the quaint, low-eaved farm-
houses of Nieuw Nederlands has a special charm
if one has seen with his own eyes some of
these picturesque survivals of the olden time.
The solidity and picturesque simplicity of
the Dutch colonial farmhouses account for the
numerous survivals of this type of home ar-
chitecture in regions where the growth of
great cities has not leveled all landmarks of
a former time. A restful beauty pervades
these old Dutch farm and village houses, and
in late years frequent copying of the best
features of these homes of our forefathers
evidences a reawakening of artistic feeling and
a latter-day appreciation of the simple life.
I like to think of the sterling virtues of the
Hollanders who brought to a new country
the courage, skill, industry, and love of order
and beauty which had made their own land
the center of European civilization. Their
descendants might well imitate the filial loyalty
of the New Englander and proclaim to the
world the great and important part their Dutch
forefathers had in the settlement of this coun-
try and the founding of the government of the
United States. :
SI
THE JOURNAL OF
Dutch settlement in the middle states of
America occurred in the period of Holland’s
greatest eminence. ‘In every branch of human
industry,’ says Motley, “‘these republicans took
the lead.’”” And Thorold Rogers claims that
the success of Holland’s struggle for liberty
was the beginning of modern civilization—‘‘the
Dutch having taught Europe nearly everything
it knows.”’ Her merchants controlled the com-
merce of the world, the influence of her states-
men and scholars was worldwide, and her broad
tolerance made this small country the refuge
of the oppressed and the persecuted of every
land. At the same time her artists were painting
immortal pictures, and her artist-craftsmen fash-
ioning in silver and gold, in wood and clay and
leather and textiles the beautiful things for
use and adornment that served to make the
home environment of the rich and the poor
artistic.
The institutions and civilization of Holland
left a permanent impress upon the New World
of which too little acknowledgment has been
made. It is rarely that the Dutch blood in
American veins is given its due share of credit
for the sterling traits and esthetic qualities
of the American people. New England has
wisely and zealously investigated, preserved,
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NHHOLIM S YOPHOIAN WOOd-LXAN UNO
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A COUNTRY WOMAN
and published to the world every trace of her
colonial history from archives, historic spots,
architectural remains, ancient furniture and
utensils, and manners and customs, with the
influences that shaped her founding, and those
that went out from her in the shaping of the
nation. It is only in recent years that an
effort to rehabilitate the early history of the
middle states has seriously begun, although
Woodrow Wilson has made bold to say that
‘the local history of the middle states is much
more structurally a part of the nation as a
whole than is the history of New England or
of the several states and regions of the South.”
The Hollanders were the first people to make
home life comfortable, as we understand it, and
they brought to the New World their high
ideal of home. What survivals of the early
settlers and their descendants have come down
to us in their houses, furniture, and utensils,
and in their customs and personal belongings
evidence the comfort and simplicity in which
they lived, and their sense of the value of
the picturesque and the beautiful in their homes
and environment. They chose sightly loca-
tions for their homes, on gently sloping hill-
sides, or by the waterside, with a longing
thought of the mother-land, and even the
53
THE JOURNAL OF
simplest country houses were models of comfort
and quaint homelikeness and excellent workman-
ship, as of a people long past the rude begin-
nings of pioneer life. The low substantial stone
houses were picturesque, and into them went
handwrought timbers and shingles and solid
masonry. Within were immense fireplaces with
Dutch hearth tiles, broad window seats, won-
derful scenic wall paper, and the substantial
furniture brought from Holland. The burnished
metal utensils, the handwrought plate, and
artistic Delft ware added the touch of bright-
ness to the interior. The things they used in
everyday life were artistic and of sound work-
manship, so that to-day what survive of them
is kept in museums and chief rooms and copied
diligently by a generation awakening to the
value of beauty in the common life.
The manor house and the larger town houses
of the Dutch in America were examples of
their more stately home architecture, and the
interiors of these evidenced the richness of
the finishing and furnishing of the time. Very
few of these houses are left, the advancing tide
of business and population having swept them
away at a time when neither art nor historic
remainders held a very high place in New
World civilization. Richard Grant White says
54
A COUNTRY WOMAN
that ‘old New York has been swept out of
existence by the great tidal wave of its own
prosperity.”
But the country regions of certain sections
of the middle states have many delightful old
houses built by the descendants of the first
Dutch settlers, who clung to their native
architecture, native customs and manners, and
to their mother tongue long after the British
had taken possession of the machinery of
government in the Dutch colonies. We find
how deeply the Hollanders had taken root in
the fact that the Dutch language was used in
the Dutch Reformed churches of New York
until 1764, a hundred years after the English
conquest, when they reluctantly adopted the
prevailing tongue, but Dutch was occasionally
used until forty years later. In the country
districts the change to church services in
English was still later. All the services in the
Bergen church (now Jersey City) were in the
Dutch language until 1792, and the singing
continued in Dutch until 1809. The church
register was kept in the same language until
1809. The charming region north of “old
Bergen’? and of New York on both sides of
the Hudson to Albany and beyond, was dotted
with Dutch settlements which preserved their
55
THE JOURNAL OF
original customs, language, and home life to
the beginning of the nineteenth century. Dutch
names predominate even now in large sections
of this Hudson River region.
Many of the Dutch colonial farm and village
houses may still be found on Long Island, and
scattered houses of this type on Staten Island,
and in sections of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and
New Jersey mark the extent of early Dutch
settlements
This region on the west shore of the Hudson,
including Bergen County in New Jersey, and
Rockland and Orange counties in New York,
is perhaps richer than the others in well-pre-
served Dutch colonial farmhouses and ancient
Dutch village churches. Here, too, one finds
something of the old-time atmosphere, and
survivals of quaint Dutch customs. The rural
environment in most of this region, the com-
paratively homogeneous population, descendants
of the early Dutch settlers, the ancient customs
lingering even to the present, the time-worn
gravestones and marvelous church records of
two centuries and more make it possible to
reconstruct in part amid these reminders a
lively picture of farm life in Dutch colonial
days. Some one has advised the student of
architecture to go to Paris via Hackensack,
56
A COUNTRY WOMAN
New Jersey, and it is certain one would carry
away fair memories of fascinating old stone
houses, substantial as when the stones were
newly placed, and with all the simple picturesque
beauty and comfort which the magic word
“home’’ suggests.
But here and all through the Hudson valley
a new civilization is covering the old one.
Ancient customs linger only in remote corners,
or in modern revivals to enliven festive
days.
JuNE TENTH. Some reminders of the an-
cient household industries remain in the neigh-
boring farmhouses, where an old loom or spin-
ning wheel, a quilting frame or candle-molds
may be found occasionally, and all of them have
spreads and quilts and carpets and rugs coming
down from the former days. In the Italian vil-
lage a few women have the graceful arts of lace-
making and embroidery, and some of the men
keep their skill in carving wood and modeling.
So it has seemed to me that a little center for
arts and crafts in my country home may bea
means of friendship and mutual helpfulness in
the neighborhood as we come to know each
other better.
The rooms on the right of the long hall
running through the Old Homestead used
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THE JOURNAL OF
to be known as the parlor and the back bed-
room. I am now putting these to social uses
and call them the studio and the crafts room;
rather too ambitious names, and I may sensibly
wind up by calling them the workshops.
Yesterday I had an old-time rag-carpet loom
set up in the crafts room. I found it in a middle
Jersey ancient village, and it fits perfectly into
the low-ceiled room of my ancestral home. I
learned to weave ‘Colonial rugs,’’ as we call
them nowadays, in anticipation of coming
sometime to the country where I should have
time to indulge my taste for handicrafts. It is
fascinating work and uses whatever artistic
gifts one has for form and color adaptations.
Now I see how I can use it among a little circle
of country and village women to promote farm-
house and village industries, as well as neigh-
borhood social life. The cutting, sewing, dye-
ing, and weaving of materials for rugs will
appeal to the women as they gain skill, and will
perhaps help them earn a few extra dollars,
provided we get sale for our rugs. I set up
also one of the small Barbour linen looms for
weaving towels and bureau covers and strips
for curtains and other uses. If we really do
much weaving, I can readily find old women
in the villages who will no doubt cut and sew
58
_A COUNTRY WOMAN
beautifully the materials for the rugs, and so
spread the interest and usefulness of the work.
I find that hand-sewing is not a lost art in the
country, and one well-lighted corner of the
crafts room is for the fine art of hand-sewing,
with a suitable table, and an old-time chest to
hold the cloth and the garments in process of
being made. Embroidery and lace-making will
also have a fit place in the crafts room. This
room opens into a smaller room back of it, which
gives directly on a grass plat made by the
angle of the house, and enclosed on two sides
by the ivy-covered walls of the house.
Inside and out it is delightful for work and as a
social meeting place.
The studio is a long, low-studded room with
an immense fireplace laid in old Dutch tiles,
and with a high, narrow wood mantel above it.
There are two large front windows with deep
window seats and two quaint little windows,
high and narrow, on the fireplace side of the
room, and with the same deep window seats,
being cut through eighteen inches of stone
wall. Hardwood floors had to be put down,
but it was with a pang of regret that I saw
the broad, century-and-a-half-old, hand-hewn
timbers covered up. The old timbers and
flooring are sound after all the passing genera-
59
THE JOURNAL OF
tions, and tell of honest, well-seasoned lumber
in our forefathers’ building operations.
I have put my old brass andirons and candle-
sticks in the studio, and two antique mahogany
oval tables which were in the house in my
grandfather’s time, and hung a few good pic-
tures. The shelving on one side of the room
is filled with all my books on painting and
sculpture, on pottery, old china, pewter ware,
old furniture, and the arts of gardening and
farming. How I have longed to read these—
that is, often to take a morning or evening to
leaf through, read, and ruminate on the wisdom
and beauty inside these attractive volumes.
But the town gives you no time for such a revel
in books. I have hurried through chapters here
and there on subjects I needed to know about
specially, but for real communion with these
books I have been waiting until I got to the
country.
JUNE TWELFTH. Joy! It is too good to be
true. I found a pair of grand, solemn, gentle
oxen last week on a little mountain-side farm,
and cajoled the kindly farmer to sell them to
me. He had raised them and couldn’t say
enough about their usefulness, their great
strength, and gentleness. But if he had said
they were wild, capricious, gay creatures I
60
Naxo dO WVAL wNO ANWOH ONIONING
* A COUNTRY WOMAN
would have bought them just the same. They
are a part of the poetry and sentiment of this
region. I remember very vividly the ox-team
owned by the colored preacher on the moun-
tain, which he brought occasionally to do the
heavy work here in my grandfather’s time.
The sense of power and peace in those gentle
creatures has been a refreshing memory.
The poet Carducci, in his lines to The Ox,
exquisitely expresses their characteristics and
the modern feeling of the common bond be-
tween man and his faithful helpers in winning
sustenance from the earth:
I love thee, gentie ox, since thou my heart
With sense of peace and power dost mildly fill;
Whether in free and fertile fields apart,
Thou gazing standest, solemn, silent, still;
Or when, content beneath the yoke to smart,
Gravely man’s task thou aidest to fulfill;
Meeting with thy slow glance each offered ill.
From thy wide, black and humid nostril steams
Thy breath, and, like a hymn, resounds and dies
Thy joyous lowing on the air serene;
While mirrored broad and tranquil, forth there gleams
From out the austere sweetness of thine eyes
The meadow’s silence all divine and green.
Besides being another link with the past and
teaching their lesson of repose and calmness
amidst strenuous work, our team of oxen will
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THE JOURNAL OF
be very useful, doing all the heavy hauling,
and many of the hard tasks of the farm. They
will haul wood from the wood lot, pull out
stumps, haul stones and clay, and when needed
do any kind of ordinary farm work. They are
easy keepers and will graze in the woods, and
drink out of the brook during much of the year.
JUNE FOURTEENTH. We are getting into the
longest days of the year, and how wonderful
they are! It is daylight before four in the
morning and the bird chorus begins with the
earliest dawn. By sunrise it is over, though
birds here and there are twittering and singing
solos. Darkness does not settle down until
eight in the evening, and one has the sensation
of living more in these long, bright days than
in the shorter ones.
I like to be out of doors by half-past five
and drink in the dewy freshness of the early
morning. It gives one a good start for the
day, and it is really necessary on a farm to
improve the shining hours of the summer time,
the seedtime and harvest days, when every-
thing is clamoring for care, and saying, ‘“Tend
us now or we perish.’”’ There is time for a little
loafing in winter on the farm, but not in the
other seasons.
But O the joy of the work! And to work
62
A COUNTRY WOMAN
under such marvelous conditions and in such
an environment! Unseen forces working with
us, doing the lion’s share, and the sky arching
over us, bluer than any sea, its drifting clouds
and morning and evening colors visions of
beauty! The cool, scented air from which one
breathes in health and vigor, the grassy fields
and green trees and hedges, and blossoming
shrubs and flowers, all are near as we work
at the daily farm tasks. Our hearts sing with
Dr. Van Dyke:
“This is the gospel of labor,
Ring it, ye bells of the kirk.
The Lord of Love came down from above
To live with the men who work.
This is the rose he planted
Here in the thorn-cursed soil;
Heaven is blessed with perfect rest,
But the blessing of earth is toil.”
George the Slav is one of the break-of-day
workers and never has to be called. He has
fed the cows and is nearly through milking
when I appear on the scene. The boy helps
him put the milk through the separator and
measure the cream into the cans, which stand
ready for the man from the summer hotel, four
miles distant, who comes at seven daily for the
cream and milk. I have also engaged to supply
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THE JOURNAL OF
eggs, poultry, and vegetables as the season
progresses, and very fortunate we are to have
a market at our gates. The same management
owns a small city hotel and will take our farm
products all the year, but we must send them
to the station during the fall and winter. This
is only a mile and a half distant, so it will not
be difficult. The difficult part will be to have
the work go on satisfactorily while we are
away during three or four months of the win-
ter. But I am not borrowing trouble, and will
find a way to solve difficulties as they arise.
Distribution of products is half the battle
on the farm, as it is in the rest of the world,
and it is only a happy chance and the dearth
of dairies, and especially of Jersey dairies,
small or large, in our vicinity which gives us
such a convenient market. Now the problem
will be to keep the cows and chickens and
garden and fields up to the mark, for some rea-
sonable regularity of supply must be assured.
The fact that there are cows and chickens and
fields and garden does not guarantee that there
will be milk and cream and eggs and vegetables,
at least with any regularity and continuance of
quantity and quality. This is another reason
why I rise early and why I plan and study and
work at the problems of the little farm. Eternal
64
A COUNTRY WOMAN
vigilance is the price of milk and eggs and
vegetables as well as of liberty, and on a farm
you do not reap what you have not sown
and tended and watched and worked over.
A hen seems a very guileless and manageable
being to the uninitiated, and a mine of wealth
in her reputed egg-producing powers, but vig-
orous mental and physical efforts are needed
by her owner to win steady and abundant re-
sults in eggs and chickens. My sturdy Nor-
wegian egg-man who brought me the weekly
supply in the city expressed it pretty correctly
when he said that only one in a hundred per-
sons makes a success of egg raising and chicken
farming.
It is simply that people have an idea that
anyone can farm successfully, that things grow
and produce with just ordinary day’s work
attention, than which there never was a greater
mistake. Nature is too bountiful to be alto-
gether defeated, and even careless and brainless
culture of the soil and care of animals brings
some results, but success and a generous living
is in the application of intelligent, trained, and
enthusiastic efforts to farming. In advising my
young college friends to choose farming as a
lifework—the God-ordained work for mankind
—I discriminate, and advise only the specially
65
THE JOURNAL OF
bright and energetic ones to take it up, the
honor men. A mediocre man may earn a scanty
living in law, medicine, the ministry, or other
lines, but he could hardly worry a living out
of the soil. Brains, energy, and insight must go
to make the successful modern farmer.
JUNE SEVENTEENTH. I am more and more
impressed with what the national and State
governments are doing for country life and
farming. No one need lack for knowledge and
the best methods in every line of agriculture,
for from both these sources are continually is-
sued the most helpful, enlightening, and ad-
vanced methods, gleaned from our own and
other countries, and sent broadcast as farmers’
bulletins over the whole land simply for the
asking. These bulletins are practical guides
based on real experiences at the various agri-
cultural experiment stations, or by practical
and progressive farmers, and are simply in-
valuable. I have been much helped in the
planning and carrying out of my country home
activities by a study of many of these farmers’
bulletins, and one of them especially is my
chief guide. It is Bulletin No. 242, issued by
the Department of Agriculture, and called ‘An
Example of Model Farming.”’ It tells the story
of successful farming on a fifteen-acre farm,
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A COUNTRY WOMAN
where thirty head of stock are kept, seventeen
of which are cows in milk, and where all the
“roughage’’ is raised for them on the little farm.
When this journal seems an improbable tale of
impossible doings, I hope the reader will send
for the Bulletin and find out how much less I
am able to accomplish than the owner of this
model farm. For although the owner of the
fifteen-acre farm is a clergyman with no pre-
vious experience in farming, I am sure he must
be a genius not to be approached by ordinary
mortals, or else the care and culture of souls
have given him the necessary training for suc-
cess in the culture of land and the care of stock.
I look for no such notable success as his, but by
adopting his methods and with other helps from
wise farmers and gardeners I hope to do fairly
well. Long life, vigorous health and happiness
are some of the fruits I hope to reap from my
little farm, but the ordinary crops are highly
essential, at least to my happiness.
By the method I am pursuing, three acres of
the farm will be kept in grass to be cut for hay,
three acres in corn, two of which will be allowed
to mature, and the third will be cut as a green
fodder crop during the summer. A half acre
each is sown to rye and to mixed oats and cow-
peas for fodder crops, coming on at different
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dates, so the cows and other stock will have a
succession of green food from now on to the
late fall, instead of pasturing. But I am saving
an acre and a half, the old orchard lot, as a
pasture and outdoor living room for them. In
this day of outdoor living I would not have
the heart to follow exactly the model farmer’s
plan, which is based on what the butter-making
little kingdom of Denmark does, keeping the
cows stabled all the year round. No, I shall
keep the cows out of doors all day from May
to November. I am sure they will be happier
and healthier. The beautiful oxen and the
horses and young calves are to go either in the
wood lot or the pasture on Sundays and on
many of the fine summer nights. I like to see
the horses roll on the grass and get up and
shake themselves and start on a brisk gallop
around the field. They feel their freedom and
come up to the gate presently, neighing and
holding their heads over to be patted. The
old orchard has eight or ten picturesque apple
trees left in it, which afford delightful shade,
and the broad brook in the wood lot makes
that an ideal spot for the animals. The least
we can do for trusting creatures who do so
much for us is to give them living conditions
to which they naturally belong, so far as we
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can. The green fodder is carried on the farm
wagon morning and afternoon fresh cut, and
thrown out to the cows in the pasture field.
Besides this, in their stalls they are fed their
mixed ration of grain well seasoned with salt
in the early morning and evening.
I am going to try an Irish plan of winter
feeding. This is to cut up and boil turnips or
cabbage and thicken with corn meal or a
mixed grain meal. For this I shall plant in
late July a quarter acre of field turnips, and
George the Slav has already set out a quarter
acre of late cabbage. We also sowed some long
rows of field beets, for these are valuable winter
feed for cattle. This Irish ration, it seems to
me, will take the place of silage very well and
avoid the peculiar flavor of the milk which is
often complained of in silage-fed cows. I shall
need a vegetable cutter for this and it can be
run by the little engine of the cream separator.
And I shall have to build a root cellar, but we
need that anyway to keep our winter potatoes,
beets, onions, parsnips, carrots, and celery in.
I have a treasure of an Irish girl as a cook
and houseworker. She came to me two months
ago, after George, my colored houseman, and I
were pretty tired out with our varied labors in
getting settled, doing the cooking, and taking
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care of the house, with only temporary help of
workers by the day. George was not complain-
ing, but he looked very sober, and as if he
doubted the joys of country life, while with
my necessary outdoor duties added to indoor
ones, I was obliged to give up my daily stint of
reading and writing and other accustomed if
unnecessary pleasures or duties, when sud-
denly Rose Finnegan dawned on my vision,
coming from a friendly office where I had left
instructions as to my needs. The more ac-
complished ones declined to come to the coun-
try, but Rose, being fresh from her mother’s
farm in Ireland, and a little homesick after a
week of bewilderment in the great city with a
married cousin, was rejoiced that she could
find a place in the country.
She had never lived out, but assisted her
mother in the house and farm work, so she
knows all about outdoor work and a little
about housework. I have succeeded in teach-
ing her to do plain cooking after our fashion,
for she is very eager to learn, and her constant
“Thank you, ma’ams’”’ and exclamations of high
appreciation of my ways of doing things have
spurred me to a task I had always vowed not
to undertake. However, Rose is no common
Irish greenhorn, but a well-mannered and in-
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WILD CARROTS NEAR THE WOODLOT. BRINGING IN OUR LAST LOAD OF HAY
A COUNTRY WOMAN
telligent girl, coming from the small farmer
class. She has a fair education, a rich Irish
brogue, a love of work almost unbelievable,
and a cheery disposition. She is trusty and
interested in our welfare and determined. to
remain with us as long as she stays in Amer-
ica, which I understand is to be until she has
added a considerable sum to what she calls
her fortune in Ireland. J am enjoying her im-
mensely, in spite of the burdens and mishaps in-
cident to her training, and I feel that Providence
has been kind to send me such a helper. She
has no prejudices against the Negroes, as her
compatriots in this country have, so that she
and George the houseman sit down comfort-
ably to their meals together and are very
friendly. George the Slav and the farm boy
take their meals together at much earlier hours.
JUNE TWENTY-SECOND. In the very thick of
things. The harvest of hay is under way, the
berry and jelly-making season is on, the garden
calls daily for hours of work, in addition to the
usual care for the field crops and the stock. I
forgot to say we put in a half acre of potatoes,
and after constant culture and daily battles
with the potato bugs, they are coming on
finely. For another fortnight they must have
the cultivator run through them once or twice
71
THE JOURNAL OF
a week, and then they will be vigorous enough
to fight their few remaining foes alone. The
oxen have behaved like angels, and already show
how useful as well as ornamental they can be,
and all the other creatures are codperating in
the general scheme of things most beautifully.
We are fairly rioting in fresh vegetables and
small fruits, and sending the surplus, which
isn’t large this year, to our summer hotel
market. The strawberries we pick carefully
with inch long stems so that they may be
eaten from the stem. Three or four of them
make a reasonable meal.
Amelia and Angelica come home from col-
lege in a few days, and they will be two royal
helpers in and out of doors. Later two or three
of their college friends are coming for a week-
end visit, and some of our city friends we are
asking for short visits, the ones who have been
obliged to stay most or all of the summer in
town. Weare to go on living very simply when
guests are here, letting them fit into our happy
and busy life, and getting refreshment and
stimulus from renewed association with them.
JUNE ‘TWENTY-NINTH. These are busy
days. It is the height of the season in the
country, but in a different sense from the
city’s “season.” We are in the midst of har-
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A COUNTRY WOMAN
vest. We are also in the midst of ripe and
ripening strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries,
currants, and cherries. Amelia and Angelica
came from college a few days ago with trunks
and boxes, and college banners and photo-
graphs, and each brought a girl friend for a
few days’ stay.
After the general rejoicing and unpacking,
and a survey of the new home in the Old
Homestead, we held a council of work. System
and order, I find, are quite as important on the
farm as in the office or shop or school, for even
a small farm combines various lines of ac-
tivity, as home management and work, tilling
of the soil, care of stock, garden culture, and
many other things. It is a factory, in a sense,
where the raw material is worked over once or
twice at least. More than that, the raw ma-
terial is created on the farm. It is as near a
case of something out of nothing as I know.
From a field as bare as your hand four months
ago, George the Slav and the boy have gar-
nered into the barn several goodly loads of oats,
and three or four loads of hay from the small
hayfield, and two loads of rye from the low
piece of land near the wood lot. These grains
will shortly be threshed out with the small
second-hand thresher which I have lately in-
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THE JOURNAL OF
stalled in the barn, and then ground up for
feed for the horses and cows, leaving the straw
as bedding for the animals.
I have put a three-horse power engine into
the barn to grind the corn and other grains
and to cut the cornstalks for winter fodder.
With this and the separator engine much of
the work of the farm and house can be done
quickly and cheaply, which formerly had to
be done expensively by hand or sent to the
mill at the cost of time and toll. All our wood
will be sawed by power from the larger engine,
and the smaller one will do the laundry work
for the family, or the hardest part of it, also
the churning.
But to come back to the council of work
with my two college girls. Amelia was born
to be a private secretary and makes an ador-
able one. She will take over all household and
farm accounts for the summer, also the milk
records, and will have charge of the farm and
household stores, renewing as needed, and
making the daily or weekly memoranda of
things required. She will assist me in super-
vising the dairy, for no ordinary farm hands or
even extraordinary ones can be left to their own
devices in this day of germs and certified milk.
Angelica is a superior house manager for her
74
A COUNTRY WOMAN
years and loves the genial, unceasing, and repe-
titious duties of the home. She will take
charge of the household comfort and look after
the needs of guests and make up the daily
menus. She will also supervise the garden and
the fruit-gathering, and help in the canning,
jellying, and preserving of the abundant sup-
plies of fruit. Rose will be her loyal assistant,
and George the houseman is often able to lend
a hand at extra work, being a good cook and
handy about all housework. Fortunately, in
his own department George needs little super-
vision, but goes on his noiseless and useful way
in a daily routine which leaves the house clean,
quiet, cool, and inviting after his accustomed
touch has passed over it. I have come to re-
spect the even tenor of his way, and only
interrupt his schedule when necessity compels.
His chief pleasure is in the coming of guests;
not from mercenary motives either, for he feels
himself a part of the family and above accepting
gratuities except when offered as gifts of friend-
ship. He fairly loves to open the door to new
or old friends of the family, help off their
coats and wraps, escort them and their luggage
to the guests’ quarters, and wait at table
where nice extra dishes honor the presence of
the welcome guest.
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THE JOURNAL OF
One can overlook some shortcomings when
this spirit of hospitality animates the serving
members of the household.
Juty Srconp. Everything is moving on
wonderfully well. The work is so nicely dis-
tributed according to tastes and abilities that
none of us feels overburdened, although this is
the rush season in the country. The days are
so long and hot that we send a lunch to the
men at the out-of-door work about half-past
ten in the morning and a cooling drink of
lemonade or buttermilk, so they come in at
noon less exhausted and overhungry.
We have adopted the good old-time noon-
day dinner hour, and a siesta for man and
beast of an hour or two after dinner, which
does away with the best excuse for a late
dinner.
My lord and master has his long vacation
now, so falls easily into the way of a country
dinner time. The council of work assigned
him the wood lot as his share in the farm
work, knowing his fondness for forestry. And
here for three or four hours daily he uses ax
and saw and rake in making our little forest
more beautiful and useful. We notice master
and men, equally, wend homeward with some
eagerness when the tuneful farm bell sounds
76
A COUNTRY WOMAN
the quarter before twelve hour, and by the
appetites of all the family I conclude that per-
haps the noon hour is not a bad time for dining,
but only an inconvenient and unfashionable one
for city folks in their tiresome duties of doc-
toring, lawyering, teaching, buying, and selling.
We have tea at five o’clock under the
big walnut tree on the lawn, with everyone free
to come or not; and quite often a neighbor
comes in at this restful hour. At seven-thirty
we have high tea, or supper, on the screened
dining-room porch which faces the road. It is
lighted with Japanese lanterns at this early
twilight hour, and with the fragrance of flowers
and the cool evening air is most attractive.
This gives us the beautiful hour of early
evening for walking in the garden, lawn, or
woods, or reading out of doors, and when the
summer night begins to fall we gather for the
social hour, at the evening meal, not a hot,
heavy supper, but dainty and cooling, yet
satisfying and substantial.
At night you can do nothing in the country
but sit out of doors and watch the alluring
moon and friendly stars, following the lights
and shadows among the trees and on the
roadway and fields. If you have been faithful,
you are too tired to read long or talk much,
77
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and are ready, but for the exceeding beauty of
the night, to lie down to the sleep of the dili-
gent. That sleep is so much a forgetting, an
absolute dreamless unconsciousness, that you do
not know you have been asleep. You remember
only shutting your eyes to the beauty of the
night. All else is a blank until the dawn of a
new day, in which to work at what Thomas
Jefferson called the pursuit of kings, beams in
at your windows.
It is a perfectly sane way to live—this busy
country life, and I am more than ever in love
with it. The hard work makes me sure it is
the right way to live. “In the sweat of thy
brow” has a deep meaning now as in the be-
ginning. I am suspicious of living which in-
volves no physical labor. This is needed for
welfare of mind and soul, as well as for health
and long life.
JuLty FourtH. Fireworks are under the ban
here. If we are to bring to the country the
noise and waste of city life, we are unworthy to
dwell here. I don’t want the oxen disturbed
out of their peaceful calm by nerve-racking
firecrackers. I respect the temperament of my
faithful domestic animals. The cows would
fall off in their milk with an ordinary Fourth of
July celebration, and the horses be nervous for
78
A COUNTRY WOMAN
a week. We will celebrate joyfully with a
neighborhood party to-night, and some city-
bound men will come out to meet the college
girls. This morning we are to get together an
hour or two to read and talk about Dutch in-
fluences in the making of our government. We
will lunch in the woods, and dine at the Inn
where we send the cream daily, and be home
for the festivities at eight-thirty this evening.
JULY TWELFTH. One blessing of the country
is that there is work here, physical toil, and of
the most agreeable and inspiring kind to peo-
ple with souls. There is never help enough,
and always something is crying to be done, so
that the veriest idler becomes perforce a
worker unless he is hopelessly degenerate.
And there is health in it, salvation of body
and soul. One of the things the Almighty seems
to have kept from the wise and the prudent
is the absolute necessity of physical work
for the sanity of body and mind. So a multi-
tude of invaluable lives go out before their
time, and a greater multitude are wrecks
for lack of this great essential. Another class
on the wrong road are the millions who
grind away at forbidding tasks in vitiated air
and with monotonous routine. We need won-
der little at the idlers and tramps and in-
79
THE JOURNAL OF
capables who hang on the skirts of society, a
dead weight. The appalling monotony of
much modern work may well drive average
folk to idleness or insanity.
The joy of work we are interested in and
which is varied and stimulating cannot be
overestimated. It develops the best in us.
When men and women owned their own tools
and wrought on looms or forges, or in other
handicraft ways, putting their best thought
and some artistic taste and skill into the prod-
uct, the joy of work came out in the grace and
beauty of the design and execution, and in its
durability.
Greater health and happiness is in outdoor
rather than indoor work, for here we have
the wonderful accompaniments of sky and
atmosphere, of fields and woods and flowers,
and bird and beast neighbors are never far off.
A few million more of our people ought to
be tilling the soil—we should have a happier
and healthier population and fewer tramps
and idlers.
The delight in outdoor life and the finer and
truer feeling for nature are a precious part of
the gain of modern life. Work under the open
sky and in the sweet-smelling earth or the
softly-talking woods, or with the creatures
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dqdvou AHL AO GN AHL
A COUNTRY WOMAN
which live among these, is full of healing as
well as of inspiration. ‘Speak to the earth
and it shall teach thee,” the Good Book says to
us, and surely never were lessons more subtly
instilled. It is passing strange that so few
physicians prescribe work in the ground as a
cure, although they have long sent their pa-
tients to the outdoor life. Health and vigor of
body and mind and renewal of spirit are to be
found by entering into working relations with
good mother earth. And for that large and
growing class of people who keenly realize the
conditions of toil or deprivation under which the
masses of the world live and struggle, there is
satisfaction in vacation weeks and months
wherein one renders service to the common
life and makes two blades of grass grow where
only one grew before. Our contribution may be
small, but it is toward the common good, and
through it we get close to realities. There is
a delicious lonesomeness when one works in
the open air, and feels the nearness and grati-
tude of graceful plants which before our touch
were choking with weeds.
The odors of the earth and of the green and
growing things minister to health and satis-
faction. The too little loved sky waits above
us in serene glory when our task permits an
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THE JOURNAL OF
upward glance. There is harmony in working
among the green things of the earth, for plants
are purposeful, bent on a kindly mission to
mankind. They take their work and play
together in sunshine, wind, and rain, and why
may not we find health, beauty, and peace
while we serve the world? Emerson tells us
that “the greatest delight which the fields and
woods minister is the suggestion of an occult
relation between man and the vegetable. I am
not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to
me, and I to them.”’
Perhaps the royal road to mother earth’s
work cure is through the woods. The woods
minister to more subtle needs than the fields
and gardens. They temper the atmosphere
and bring down the rains, and afford shelter
and herbage for the cattle, and by and by they
go to make the four walls of home, and enter
into the thousand practical uses of life. How-
ever, corn and wheat make brain and brawn,
so no invidious distinctions may be drawn.
The joy of the woods, however, is surely the
ultimate healing power of good Mother Earth.
“In the woods,’’ says Emerson, ‘‘a man casts
off his years. In the woods is perpetual youth.
The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us
to live with them, and quit our life of solemn
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A COUNTRY WOMAN
trifles. As water to our thirst, so is the rock,
the ground, to our eyes and hands and feet—
what health, what affinity!”
The woods I know best are not the lonesome
forests of great trees and dense shadows. The
poet may find “‘pleasure in the pathless woods,”
but the everyday human wants the cheerier
woods, where broad spaces of sunlight make
patches of green grass to thrive, and a carpet
of many hued flowers is spread for our feet.
Never such a wood without its brook and
springs! In our woods there is a clear pool
fed by springs and flowing out to make the
brook, which in the driest, hottest seasons
never runs dry. Nothing can be more de-
lightful than clearing this brook of sedges and
grasses, and drifts of clay and pebbles which
choke up its channel.
The delight of outdoor work gets hold of
me so strongly sometimes, when my hands are
erimy, my back lame, and my head and heart
intoxicated with sweet odors of the earth, the
grasses and flowers, and overwhelmed by the
marvelous bounty of the Creator for man’s
comfort and health, that I long to open a
country colonizing office in town for enlight-
ening city dwellers as to the real joy and profit
of living near to nature’s heart. Especially
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THE JOURNAL OF
would I like to make something of this plain
to the toilers whose poverty and hard work
leave them no time to consider a new and
better way of life.
JULY SEVENTEENTH. The days are intensely
hot, and one fairly sees the corn growing taller
and waving its long green leaves and silken
tassels triumphantly in the summer breezes.
Corn is to the Eastern what wheat is to the
Western farmer—the main and indispensable
crop. As the Minnesota and Dakota farmers
talk in terms of wheat—wheat weather, wheat
conditions, and wheat prices—so our Easterners
talk and meditate and almost pray in terms
of corn. A big corn crop means prosperity.
These moist, hot days insure big ears of yellow
corn and heavy fodder from the stalks. Every-
thing else flourishes too under these tropical
conditions, but all are incidental to corn, which
is a universal food and almost as good a medium
of exchange as gold.
The horses sniff and neigh for very gladness
when the golden ears are rolling into their
feed boxes; the cows straightway increase their
milk yield when the yellow cornmeal is mixed
bountifully with their mess; corn-fattened pigs
are the only fit ones for the market place, and
it is the mainstay of chickens in their efforts to
84
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THE OLDEST HOUSES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
A COUNTRY WOMAN
provide a wholesome breakfast for the world.
As for us humans, corn feeds us directly as well
as indirectly in many forms.
To-day George the Slav brought in two or
three well-grown though immature ears of
corn and held them up for our admiring eyes.
They certainly give promise of a record crop
if weather conditions remain favorable. George
takes most of the credit to himself and deserves
a good deal, for successful corn means diligence
in business.
JULY TWENTY-FIRST. There is great rejoic-
ing, for one of my intimate friends has rented
the oldest house in the neighborhood for a
summer home. It was built about 1700 and has
a glorious, deep fireplace and a well of water
fit for the gods. My friend, Martha by name,
writes poetry and prose, and this is a place in
which to see visions and dream dreams. She
has taken the quaint old place for three years
and will make it comfortable and attractive
with a little effort and expense. Angelica and
Amelia are helping her renovate and settle it
and astonish me daily with tales of wonders
accomplished. It will be such a happiness to
have our circle increased by this congenial
friend, who will mix into the neighborhood as
happily as we have. We celebrated by asking
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a few neighbors to meet her at a picnic on the
Palisades, all of us going on foot from choice,
by way of the mountain boulevard after a
climb to that delectable road. George the
houseman came after in dignified state with a
wagon and the provisions. It was a heavenly
day and bound us all together in joyful appre-
ciation of each other and of our happy fate to
live among the glories and graces of kindly
nature. The day’s success was due to Martha
chiefly, to her charm and her joy in finding the
true life. She will stay late in the country and
come back early, and I doubt not songs in
the night will be hers and day dreams to weave
into verses for those who must take their joy
in nature second-hand.
JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH. We begin to know
people for five miles round about. The min-
ister of the little village church—my grand-
father’s church, for he built and mostly main-
tained it for fifty years—was, of course, one of
our first friends. Then we found an ideal
country doctor who cures mostly by suggestion,
with incidental prescriptions of baths, exercise,
and much sleep. He became at once a valued
friend of the family, but with the assurance that
we were hopelessly well and his calls would
need to be friendly visits.
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PARLOR CUPBOARD OF AN OLD DUTCH FARMHOUSE IN THE NEARBY VILLAGE.
A REAL HOLLAND INTERIOR
A COUNTRY WOMAN
Then our immediate neighbors have proved
so satisfying. They welcomed us, and were
delighted to find an open door at our home,
where a thought for the general weal of the
community was taken and some practical
way opened for them to come into social and
personal contact with one another a little
more freely. The arts and crafts rooms are a
meeting place of unending interest, and a rea-
son for frequent and prolonged comings of
neighbors, assured that here is a welcome and
work for those who wish, and fellowship of
kindred minds.
I am weaving some rag carpet rugs in at-
tractive patterns, and Amelia is also an adept
at the loom. One of our oldest neighbors has
revived her skill at coloring cloth in vegetable
dyes, and such wonderfully soft and artistic
and lasting blues and greens and browns and
purples as she brings out of the dye pot delight
our eyes and insure the beauty of our rugs.
Amelia is teaching two neighbors, young mar-
ried women, to weave, and three or four older
women sew the carpet rags at their homes, using
much of the artistic dyed cloth with their own
pieces, and bringing them in pound balls, on
our social afternoons, as their contribution to
the neighborhood arts and crafts work. We are
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THE JOURNAL OF
working at other crafts a little, and talking
over plans to make our work profitable, and so
to extend our art industries. The winter will
be the season to work out the problems of the
social and crafts side of our lives. Now the
wonderful outdoor world claims us most of the
time, and we visit each other’s gardens, and
inspect the cows and other animals, and go on
picnic excursions or on fishing parties in the
little leisure of our busy days.
JuLy Tuirty-First. I pitched my camp near
the site of the little old red house of my child-
hood days. Here by the spring, under the
shade mellowed by sunlight, we had two tents
put up on good solid floors—oblong tents,
which seemed like little cottages, with their
flapping doors of canvas. Good couches and
just furnishings enough to make a temporary
home for two or three people, and my camp was
done, for Dame Nature had made the setting
more beautiful than hand of man could ever
work out, and we have only to accept her gift.
Most people, including my lord and master,
naturally thought we were sufficiently ruralized
without going into camp. But a country home
is a place of such varied activities and interests
and incoming and outgoing people that I knew
full well there would be joy in a tented retreat
88
A COUNTRY WOMAN
under the starry skies and with delicious sounds
from brook and trees the only noises; hence my
camp. It has been and promises to be an end-
less source of peace and pleasure. I can lie
on my couch and watch the stars in their courses,
and wave a greeting to the man in the moon.
Or in these hot, busy days, a long siesta far
from the house and its inevitable duties, is
restful beyond words.
Another use I intend for the camp is to
offer it a week at a time, now and then, to
people who never get into the country and
who need it sadly. A young clergyman and
his wife, from a small downtown church, are
coming next week to enjoy it, and later two
or three clerks who never know how to get a
little rest and pleasure from their brief vaca-
tion; from here they can go on day outings to
lovely spots and at night be refreshed by
sleeping practically out of doors.
AuGust THIRD. To-day we had sweet corn
from the garden for dinner, and will have a
lettuce and cauliflower salad for supper. The
lima beans are coming on, while the early cab-
bages and white turnips we are using right
along, as well as string beans and beets. Har-
vest apples and old-fashioned bell pears are
the chief fruits, now that the berry season is
89
THE JOURNAL OF
over. But I must not forget the huckleberries
which sturdy boys and girls gather on the
mountainside and bring to our door two or
three times a week. If there is anything better
than huckleberry pie in the pie line, I have
yet to discover it. Angelica is canning a lot of
the berries for winter use.
The wonder of it all is this succession of
fruits and vegetables, each month furnishing
new and delicious kinds, beginning with spinach
and asparagus in early spring and running
through until late fall, Then for fear man
might suffer lack in the long winter months,
certain vegetables and fruits are good keepers,
and being stored in a suitable place they give
fresh food all winter.
When you live and work in the country it
is so easy to believe that God planted a garden
for man’s sustenance and delight, and so im-
possible to comprehend the attitude of people
who think all these wonderful laws and bounti-
ful provisions of nature come by chance or
without a lawgiver and creator.
AvucusT Fourtu. I worked in the garden an
hour before breakfast this morning, which I
try to do three or four days in the week for
the garden’s sake and my own. It is so still
and sweet and dewy there at six o’clock. The
go
A COUNTRY WOMAN
earth is like our friends, the more we cultivate
it the closer and more delightful our relations
become. It leaves no kindnesses unreturned.
It heaps favors on us after its own kind and its
silences speak to the comprehending heart.
One feels like continually singing praises in
the garden, the fields, and woods, and under
the open sky, and since the foundation of the
world men have sung praises and uttered
thanksgiving for the marvelous bounty of the
earth. The Psalmist seems to confirm our in-
timations that even inanimate nature is full of
joy and praises when he sings: “Let the field
be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall
all the trees of the wood rejoice.”’
I cut a basket of flowers before going in to
breakfast, and so closes one of the happiest
hours of the day. It is health-giving too, that
early morning hour of sunshine and fragrance
and contact with the earth and her fruits.
Things seem clear and easy in the strength of
the new day which were perplexing and worri-
some the night before. I think it might be a
cure for nervous people, an early hour in the
garden, only, poor souls, they never seem to
have the will and energy to get up early, even
though their chief trouble is_ sleeplessness.
Keeping well is my particular hobby, for obser-
OI
THE JOURNAL OF
vation has convinced me it is far easier than
getting oneself mended after a breakdown.
AuGusT FirtH. This was our picnic day.
We have one every week, generally on Sat-
urday afternoons. We cook our supper in
the open and stay late to enjoy the moon-
light when the moon shines, and the friendly
and more constant stars. Sometimes we go
to the top of the Palisades, sometimes to the
foot of that mighty bulwark, beside the broad
river, but very often to our camp near the
spring or to a neighboring woods.
The coffee-pot and broiler and a pot to
boil potatoes with the skins on are the im-
portant features of the outfit. The provisions
have to be bountiful, for out-of-door appetites
are remarkable. George the houseman always
goes with us as chief fireman and helper, and
two of the party cook and serve the supper.
Our poet friend Martha goes with us and one
or two neighbors, and whoever chance to be
our guests for the week end. So we have
simply happy, witching hours of talk and song
and jollity until the darkness begins to gather
thick and the stars come out while we sit
around the glowing fire and fall into the quiet
mood that seems to fit the evening hour and the
close of the working week.
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A COUNTRY WOMAN
AucusT SIxTH. It is one of those Sunday
mornings when the whole earth seems to be
uttering forth the glory of the visible and
the invisible, when to be alive is a joy. Cloud-
less blue sky overarches the green and bloom-
ing earth. The atmosphere is clear and vibrant.
A heavenly peace seems brooding over every-
thing as in the time before man toiled and
moiled to keep body and spirit together.
Sunday in the country is the crown of living.
The stillness is a revelation. The busy grind
of everyday life ceases, except just the neces-
sary work, and men and animals have a quiet,
restful air, different from their weekday look.
We all go to church in the morning and
our guests with us. Our ancestors hereabouts,
the genial Dutch folks, went piously to church
services lasting most of the day. They took a
lunch, and in winter a footstove, and were
edified by lengthy prayers and sermons, and
cheered by the neighborly intercourse at noon-
time. The spiritual side of life is as conscious
in us as in them, and perhaps as dominant,
although we have changed our customs of
churchgoing to shorter hours and shorter ser-
mons and prayers.
Churchgoing in the country is far less regular
than of old, and the influence of the church
o3
THE JOURNAL OF
less. Perhaps it is because there are so many
open doors to the spiritual life nowadays. It is
just as true of the cities, and perplexes thought-
ful and religious people everywhere. But if we
try to solve all the problems and remedy all
the ills of modern life, we shall not have time
to till the soil or keep house. We try, indeed,
to do our share in the effort to understand
conditions and help bring in the kingdom.
Here in the country I haven’t got much farther
than just to do, myself, and try to have my
family do, what we think is right and best for
us, to set an example of going ourselves regu-
larly to church and inviting our neighbors when
a suitable opportunity occurs. We take the
same attitude so far in community social and
political affairs, which suffer just as the church
does for lack of the people’s codperation.
AuGusT FIFTEENTH. This is the farmer’s
vacation time, a little cessation of urgent
work, an interval between the gathering of
early and later crops. One almost has the
sensation of a real vacation. There is still
enough to do in the care of stock and other
regular work, but now we can have the men a
few hours daily for such extra things as have
waited for this time of comparative leisure.
I am having them set out some evergreens as
94
A COUNTRY WOMAN
a windbreak on the north side of the barn,
and small clumps of them in two or three
other places. J don’t want many, for they
seem not to belong to this old-time place.
The fences are being looked after a little, the
spring cleaned out, and wood brought from
the wood lot, where the foresting has gone on
these weeks past.
It is such a satisfaction to be partially in-
dependent of the coal trust, and we look for-
ward to the early autumn evenings when the
open fireplaces with our own wood will cheer
and warm us. We put in a kitchen range
which burns both coal and wood, and a fur-
nace of the same kind. The latter easily takes
cordwood sawed in two pieces. Wood gives
out a delicious, odorous warmth, and the food
cooked over wood fires has a different and
finer flavor.
AuGuUST TWENTY-FIRST. Angelica has made
so much jelly and jam and canned such a quan-
tity of fruit with the combined help of the
family that we had to put up a new fruit shelf
in the cellar room devoted to food. The fruit
looks beautiful and samples of each kind at
our porch suppers proclaimed them perfect.
Angelica is becoming a notable housekeeper,
and I have to warn some of our guests that she
95
THE JOURNAL OF
has three years yet in college. Several ro-
mances have been weaving themselves during
the summer, as is inevitable where young
people are coming and going. What a
blind thing it is, this meeting and wooing
and wedding! It is not only Cupid who is
blind, but the young people most intimately
concerned in the romances. The best safe-
guards for reasonable happiness in the natural
ending which some of these romances are sure
to have is that youth should be trained to
unselfishness, self-control, self-reliance, and in-
dustry.
Just now I am thinking pretty seriously on
these questions, for something really tragic is
going on under our very eyes, and one’s power-
lessness to help is so apparent. In crises of life
very little help outside ourselves is possible.
We stand alone. No one can decide for us.
The little tragedy which has shadowed our
gayest and busiest days a bit concerns a charm-
ing young girl, one of Amelia’s earliest and
closest friends, and a great favorite with us all,
who came out to us in a gale of trouble three
weeks ago. The child has been educated in
fashionable schools and has all the graces and
accomplishments. Usually she is the merriest
of them all, dancing, singing, walking, and
96
A COUNTRY WOMAN
talking as care-free and happy as the birds on
the wing. Her home for years has been with
distant relatives in the city, where she is en-
tirely one of the family and where she has
shared all the advantages of education and
accomplishments enjoyed by her young relatives,
although her patrimony is very small.
She is a dear and attractive girl, and quite
naturally the eldest son of the family fell in
love with her. No sudden thing, to be sure,
but by constant association at home, and con-
tinual choosing of Cornelia to take everywhere
to their young circle’s entertainments, and to
confide all his hopes and ambitions to, there
has grown up one of those devoted compan-
ionships which are the surest presage of a
happy future together. There was no formal
engagement announced, but everyone knew
they were bound up in each other.
In an unfortunate moment Cornelia over-
heard Raymond’s parents regretting that their
eldest and very promising son should not
marry a young woman with some fortune.
The poor innocent folks are wealthy themselves
and have a large family and know how handily
money comes in to oil the wheels of material
existence. It was only a little human regret,
and with no intention of interfering with their
97
THE JOURNAL OF
son’s happiness. But this high-strung young
piece renounced her lover forthwith, and fled
to find balm in the peaceful country and with
old friends, leaving a man stunned and heart-
sick over her folly and pride, protesting with
all his soul against the cruelty of making him
the victim of some chance words and innocent
regrets.
SEPTEMBER FiFTH. Few hints as yet of real
autumn, but the fullness of summer every-
where. The ripened corn awaits the sickle and
the apple trees hang loaded with red-cheeked
apples, soon to be picked and stored for winter
use.
The fields are only a shade less richly green
than in July, and the woods are but just be-
ginning to put on the yellows and browns and
soft reds of autumn. The busy season has
commenced again on the farm, for now the
corn must be cut, and later husked and the
stalks stacked. Apples and pears are being
picked and sorted. The potatoes were dug
this week and turned out well, smooth, and good
sized. We will store enough for the year, until
the next crop ripens, and have fifty bushels to
sell, and thirty bushels of very small ones to
feed to the chickens and pigs. For this purpose
we boil them in a big iron pot, generally out of
98
A COUNTRY WOMAN
doors, and stir in several quarts of wheat bran
or cracked corn or cornmeal. ‘The fowls re-
joice in this tasteful mixture, and the pigs are
vociferous over it. This is what Irish Rose
calls ‘‘stir-about,’’ and a much-used feed in old
Ireland. Then the chickens like cabbages very
much, and the poorer heads from our small
field will be stored separately, under a bank of
straw and earth to keep for use in feeding them
during the winter. Fasten one on a nail or
hook within their reach and an eager crowd
gathers around and picks the tender white
cabbage heart out in short meter.
I haven’t spoken of our chickens and pigs
before, on the theory of leaving the best to the
last. The chickens are a dream. Thoroughbred
black Minorcas, Rhode Island reds, and barred
Plymouth Rocks; too many varieties for a
small place, I admit. But we got them in our
inexperience, and now are too attached to each
kind to give any of them up. They are all so
excellent and beautiful, each kind with its
dominant virtues, and seeming to outvie each
other in the number and size of the eggs they
lay. Without undue favoritism, I may men-
tion the beauty and lordly airs of the black
Minorca cocks, and the immensity and white-
ness of the Minorca hen’s eggs. They never
99
THE JOURNAL OF
stop to hatch out and bring up a family, but
keep right on laying as if they realized the con-
suming power of the human family for fresh-
laid eggs.
SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH. I do not believe
much in unlucky numbers and days, but cer-
tainly this day bears out the reputation of the
number thirteen. Not that ill luck has befallen
the farm or its interests. No, all things work
together for those who love nature and God,
but one can’t say as much for those who love
man—a man, to put it more definitely.
Dear Cornelia! poor Cornelia! This reminds
me of my dear mother, who always expressed
her gentle, heartfelt sympathy by the word
‘“‘poor,’’ “‘poor Louise,’ “poor dear Georgie,’
even when these children of her heart were but
lightly in difficulties.
I might write a week and yet not convey
the agitation, distress, and sympathy which
have moved our household over the crisis in
Cornelia’s affairs. There has been weeping
and pretty nearly gnashing of teeth, for it is
all so maddening in that we can only look on
and follow the lead of a young girl. It isa
month since she came to us, troubled and for-
lorn, having left her lover in anger. The nice,
refined country schoolmaster here has been
100
A COUNTRY WOMAN
among her devotees since she came. He is
much older than she, quiet, kindly, but utterly
unworldly and unfitted to cope with the bread-
and-butter problem of a household. His total
salary as a country teacher about equals Cor-
nelia’s fairly modest allowance for clothes and
sundries. He is rather good-looking and very
sympathetic, and fell deeply in love with our
charming Cornelia. Angelica, who has dis-
cernment, warned us there was danger, but
I was totally unprepared for Cornelia’s announce-
ment a week ago of her engagement to him.
I nearly fainted, which is a good deal for a
farmer. I begged, pleaded, commanded her to
cease her folly, but all to no purpose. It is
pique in part, I am sure, but the tender sym-
pathy and really earnest, attractive nature of
the school-teacher has won her regard, and not
wanting to return to her old home, which is
her lover’s home, nor having any plan in life,
now that the old love is off, the poor child
cuts the knot by accepting the schoolmaster.
She only consented after much urging to go
to the city and see her uncle and aunt, who
are her guardians. In her inmost heart she
doubtless hoped that some readjustment might
come with her lover, and I was sure of it. They
were in despair over her hasty action, and al-
IOI
THE JOURNAL OF
most forbade her marriage to the schoolmaster,
knowing her unfitness for a poor country
school-teacher’s wife. They begged her to take
more time to decide.
Raymond was absent on business, but re-
turned before Cornelia left, and I fancy the
meeting was tragic. In the joy of seeing each
other they forgot for a moment their bitter
parting and their grief, and fell into each other’s
arms in true lovers’ fashion. Poor little Cor-
nelia swallowed her pride and begged him to
forget her hasty action and offered to break
her engagement with the schoolmaster.
Then, alas! that awful sense of justice in
youth spoke up, and vowing that he loved her
utterly and would to the end of his life, he
absolutely refused to have her break the en-
gagement, declaring he would not cause another
man to suffer what he is suffering. And there
it ended.
Cornelia came back to the country with
shining eyes and a determined mouth. No
wisdom of the ages or the sages could have
moved her, and to-day at sundown she was
married to the schoolmaster on our lawn under
the walnut trees. Our family and the friendliest
neighbors gathered there. The schoolmaster
is almost the last of an old Dutch family and
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had no kindred to come. Cornelia did not
want her family friends, and asked only two
or three intimate girl friends from the city.
We made it as gay and beautiful as we could,
and a fairer bride were hard to find, and the
young girls in their filmy gowns made it quite
a fairy scene.
They are to live in the schoolmaster’s ances-
tral home, a mile distant from us, and as the
twilight faded and the moon shone and the
stars came out the young husband and wife
walked hand in hand to their new, old home,
surrounded by the galaxy of lovely girls who
bade them good-by and Godspeed at their
wreath-hung old Dutch door.
The old house was made quite a bower of
beauty by Amelia and Angelica, assisted by
our household force. Cornelia herself seemed
to take little interest. She swung in the ham-
mock on our porch, listless and dreamy, while
the old house was scoured and dainty curtains
put up, rugs put down, the few pieces of fine
old furniture belonging to the schoolmaster,
rubbed up and put in place, and Cornelia’s few
belongings saved from her dead mother’s treas-
ures, adjusted to their new environment. Then
the few but choice and useful wedding gifts
were disposed to advantage, the great fireplace
103
THE JOURNAL OF
piled with logs, the iron andirons brought from
the attic, and everywhere flowers and wreaths
of green.
George, our houseman, was there to light
the candles and the hearth fire before the
bride came home, and will stay a day or two
to light the kitchen fire and keep house until
the little lady takes up her life task in her
quaint old home.
The schoolmaster bought a cow and some
chickens, which will pay their own way. A
horse and carriage are not for poor people,
but the walking is good on our country roads,
and there are delightful walks. School open-
ing is postponed a week for the wedding, so
Cornelia will not be alone in beginning the
new life. Sheis tospend a day in each week with
us, and we shall go to her as often as we can.
When the girls came back we were sitting
in the moonlight still, amid the wedding
wreaths, talking of youth and love and life—
so mysterious and so blessed. Some one was
playing weird, sad airs on the flute. All our
gayety had vanished. The girls strayed a
little from us and sat in a circle on the grassy
slope, their arms intertwined, and not a word
from them. I suspect there were some wet
eyes and sympathetic hand-clasps.
104
A COUNTRY WOMAN
SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH. It has been a
month of perfect days, the crowning glory of
a beautiful summer. The harvests are gar-
nered and the clear, cool evenings remind us of
a new season’s coming. But so gently has
the change come, so softly the September breezes
have blown the tinted leaves from the trees,
and so hot and summery are the midday hours
that one hardly realizes the subtle change
going on. Then nature is so abundant in her
September gifts, and flowers and fruits and
vegetables were never more abundant. The
early varieties are gone, but from now on until
late October we shall have luscious grapes,
rosy-cheeked apples, golden pears, and plenty
of flowers and vegetables of the hardier kinds.
The spacious cellar begins to look like its
old-time self. A wagon-load of dropped apples
was taken to the mill last week and brought
back as cider to be preserved for winter use.
Boxes of sand and loam to hold the winter
celery, carrots, parsnips, onions, beets, and
turnips have been put in place. Pears and the
choicest apples were picked, wrapped in paper
and stored in barrels, leaving an abundant
supply out of doors, even after selling a
quantity.
The corn has been husked and brought in,
105
THE JOURNAL OF
while the stalks stand in great shocks, to be
later stacked beside the barn. The nut trees
are loaded and after heavier frosts we shall
have nutting parties to gather in a store for
winter use.
The gentle oxen are carting our winter wood
from the wood lot, and great piles of it have
been sawed and piled ready for use. How rich
we are! It seems almost wicked to use the
good things of the garden, orchard, and forest
as freely as we do. The narrow pinching of
many thousands of refined people in the city
and the real poverty of others enjoins upon us
care of the bounties lying all about us, that
there shall not be waste. In spite of this and of
the fact that hearty chickens and pigs await the
surplus of garden and orchard with impatience,
one feels like summoning gentle people to enjoy
the fruits and vegetables and flowers that seem
to produce an hundredfold and load us with
good things.
SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH. Yesterday Amelia
and Angelica returned to college, leaving us
lonely enough. The summer’s work and play
had made them hardy and happy. We shall
all be together again for two or three weeks at
the holiday season, when we are to have a
house party with as many friends coming as we
106
A COUNTRY WOMAN
can store away in the Old Homestead. And
then how the big logs will burn in the great
fireplace, and the home-made candles light us
merrily about the quaint old house, and to the
cellar to bring forth the good things now being
stored there!
Candle-making was a very interesting proc-
ess, for which we called in the assistance of
two old gentlewomen of the neighborhood who
had made them in years gone by and had kept
the molds. I remember seeing them made here
when I was a very little girl, and I have always
kept one of the old candle-molds in the hope
that I might some day use it. Our work turned
out successfully and we have a chest of four
hundred candles in the attic which will light
our ways during the year. We can turn on the
electric light at the stables and on the porch,
and even in the house on a pinch, but everyone
scorns to use it in the country where there are
candles and moonlight and starlight. We are
in the country partly to get back the poetry
of living.
Something new is happening all the time,
and the most exhilarating place I know of is a
farm. We no more than had Cornelia settled
with her schoolmaster in his quaint ancestral
home, than George the Slav announced that
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THE JOURNAL OF
his wife and children were coming from the old
country. What to do with them became the
question of the hour. George was helpless and
looked to me to provide a place. He had not
wanted them to come, knowing they were com-
fortably fixed at home and his fifteen-year-old
boy earning fair wages with a farmer there.
But a Slav woman in the nearby town, through
whom George has transacted such business as
he has, as sending money home and the like,
sent word to his wife that George was paying
attention to a young Slay woman and she
would better come to America. George scorn-
fully avers that he has not seen the young
woman for two years, and looks deeply worried
as to the future home he is to set up.
“Me no place for wife and children,’ mutters
George every day, and seeing the puckers on
his brow and the trouble in his eyes, I sallied
forth in search of a home for the newcomers.
Fortunately, I was able to rent a little, old
cottage on a neighboring farm for four dollars
a month, and we are sending over a stove not
in use, and some necessary furnishings, so that
Mrs. George the Slav will not be homeless on
her arrival in this hospitable land.
I am opposed to all immigration to our coun-
try for the next fifty years, believing we have
108
A COUNTRY WOMAN
more foreigners now than can be properly
Americanized, but this is an accomplished fact,
and at least they will settle in the country. It
meant either George must leave us and try to
take care of his family in the overcrowded city,
away from the only work he knows, or we must
help him shoulder the burden here. They can
dispose of some of our surplus fruit and vege-
tables and wood, and the wife doubtless will be
a good worker and find plenty of work to do
here and there in the neighborhood.
OcTOBER FirtH. The leisure I hoped to find,
but which was a rare thing in the summer, is
one of the joys of this autumn time—leisure to
read, to study, to write, to think, to see and
enjoy my friends, and even to loaf. Two or
three hours a day of work and supervision out
of doors and in, and the other twelve or four-
teen waking hours are reasonably free. We
have all been so diligent this summer, doing
the work needed to be done in season, that now
the time of rest and change to other congenial
occupations is really here, stretching all through
the quiet fall and winter months if we could but
tarry here, and promising joy and mental and
spiritual renewal.
At least we shall stay until after Thanks-
giving and come back for the holiday season;
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THE JOURNAL OF
but necessity seems to point to a few months
in town, so we shall make a virtue of necessity.
In these golden autumn days I am having long
walks and talks with Martha, our poet, and
we are reading together—the very latest novels
and poetry, a luxury I only had time for
snatches of before. The very spirit of our own
time must breathe in the best of these, and
they take us out of the practical into the ideal
world for a little while. Then for our solitary
hours we take up whatever line of reading or
study fits into our individual schemes of work.
The habit of early rising gives me long morning
hours when the mind is freshest and most
alert. The afternoons are mostly for social
and neighborhood life and to work out our arts
and crafts plans with the codperation of the
neighbors.
Cornelia is proving my loyal helper, now
that Amelia and Angelica have gone back to
college, and comes twice a week to help in
the weaving and other handicrafts, and to
cheer us with her music. With the marvelous
adaptability of the American girl she has
taken up her new life courageously, and tries
to find peace and content in the new duties
and to give pleasure to all whom she meets.
With her I can leave the social and crafts work
IIO
A COUNTRY WOMAN
I have begun, during the winter season when
I must be away, and so my problems get them-
selves solved as they arise. If we are obedient
to our visions, the ability and opportunity to
do the things we dream of is sure to follow.
OcTOBER EIGHTH. To-day we began an his-
torical pilgrimage which is to be continued on
fair days until the weather is too cold for
pleasure in it. It is a pilgrimage of our county,
one of the most historic in the Union, and
beautiful and picturesque as well. Here the
cheery Dutch settlers landed and explored
and made settlements before the Puritans ever
sighted their barren New England coast. Here
they developed a tolerant, peaceful, and pros-
perous civilization, whose ancient homesteads
still set forth the stability and honesty and
love of beauty of their builders and founders.
Here they helped to put the progressive ideas
of their homeland into the fundamental law
of their adopted country. Here battles of
the Revolution were fought and tragic events
connected with it occurred, and here through
all the years the development of agriculture
and of the arts and industries have gone on,
so that our county is a world in itself and
one to be proud of and to love.
It is a happiness to know well and love
IEIE DC
THE JOURNAL OF
some particular little portion of our great
land as well as to cherish a patriotic pride
and affection for the entire country in all
its grandeur and achievement. Few things are
finer in human nature than this clinging to
native places and contributing, if we may, to
their well-being.
On our pilgrimage we mean to gather rec-
ords and books and maps and pictures of
places and events to keep in the Old Home-
stead, for our own use and satisfaction and
for the neighborhood people, who are unlikely
to make much use of the county historical
society collections. From the scattered an-
cient houses we may pick up reminiscences and
traditions from descendants of the earlier
times, and perhaps some furniture of the
forefathers.
I shall be as much interested in the old
stone houses, ancient stone kitchens, colonial
Dutch doorways, and roofs, old looms and
brass and delft ware, bedspreads and home-
spun linen, as in the places of the first settle-
ments, or Washington’s headquarters and the
route of marching Revolutionary soldiers, or
the place where André met his tragic fate.
OcToBER TweELFTH. A doubting friend has
written me that I never said anything about the
II2
A COUNTRY WOMAN
dark side of country life! But have I not per-
sistently affirmed that foresight and hard work
are prime elements of country life? This with
the uncertainty of the seasons and its effect on
crops, the multitude of insect pests, seeking a
living as we are out of the fruits of the earth,
occasional sickness and death among our flocks
and herds and the difficulty of getting com-
petent farm help—these are what I would say
constitute the difficult but not the dark side of
country life. There is no dark side unless one
happens to go in beyond his depth financially,
but this is not peculiar to farm life, and less
fatal to it than to some other kinds of business.
To get joy out of country life one wants to
plan and work and live well within one’s means.
I have not dwelt much on my difficulties,
knowing that everyone has plenty of his own
to draw upon. The occasional failures in crops,
partly due to Providence and partly to George
the Slav, I have left unrecorded. It has been
a summer rich in delights, sitting at the feet of
Nature and learning her marvelous ways, not
rich through the harvests and the increase in
our live stock, though they have done their
best ungrudgingly.
However, my account books, kept in Amelia’s
clear handwriting for the most of the season,
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are not bad reading, and I do not hesitate to
put down here some results of my farming
experiment.
This is what we sold or used from April
first to October first, and the cows did not
really become domiciled and at their best
until well along in April.
EVOOVGtS. Creamlyat {220s crue eekretiarecy oh eecon $374.
Ssridoz wer eNat 2200). ki keen eee eee totes tae 23,
Govibs: spring chic. ation os cana ee 22.
HOGA DS OWL Abe O:m op uct. yok tee Rus Sa Oe oe
220 lhe: YOuny porkiat Erin ase este ole ee oe Busi
2a DS. (POR ab. Oss «st ese eyes Renate eis Zee
so baskets Bartlett pears at 60. 3... 256 5.0. 18.
€2 barrels apples.aty 2-50... on. .'s Sic ee oe 30.
Tomatoes, beans, early cabbages.............. Le
GO DU. NOLALOES ALBOG.. 5. fa. a aia eee 32.
BHCAIVES cto th AS tugs Sais ieis tas eles arene ee 20.
gGe.atsrmilkiat! (e640 se ck as Soe. Meee 21.
go. libs: butter at 2.30...ss)y. shoe Sh tas ere eee E2%
motal*soldy (an eke ccs eee eens $652.
PSO MCS MCrea im iaG Amro. ata. je nie, clon ae ne $19
BEGIOGZ, CC OSHAL SOs 3.58, \elanld © ee ae 30.
g2oulbs- spring tebe at. £o'6'0's/.\ 5. gesemeeney. ere er 30.
BSS TOW) BG EOS cys scarklh ss pepe ens eee 9
Vevretables: estimated: 2. < s. domes os bet cece 47
Prints testimateds 2.2. eee ee eee 61
BOOugtSsainatlke ate O6u (cis Pa aeee te.