Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1885 — A Yankee Fanner’s Wife. [ARTICLE]

A Yankee Fanner’s Wife.

She has received a certain amount of instruction at a public school, then marries young and begins her, to me, Herculean labors. It is her part to perform all the daily household tasks, -with but seldom any outside aid. She must make butter, milk cows, feed the chickens, and attend to the kitchen garden, as well as to her special pet flowdr-beds and vines. Then she harnesses a horse and drives to a neighboring town to barter (as no one else can) with her butter, eggs, and garden produce. If anything is broken or out of order in the house or farm, she mends it, and being a woman of infinite resources, she may even construct some of her own furniture or paint her fence. Her “parlor” is adorned with all the latest substitutes in the way of worsted work or pressed bouquets, while her store-closet is well stocked with preserves, and her garret hung with dried fruits. It is probable that she has children, and none are more thoughtfully tended in all their needs, be they physical, moral, or mental. The clothing of the family, even to their stockings and mittens, is her handiwork, while occasionally a garment is made for one of the village poor. But where is her self-culture ? say you. Ah! there is the mystery; how and when is it accomplished? And there is no denying the fact, a narrow previncial education it may be, but that is owing to her circumscribed life. If you were to enter a small, commonplace, white-washed farm-house in any of the straggling New England villages, which appears little else than a cluster of huts in a wilderness to English eyes—if you are so bold as to enter in, and so fortunate as to have an uninterrupted conversation with the mistress of the house, yon w ould find her a plain, probably faded, woman, clad in neat calico, sharp voiced and sharp visaged perhaps, but gentle in manners, and displaying as she talks a ■well-cultivated intelligence, and more or less acquaintance with literature in all its branches of. history, philosophy, science, and belles-lettres. You would find her a member of the nearest library, and a subscriber to all the leading periodicals. But in order to make this a strictly truthful account, I must add that she seldom reads the newspapers, and is utterly devoid-es that knowledge of current affairs that distinguishes particularly the somen of New York and Chicago. But then, consider how precious to her is each moment of time, and how far she is removed from the centers of civilization! She has no amusements, no diversions, no trips away; yet she is patient, and never resting from her round of necessary duties, and that, to her, no less necessary one of self culture. Some one has beautifully said that “the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world.” The children of-Priscilla—or, more correctly, “Sairey Ann”—will doubtlessjbe rich, and some will call them parvenus, perhaps; but as for her grandchildren, what may they not become!— Cassell's Family Magazine.