Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1911 — “THE ADVANTAGE OF THE COUNTRY WOMAN” [ARTICLE]

“THE ADVANTAGE OF THE COUNTRY WOMAN”

(By Mrs. John Gwin.)

The word "eventless" is orten applied to the life of the country woman. This is as you look at it. I kn w city women who are living in the midst of things and their lives are very humdrum. Nothing is so dull as luxury; and society, the theatre, even travel, soon become monotonous unless a person is constituted for enjoying life. In this case environment has very little to do with it. People keep busy with pleasure-seeking as w’e toilers do with work,'but I doubt that their activity holds the abiding flavor we actual work, whieh makes us hungry and tired and sleepy and makes food and rest and sleep so good. I hope we may be able to convince mistaken people that the life of the woman who does her own work i 3 not necessarily dull. Dull people are born, not made, and who was it said: "People who don’t like the country because there is so little going on arc those in whose heads there-is less going on than even in the country." there is always something going on. Life is going on. The universe is going on. They are dull persons who need constant distractions and the over entertainment which has become a habit with society people is indeed ‘a dreary agitation of the dust.” The life of the country woman is full of busy days. Let her be thankful for them and keep her interest in them just as they are and she will be to the end immune from the evil days that have no pleasure in them. I think I notice among my many friends today a strong movement in the direction of studying happiness. There is certainly an effort being made among sensible people to simplify daily life, to And pleasures in common tasks and to cease profitless and foolish social relations. I expect this study of happiness to result in many good things. In optimistic moments, now and then, I come to the idea that people are going to stop going crazy about money and success and fame and distinction, and get interested in the business of really bettering the human race and finding out how to be happy. There are several straws blowing In this direction. The Christian Science idea, the Emmanuel movement, the fresh air and healing idea, all these show a growing Interest in the true happiness and welfare of the human race, and a great knowledge of the truth that wealth and power and social prominence have little. If anything to do with happiness. If we do take up the study of happiness seriously and make it the object of a new religion—a religion of here and now, rather than one that deals entirely with the hereafter—l hope It will bring ns to a new contemplation of education and Its possibilities, and to the important parts of education, which we persistently

ignore. Country people are especially blessed with their nearness to nature. Life is simple and Its duties are plain, yet many of us do not know that this is a Messing. We look away to the city and sigh for its luxuries and elegance, not realizing that we are the people who live close to the great secret which the world so often stands on tiptoe to explain. “Did you ever try being happy just because it is raining or snowing or blowing, or because it is April, May or November? Any of these is a sufilcient reason for being happy, but few people know it. Indeed, young people are discouraged by ambitious parents and teaebdts from yielding to moods of being happy over nothing and counseled to strive and grasp and attain, forgetting everything but the work in hand. Men in hot, dusty offices and stores and counting rooms must indeed do this, bui women more blessed in their work at home, may keep round them a sense of what the beautiful world is doing and share the impressionistic rapture with which April clothes the faintly greening woods In mists, hastily splotches the grass with dandelions and streaks the color on tulip petals scarcely awake and aware. I used to have a friend who vdsited me from the city. She would sit in the kitchen and lament over my hard lot and the thought that I was burled in the backwoods. She would often get me worked into such a state of self-pity that it is a wonder I did not commit some dreadful folly, for I liad not yet learned the deep meaning of life. My friend was a good woman, and her sympathy was sincere, but she did not know that what she wished for me had nothing to offer but the pernicious seeds of discontent. Do not allow any one of this sort to tell you of the glories of the outside world. Life is life and the world is your world. To judge your own happiness and circumstances by other people’s standards is a little way of looking at life. Suppose your house is old and plain and its furnishings shabby, compared with your neighbors. Does not April love you just as well —i 3 not her face quite as tremuously tender, do not the robins sing their world-old love song at twilight, and is it not for you? Step out into the April night some time when you are perplexed by life’s problems and see the stars hanging down from the sky. Feel the fresh tides of the year throbbing, half hearing the stirring of sproutipg things, and the nestlings of young creatures to sleep and mother. Imbibe the trust in which they go to rest and take the gift which life is constantly offering you. If you ask me what that gift is I reply, a soul quickened with a willingness to live and trained to the proud humility of obedience, which, take rank with command.

In trying to tell women of the serenity that may come into their lives if they will admit it, I do not mean that they can arrive at a point where everything will run so smoothly there be no friction. Too many impractical writers have told us that. It is easy to put on paper a plan for smooth, perfect action in the home and kitchen, but we who have lived there year in and year out know better. We know that the dishes will not wash themselves while we go and drop corn or plant potatoes or sow early garden seeds, and if the bread runs over while we are out making a bed for sweet peas—it will be too light and have big holes in it; or if we work it down it will taste sour when it rises again. I believe the thing that most frets the woman on the farm is the thought that many of her sisters live without care or worry while she must degrade herself with toil. If this were true she would still be the fortunate one, but it is a great mistake. Life does not move without effort to any really

.bright people; friction keeps us alive, and the woman whom you see idly sitting around is a dull person whom you should not envy. . What ever we really appreciate is ours. It TaFT possession no one can take from us. We need to look at life in the abstract as a thing of beauty and wonder. We must learn to regard suffering and trial the sublimity of what they bring with them; courage, patience, endurance. As for happiness, it, too, is symbolical. It belongs to us exactly in proportion to our appreciation of it. People who know what happiness is are happy. Only those who do not understand, remain fretting like children. The woman on the farm should be happy because she lives in the big world of nature, where she can see the farmer breaking the ground and feel the deep religion of such vital work. Men go daily into avenues of money-making with a sense of dishonesty in their hearts, but the plowman can never doubt he is doing “God’s service” when he plants the seed for bread.

As some of my hearers know, I lived in the country, with the fields and woods stretching away on all sides, and the neighbor’s houses nestling among beautiful trees, clustering round me, near enough to give me a sense of companionship, yet with distance enough between us to insure that large quiet which is one of the great blessings of living in the country. Occasionally I go to a neighboring city on a shopping tour. Going to the city requires of me the utmost exercise of courage. I try to fortify myself for the trip, arming myself against the depression that invariably settles upon me at sight of the high buildings, the dingy approaches to the big railway station, where one sees men black, with car grease and smoke, women in squalid houses, and listless children in the shadow of the brewery, or in bits of ragged yard adjacent to the saloonr I am no misanthrope, allowing the world pain to grow upon me to no purpose. I

steel my heart and shut my eyes and try to save my nerve force for the shopping tussle which I know is before me, but I cannot help suffering a little, and to some extent prostrating myself with those poor black fellows under the wheels of traffic, and living with those pale women in tlie dingy houses where cheap lace curtains speak so pathetically of woman’s undying love for what she believes to be beauty. The freight dewith their cargoes piled to the roof; the baggage room swallowing up and disgorging hugh loads of trunks, filled for the most part with Clothing, as superfluous, as unnecessary as any of the ridiculous things with which women persistently clutter their lives; the surging crowd with its* pathetic history of human emotions; the terrible engines; the clamor and clangor of this thing which we stupidly call civilization—all weigh on my heart like scenes in a nightmare, and I find myself wondering why I came away from home and subjected myself once more to the heavy sense of life’s injustices, as they appear in the sharp contrasts of the city. When I entered the department store It was with a crushing sense of how little I had to spend and how shabby in comparison with the rich and beautiful things displayed, were all my possessions. But as I wandered through the building and its various departments, I came gradually to a different point of view and a different idea of cheapness. Nothing is quite so cheap as a low moral atmosphere and the department store is so full of it that the soul dies of suffocation while one stays there. This spiritual deterioration begins In the show windows where effigies of women stand in actual typiflcation of the adornment of the human body. In the false tinting of their hair and faces, the impossible forms, hugh busts and ridiculous waists, children gazing upon them from Outside get distorted ideas of beauty in womanhood. Young girls absorb dangerous theories regarding fascination and young wives, in their longlhg to wear garments like those in which these figures are draped, make extravagant purchases and lay the foundation for the ruin of their husbands. In the department store we see the female of the genuß homo at a very low point In her development. We see her selling it for less than man can afford to sell his. We see her in all the heartlessness of finery and indifference to sharp contrasts, worshiping mere things and exhibiting her greed for possession. When I look at the women behind the counter, standing for hours, handling fabrics and breathing the vapid atmosphere of life as we find it here; the waitress in the case at the top of the building, where everything iB served in elegance and the dishes are garnished and the chops haVe frills on them, and if you would shut your ejfes you couldn't tell the fish from the dessert by the taste —I Bay when I look at these young women with their laced waists, frissled hair and hot. tired faces, I know there must be something wrong with the work or they would never prefer this Hades

of Trade to a plain little home of their own, or even to service in some quiet family. In the country there is a much higher moral atmosphere thi*. belongs to simple living and old ideals. In our quiet country homes some acts of the world of money occasionally disturbs us. We realize we cannot travel or stay in first class hotels, nor see things in the luxurious way of modern customs. For a moment this thought galls us jratil we remember that our inheritance of poverty is God’s richest dower to souls he thinks worth saving. Sometimes I worry over the idea that if I had a little more money I might be a better woman, but immediately comes the reflection that I might be a worse one and I am consoled. Besides I am convinced that the true religion of living never goes out of its way to look for a duty, but simply performs the pne nearest at hand, never evading it so long as the day holds hours enough for its accomplishment In my mind religion lies in the seam, the washboard, the stove, the broom, the plow—everything that represents a necessary adjunct to life.