The American Country Girl. Martha Foote Crow
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A country life is sweet!
In moderate cold and heat,
To walk in the air how pleasant and fair!
In every field of wheat,
The fairest of flowers adorning the bowers
And every meadow's brow;
So that I say, no courtier may
Compare with them who clothe in gray,
And follow the useful plow.
They rise with the morning lark,
And labor till almost dark;
Then, folding their sheep, they hasten to sleep,
While every pleasant park
Next morning is ringing with birds that are singing
On each green, tender bough.
With what content and merriment
Their days are spent, whose minds are bent
To follow the useful plow.
Anon.
CHAPTER IV
A CALENDAR OF DAYS
The wisest find life a difficult thing to classify; therefore young girls must not be blamed if they do not critically analyze the causes and the effects that appear in their personal environment. When asked, however, to give pictures of their daily experiences they do not fail us. Such glimpses of the real life of some Country Girls in their farm homes will be afforded by the partial recitals given in this chapter. To other Country Girls or to those to whom the welfare of the country girl is dear, or even to those urbanized city residents who consider the dwellers in the open country as a sort of alien race whose ways must be made a matter of study before they can be comprehended—these and perhaps others will surely be interested in these fresh and vivid accounts of the everyday doings in the farm homes of our country.
A fortunate country girl when asked to write a description of a representative working day of her life, sends the following joyous account. She is fifteen years old. Her life is under the protection of highly educated parents and the safeguards of right home training, taste and refinement. They come from magnificent stock and work a farm of medium size in the Northwest. She said:
"I get up at about half-past six in the morning, and have breakfast at seven. Then I help Mother what I can before I start for school. Mamma puts up my luncheon while I get ready. About a quarter past eight I start on my two mile walk to school. For about three quarters of a mile I follow the road, then I turn off into woods. By following a half-beaten trail for a ways, I come to a bridge made of wire. The sides and bottom are of wire; on the bottom are laid rows of planks with cross pieces to keep them where they belong. The bridge sways when you walk on it and sometimes it sags quite a little. Across the river I go through more woods. The schoolhouse is set on the top of a little hill. There are about twenty pupils in the school. At recess and noon we often play baseball. We have a fine teeter and swing. At noons all of the girls and sometimes the boys take their dinners and go out and find some pretty spot in the woods to eat. In the spring-time we often go flower hunting. I never get home in the afternoon until about half past four. After school I play, sew, or help in the garden till supper time. After supper I do the supper dishes, then we all have a nice time sewing, reading, or playing games around the fireplace."
A rest-breathing idyl like this shows that it is possible for bits of heaven to appear here upon earth now and then! The picture is made still more vivid by this little note:
"Several times we took lunch to an unworked mine near by and enjoyed the beautiful view and amused ourselves by picking gold out of the crevices in the rocks." The final touch of romantic beauty!
A roseate story like this should be followed, for contrast's sake, by one picturing the harder side. The following, written by a girl of sixteen, a description of a day in haying time, shows how a blithesome spirit can make work light and joyous:
"Haying time is a very busy season for all on the farm. At 5.30 o'clock Mother comes to our room, saying, 'It is going to be a good hay day, girlies. You must get up now; the men are nearly through milking.' She is forced to call several times, but finally we are up and dressed; we help finish getting breakfast, feed the chickens, and drive the cows to pasture. After breakfast my sister and I take the milk to the milkman who carries it to the milk station. Father hitches our horse and loads the milk for us, and then hurries away to begin his mowing so that the hay will have time to be well cured in the afternoon. We drive a half mile to the milk stand where our milk is unloaded by the milkman; exchange good-mornings with him and perhaps with a neighbor or two, and drive back home. We take care of our horse and wagon and then help with the morning housework. About half-past eight my sister and I start out after huckleberries in a near-by field. It is a beautiful morning and we enjoy the walk. We pick enough berries for a pie and for supper that evening and a few more. But we hurry back in order to have a little rest before half-past ten, when I must start raking. At half-past ten, then, I hitch my horse to the rake and ride off to the lot to work. I rake until dinner time and have perhaps a third of the raking done. I unharness my horse, water him, and put him in the barn. I go to dinner with an enormous appetite and a feeling of anticipation, both of which are soon appeased.
"Soon after dinner I begin raking again and rake until six o'clock. Father and the hired man draw in six large loads of hay. The haying for the day is done and it is pleasant to lie in the hammock and read a paper or book while the men finish unloading their last load. But before I enjoy this I must take care of my horse and carry him a drink of water from the well. After supper my sister and I help with the dishes and then run off to play in the swing while the men finish milking. When the milking is done we take the cows and the horse to pasture. Then we feed the calf, Claire by name, who is a very dear little creature and always greets us with great joy when she sees us coming. We shut up the chickens also. Then there is about a half-hour or more left for play, and we have a good time, forgetting that we ever worked.
"All our days are not so busy as this one; and when the haying and summer sewing are done, we have a chance for good times. Our haying was done this summer in eight days or perhaps less. At quarter of nine we go to bed. I read a chapter or two in some book I am reading, but by ten o'clock we are both asleep with the starlight and the moonlight shining in on us through the open screen."
If our sixteen-year-old girls can be completely satisfied to have but half an hour a day for recreation and to spend all the rest in unintermittent and heavy toil, and then can come out of it not only with unbroken courage but also with buoyancy and a poetic mood, then our respect for the country girl's character and nerve ought to be enhanced. This one ends her story thus:
"Indeed my sister and I love the farm very much and have no desire to leave it. We often declare that we would not live in the city for anything."
Perhaps the above letter will be recognized in some mysterious way as belonging to one of the Middle States; the following delightfully individual letter can come only from a big ranch in the Northwest. One feels the personality of the writer, like a dynamo, through all she writes. A Rocky Mountain breeze blows through her words; and her day, we know, is only one among many equally dramatic and interesting.
"This morning I was wakened by the sun as it first shone in at my window. As it was only a quarter of five I covered my eyes for one more nap. We have cool nights, but yesterday it was 104 in the shade. Soon I heard Papa get up, so I did likewise. I built a fire in the kitchen range and cooked my own breakfast. 'Cookie Sis' was not up and Papa does not eat breakfast.
"I thought the rest had